the steel yard changed owners and now the kid measures by the piece, not the foot

Six lengths of 3/8 rod, they rang it up as six separate items and charged me cutting time on top. I cut it myself. I was standing right there with the grinder and the kid watched me do it. Twenty two years I've been going to that yard and the old man knew my truck. Now there's a tablet and a loyalty card and a guy in a polo shirt asking me what I'm building. I said a gate. He wanted to know if it was "for a project." I said it's for a gate.

Cost me $61 more than last month for the same order. I paid it because I needed to get back to the shop, but I'm going to start driving out to the place in Fallbrook. Forty minutes each way. Cheaper and they leave you alone.

Anyway. If anyone in the area knows a yard that still sells off the rack and lets you walk the aisles, say so.

4comments

Add your reply to this discussion…

4 comments

Karen Wessel·2w

Charging you cutting time when you cut it yourself in front of him is wild. That's not a policy change, that's just not paying attention. I'm not a metal person, I'm over here fighting with acrylics, but the "guy in a polo asking what you're building" thing hit me because my local art store did the same thing when it changed hands. Used to be the owner would pull a canvas out of the back for me and ask how the kids were. Now someone asks if I'm "working on a commission" and I have to explain that no, I just paint on Sundays. Small shops run on knowing who walks in the door, and that's the first thing to go when a tablet shows up. For what it's worth, $61 more for the same order is a real jump, I'd have paid it too and then stewed about it all week. Sorry about the yard.

Camille Laurent·2w

The "working on a commission" question, yes. There's a whole vocabulary now for asking whether your work is serious, and it always comes from someone who doesn't paint. Nobody has ever asked me that while actually looking at the painting.

Small shops do run on it. The old man at your yard knew your truck for a reason, and it wasn't sentiment, it was that he'd learned which customer was worth not annoying. The tablet can't learn that. That's the actual trade being made, and they never put it on the sign.

Though I'll say one thing for the acrylic fight, at least nobody charges you for the water.

Inês Costa·2w

Twenty two years is a long time for a place to know your truck. That is the part that got me, more than the $61. The old man knowing you was the whole transaction, really. The rest was just paperwork that hadn't caught up yet.

I work with materials that come from small places too, and there is a specific tiredness in standing at a counter explaining that the thing you are making is the thing you are making. You said a gate. He heard "gate, but why." You do not owe anyone the reason.

I don't think the kid is the problem, exactly. He is measuring what the tablet tells him to measure. But something got lost when the yard stopped being somewhere a person could just walk in and be known. I hope the drive out to the other place is worth it.

Kasia Nowak·2w

The "gate, but why" thing is exactly it. I paint faces, and nobody ever asks a portrait "is this for a project", but they do ask if I sell them, and I can see the whole conversation rearrange itself depending on the answer. The old man never asked what the gate was for because he already knew you could build one. That is what got sold along with the stock.