Open Mike: I Go To Wander and Hope (OT)

When I was recovering from my heart procedure, which was supposed to take six weeks, I had to put my shirts and coats on backwards, because I wasn't allowed to raise my left arm during that time. I had not thought about how I put on a shirt or coat since I was, I don't know, five or six? When do kids learn to put on their coats? If I was five, that means John F. Kennedy was President the last time I consciously thought about how to don a coat. It wasn't a real problem, just an annoyance. But I had a ludicrous amount of trouble with it. I swear it took me the whole six weeks to re-learn how to do it. I didn't get the knack of doing the motion backwards till the last day. Honestly, it was that hard.

That's part of the reason I got all agitated when I learned my old keyboard had been discontinued. The replacement (which I called the No Natural because it had the same name minus the word "Natural") was different enough that I couldn't type on it at first. I was convinced it would take me forever to get used to it. Because, you know, the putting-on-the-coat thing, not to mention lots of other things like that.

But when I finally actually tried to learn the new one, I adapted to it in...about eight minutes. I exaggerate. But it's fine.

Do I still need to learn to touch-type? Not really. I took a typing test using the No Natural at Monkeytype, typing my old way with three fingers and one thumb, and within three tries my score was 50 WPM with 98% accuracy. Which (again) is fine.

So all this keyboard business was just me being Chicken Little. I was honestly panicked when I found out my keyboard had been discontinued. I mean, I had been been using it for 30 years (a new one every three or four years). Meanwhile, readers were all like, dude, just learn to type. As I was freaking the F out.

Lost souls
Speaking of odd nicknames for weird things, like No Natural, I went to Wal-Mart yesterday. I decided that store should be called "Wander and Hope," because that is what you have to do there. I get an attack of existential pessimism whenever I go into a Wander and Hope. It makes me question the culture of now, the meaning of life, and whether I belong on this planet. I never feel lonelier or more defeated. Manfully, however, I found three blue-vested employees in a little klatch talking with each other animatedly about their men, their kids, and their lives. I interrupted them and asked them for what I needed, and one of them turned away from the others and sucked it up and put on her concerned/motherly/helpful employee-face. She waved and pointed and said, "It's down there, way down there, just look for a section called 'More Meaningless Crap.' You'll see it. You'll find it. You'll be all right," and I repeated, "More Meaningless Crap?" to help me remember it, and she said 'More Meaningless Crap." Then she went back to her discussion with her friends. Within 40 steps I had forgotten what section she told me to look for (it wasn't actually the More Meaningless Crap section), but I was too far into it to go back and ask again. I thought perhaps I would find another employee in the interior of the store to ask, but encountering a Wander and Hope employee in the interior is as common as someone offering you a Prosciutto e Melone sample on a tray in the middle of the Australian outback. I had about a football field to walk. In my meandering I encountered several more old men wandering aimlessly, doddering into view for a little while and then disappearing. At any given time in any Wander and Hope there must be at least eight old men shuffling around lost, having forgotten or given up on their mission of finding whatever it was they came for. They wander around for part of the afternoon and then eventually manage to trickle out the front doors. They probably lose their cars in the parking lot, like I did, but here's a hint: if you just keep walking around purposefully out there like you know where you're going, nobody can tell you're lost. If you ask any of those old men later that evening what they did that day, they will look at you with a bewildered expression, which is not all that different from their usual expression, and say, "I went to Walmart."

I eventually found a round plastic can of wipes for car interiors, and I was pretty amazed that I found it. It occupied about 12 inches of linear shelf-frontage in a vast wall of other stuff, on an aisle adjacent to twelve other very similar aisles, and the employee had pointed to it from a football field away, and I found it anyway. I was a little proud of myself. Next, you wander until you detect daylight, and head toward that. Sometimes you merely sense it. Eventually you will get to a long stretch of cash registers, all of which say "CLOSED" except two, which both have long lines. At that point you are within an automated self-checkout payment of freedom, so keep going.

Ignore that orange warning light
My car came home yesterday, by the way. It was at the dealership because no one could figure out a persistent problem with the TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system).

This popped up about two years ago. At that time I took it to the Honda dealer in Canandaigua and asked if they could have a go at it, to save me the drive all the way to Rochester to the Acura dealer. (My car is an Acura, but Acura is a division of Honda, and my car is based on the Honda Civic.) I waited patiently, and presently the Service manager came out to talk to me. He kind of hemmed and hawed, saying that he didn't know if Acura used the same machine as his, and that Acura might have different codes than their machine used, and that I would probably be better off just taking it to Acura. I thanked him and left. In the interim I had several other places try to fix it, a couple of tire stores and a couple of independent mechanics. The light kept coming back on. It didn't really bother me much. It was merely an annoyance, no big deal. I learned to check the tires the old-fashioned way, and ignore the big orange warning panel that says "CHECK TPMS."

