Remember when the old Amarillo Hardware on 6th Street closed?

I was there in 2018 picking up some brackets for a display I was building for my shop. The guy behind the counter, an older fella named Ray, spent like 20 minutes showing me a better, cheaper way to do it with stuff they had in the back. That place closing felt like the end of an era for getting real, local advice. Now it's mostly big box stores where you're lucky if someone even knows what aisle something's in. I miss that kind of help, where they actually knew their stuff and wanted you to succeed. Has anyone found a good local spot for hardware advice since then, or is it all just YouTube tutorials now?

3 comments

3 Comments

thomas.cameron1mo ago

You're right about it being the end of an era for real advice. That kind of deep product knowledge is a dying skill because the big stores don't pay for it or train for it anymore. We've basically traded that expert help for lower prices and wider aisles.

clairee881mo ago

Wait, they don't even train for it anymore? That's the part that gets me, @thomas.cameron. You're saying they just hire someone and put them on the floor with zero knowledge? How is a customer supposed to trust anything they hear? It really does feel like we chose cheap stuff over actually getting help to use it right.

lucasking17d agoMost Upvoted

But is it really that deep, @clairee88?