Gary Navarre on mon 25 jul 05
Hay Poor,
Don't know what Big Lots, K-Mart, or Meijer's call it but we at Wally's
call it "zoning". That's what we do when we pull product up to the front
of a shelf so it looks full and you can get a hold of it. Now the
inventory season is on us and lawn and garden is slowly clearing out. A
few days ago I found myself zoning out the pottery shelves. Our two
checkout gals were having a go but customers kept interrupting and the
pots were vary disorganized and heavy. So in deciding to help I found a
project to last the entire day. Who better to unstack and unstick big
$15 Malaysian planters than another (professional) potter. Man what a
humbling experience. Here I am crawling onto 15" and 20" shelf spaces
just like the little guy half way round the globe for the same minimum
wage. He don't love clay though, it's just a job to him. But here was I
using my kiln loading skills to place all the same pots closely together
and not wasting space. Just like riding a bicycle and I got paid to
practice on someone else's stuff. Seems I have a nack of popping them
apart. Too bad so many ended up broken on this end because they were
stuck inside each other but so what, we can get credit for the loss and
numbers moved on the spreadsheet. It's the American way. If it still
looks like you are making money you probably are.
Something real strange about the consumer I noticed was we sold the pee
out of those phony Bonsai for $15-$20 and couldn't get rid of about a
hundred 2-3' evergreens for $6 that turned a little brown because of the
drought. It rained yesterday and many we still had perked up. The
hundred ended up in the dumpster. All they needed was re-potting and
training and there is a Bonsai, in a few years. But I guess that would
take too long. We want everything real quick, "It takes too long doing
it that way." I love that thought, "Hurry up, you're taking too long." I
wonder if anyone is mad at Jesus for taking too long to get here. That's
a conversation I'd love to hear, "Hurry up, man, you're takin too long
to get here!" "Can't wait another 6 years ya know."
Oh well, I love my job anyway. If ya wanna see blatant self-promotion ya
oughta watch me in action with my customers. I must have told a couple
thousand people I'm building a wood fired pottery kiln in Norway. Some
know exactly where, they live within 20 miles. When I go on TV again not
only am I the guy who survived Meningitis but, "Hay, isn't that the old
man from WalMart's lawn and garden that loaded our Cadillac with cedar
mulch? Lets go to his studio and see the pots." WalMart is not sucking
the life out of me, man, if anything it's adding new life to my
material, not to mention the muscle. Doc said I needed to start pushing
myself and now it is nothing to put 75 high heat duty firebrick down for
the floor in my second chamber. It only took about two hours to get 3/4
done last week. I should be starting the stack and wall base the end of
the week on my 4 days off. I love being part time. And I can still get a
discount on a grill so I can have chicken ribs to Bar-B-Q while firing.
Wanna join me? Remember this is da UP and all the beer you can drink.
G in Da UP
Navarre Pottery
Navarre Enterprises
Norway, Michigan, USA
http://public.fotki.com/GindaUP/ (Nothing new, still waitin on the
slideshow fix.)
"Man, my sex life has dramatically improved since I quit drinkin! Ya,
now I don't feel so guilty about sleepin with myself anymore." Stay in
there!
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