My car had to go to the Acura dealer for a different issue, so I asked them to take a look at the TPMS problem while they were at it. I, er, expressed my skepticism that it could be fixed. The Service manager said, "Oh, we'll fix it." When I picked the car up a week ago he told me the TPMS was fixed. I said, I dunno, that's been a pretty persistent issue. The light came back on before I even got home, same as usual.

But Acura is super-serious about standing behind their work. When I called and told them the light had come back on, that's when they sent a driver in a loaner car to pick up my car, so I wouldn't have to make the drive to Rochester again. They delivered an expensive, gleaming, brand new SUV, an RDX, for me to drive. They kept my car a whole week. No extra charge for any of this.

That's service.

Having not seen my own car for a week, it came to me in a flash of obviousness that it was dirty, hence the stop at the Wander and Hope. I had softened a good deal toward that Acura RDX that I ended up driving for one solid week. When they picked it up yesterday I still didn't know how to turn the radio on and off, but I had learned what a lot of the other features did and had started to relax into its weird mid-2020s vibe. I learned many things about it. If you can believe this, that damn car will drive itself on a more or less straight road, for miles, no hands on the wheel. It weaves gently from the fogline to the centerline and back again...until it reaches a curve, when it will go right across the centerline and into oncoming traffic. That seems a.) amazing, yet also b.) not a desirable functionality in any way, shape, form or fashion. We didn't hit anything.

So the reason they kept my car for so long was because the dealership was hosting a visiting Acura engineer for a day, for a completely separate matter, and they wanted him to take a look at my car while he was there. Well, guess what? The engineer discovered that the piece of testing equipment the dealership was using had gone bad.

He tested this hypothesis by driving my car to a nearby Honda dealership and getting them to fix the problem!

So everyone's happy. The Acura dealership discovered their equipment was faulty—they've ordered a new one, of whatever it is—the Acura engineer solved my issue, and my issue got solved, which is what I wanted.

I just think it's a little ironic, is all. If the first Honda dealer had just taken a shot at fixing the problem, it probably wouldn't have been a problem for the last two years. You know what they say: Oh well.

I can't complain. That's life. Life on life's terms.

This post typed the old-fashioned way

Meanwhile, I'm using the chip-away method on my dirty car. Whenever I have a big task to do, I tackle it by doing just a little at a time. To "detail" the interior of my beloved 2014 Acura ILX 2.4 with manual transmission (that's it in the top illustration, taken in the dark with the iPhone), I get a container of those car interior wipes, keep it in the car, and just clean a little bit every day. The inside of a door one day, the body sill the next; the center console the next day; the top of the dash the day after that; and so on. Before you know it the whole inside of my car will gleam like new. 

Now I'm off to chip away a little bit more on my taxes.

Happy Easter to those of you celebrating!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

David L.: "I work in a big box retail store. One of the most common searches is 'I’m looking for my wife/husband.'"

Steve Rosenblum: "As you know, Mike, here in Michigan we have these gigantic Meijer superstores (formerly called 'Meijer Thrifty Acres' before they decided to jettison the reference to their West Michigan Dutch Reformed roots). I believe they were pioneers of the 'superstore' concept because they had the combination grocery store/huge discount store thing going before I started college in 1970, long before Walmart and Target got on that bandwagon. I was amused by your post because even in my college days, long before I became an old man, I found myself in a kind of mild dissociative state after wandering around in there for quite a while trying to find the item I came there to buy without a helpful employee in sight. There didn't seem to be any logic to where things were located, or at least I was unable to perceive it. These days they are somewhat better organized; plus, many of the big box store apps will actually indicate on which section and shelf the item can be found."

Ken James: "Mike, that was the funniest thing I have read in like forever. It was made even more special for me because just on this past Thursday I went to Walmart for the first time ever! I was one of those old men shuffling about aimlessly in total amazement. I went there because they apparently carry a dog food I am feeding my rapidly declining old dog, and yep! I finally found the dog food department and, like you, after wandering that quarter-mile-long aisle for 10 minutes I spotted it on the vast wall in front of me on the very highest shelf, one case left occupying the same 12 inches of shelf space. The whole experience was truly surreal. I could also identify with wandering until I spotted daylight. What an experience. My wife had a similar experience with the tire pressure thing on her car too."

