‘And this is really grass-roots work. It’s like you’re working with real people.’
Among the well-stocked aisles of shower heads, plumbing equipment, nails and push brooms at San Diego Hardware Co., Tom Griswold stands ready to tell anyone who cares to know how to install a dead-bolt lock or replace a light switch. Griswold, 30, is a merchandising manager for San Diego’s oldest hardware store, and he can talk passionately about everything from pocket knives to dust pans. Griswold landed the job more than four years ago when he was looking for full-time work that would earn him the money to pursue his artistic endeavors with music and painting. When he first applied for the job, he knew nothing about hardware. Now, whether he is talking about blue grass hammers or faucet washers, he speaks with a confidence born of a true handyman. Times staff writer Caroline Lemke interviewed him, and Barbara Martin photographed him.
I’m in a kind of catch-all position. I’m a merchandising manager, which means I’m one of three managers on the floor, managing employees, customer complaints, that sort of thing. I also find things to have specials with, and I give input as to what would be good image items, things that would fit the store.
The customers are a mix. You have the full-on salts of the earth-type workers with the cigarette stains under their fingers who do nothing but work all the time. Like the maintenance guys in the SRO hotels down here.
There are a few who come in three or four times a day. They probably work six days a week. They don’t know anything else. They live in these hotels, they work there, it’s just their life. Then we get the contractors and construction workers.
And then you’ve got business people coming from the offices to get stuff to work on at home. They are cool in a way because I’ve worked in restaurants downtown where customers had a tendency to look down their noses at me. But, in a hardware store, you normally know more than they do, so you’re on equal ground and it’s really good.
There are a lot of things that are essential. For example, we have these really sturdy metal dust pans which are the kind they use in grade school, just heavy duty, bang-upable dust pans. They are the Levi’s of dust pans. These guys that come in, they’ll walk past them five times and finally say, ‘I’ve got to have that.’
I never have been in any other hardware store where they explain things. They just say, “Here’s your stuff. There’s the register. Bye.” I get a kick out of putting everything in layman’s terms because it helps me understand, too. Because a lot of times I don’t understand how stuff is supposed to function until I have to verbalize to someone to make it easier for them.
People who come in who want to put in a dead bolt who have never done it before, the prime thing is getting them over the mental block of thinking they can’t do it. We have so many people who come in and say, “I can’t do it. I’m not handy. My husband’s not handy.” I say, “It’s simple. I’m not handy. I’ve never done it before. But I would come over to your house in a second and do it,” you know, if that were kosher. Because I’ve been telling people how to replace light switches for years, but I’ve never had to do it. I have rehearsed it over and over in my head, and I didn’t think it was impossible for me to do. It was easy.
When I was younger, I thought there’s got to be some way I can get out of work. I’ve got to be able to get out of work because I don’t want to work full time, 40 hours a week. And someone told me, “Look, even if this was the 1800s, you’d be out there milking a cow and pulling vegetables out of the ground eight hours a day. You gotta do your time. Everybody does.”
And this is really grass-roots work. It’s like you’re working with real people. It’s work you can feel good about. Even though the business is growing, it still retains the Ma-and-Pa market atmosphere because of the people who work here. There’s a lot of camaraderie.
I’ve been offered a few jobs since I’ve been here, and I’ve passed them up because I’m happy here.