Speed: "Both Home Depot and Lowe's will tell your phone exactly where a product is if you tell them which of their stores you're standing in and exactly what product you are looking for. Their computer knows where their stuff is, why shouldn't you? Some Walmart stores do as well—maybe all but I've not yet shopped in all of their stores. And all three of the above will 'pick' all the products on your list, package them up, charge your credit card and have them waiting for you near the door. Target too."

Comments

[David B.]

That's the (skilfully) funniest thing I've read all year, anywhere, so far!

[Craig Beyers]

Years ago my kids complained about ALL OF THE THINGS THEY HAD TO DO to complete an assignment; the topic is irrelevant and I can't remember anyway. I used this example: how to get from DC to LA? Well, you can fly, take the train, ride a bus, drive a car, or...walk. They said/asked "Walk?????". I told them yes, walk, one step at a time...it will take a while, but by taking one step at a time you'll get there. That's "chip away".

[Keith B]

Mike, your blanking out on the Wander And Hope employee's instructions reminds me of going to record stores in the 70's/80's/90's: Whatever mental list of 5 or 10 artists/albums/composers/etc that I wanted to look for, that I had memorized on the way to the store, was erased from my brain as soon as I was exposed to the loud Top 40-type recordings being loudly played on the store stereo system. I hated that, and it's one thing I don't miss about going to the record store.

[DavidB]

If I go to and know exactly what I want and which aisle and bin it resides I get several employees trying to help.

If I dont know exactly what I want or where to find it there's never an employee to be found.

One of life's mysteries...

[DavidB]

Hmmm...it looks like the software stripped out part of my comment. Oh, well.

[robert e]

Mike, don't ever walk into an IKEA. You may be in there for days.

I don't think I've ever walked as much as I did in the mega mall at King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Until then I believed that one of the few benefits of suburban car culture was reduced wear and tear on my walking equipment, both biological and man-made.

If you're in the habit of connecting your iphone to your car, you can have it mark on a map the spot where you disconnected it, i.e., remember where you parked. https://support.apple.com/en-us/101587

[robert e]

P.S. You can of course manually mark your parking spot on the iPhone's map app, but since we're forgetful, I figure the automatic way is better.

[Keith]

Back in the day, I remember adults complaining about power steering and power windows, and how they'd never buy a car with them, because it was one more thing to break, and more expensive to fix. Now cars are so complicated that the sensor is sometimes the problem, delivering a false negative. And sometimes, like in your case, the equipment that is supposed to diagnose the problem is itself faulty. Let's not even get started on operator error.

[Kye Wood]

You just nailed the Walmart experience.

[John Abee]

I learned years ago - the hard way -
that when you get a TPMS alarm you first check the tire pressure in your spare and then, if the problem persists, you take your car to your tire dealer. They can diagnose quickly and if a sensor needs to be replaced they charge about a quarter of what the dealer wants.

[Kevin Crosado]

A friend of mine has a Toyota hybrid thingie with a similar sort of self-driving to your loaner. What he really hates about it is that the tech stops working below about 30km/h, which is when you really want it for peak time gridlock, roadwork stop-gos and suchlike.

The only time the interior of my car has ever been cleaned was when it was at the panelbeaters to be de-rusted (penalty of living by the sea). I get to enjoy the crunch of gravel each time I change gear :-).

[John Camp]

That would be "Walmart"

[I'm a little behind the times. --Mike]

[Sal Santamaura]

Mike, apparently you weren't a Car Talk listener. If you had been, you'd have known how to fix that TPM issue right away. A piece of black electrical tape over the light. Also, if the Acura ever develops an annoying noise of any kind, just turn the radio volume up.

[hugh crawford]

Mike, you might like one of those cheap Bluetooth ODB2 scanners. Even the cheapest can give you some useful information before you head off to the dealership. On the other hand there are some impressively complicated rabbit holes you can find yourself in. I haven’t shopped for one in ages so I have no advice, but the cheap ones are pretty much all alike.

[darlene]

I've found the ultimate solution to my shopping aversion: I place a Walmart order online, and it magically appears at my car door when I pass by while running errands. It's like having a personal shopping genie, granting wishes without the hassle of stepping into the store. Check out Walmart Plus - I quit Amazon Prime once I discovered it.

[Thomas Mc Cann]

I have a notes app on my phone. I will note what I am looking for before I enter the store.
If its something I read about, say a wine, I will take a photo on my phone and show it to an employee. To be fair some employees can be very helpful

[Kye Wood]

After extreme rainfall last year, my car got creative. It started showing an intermittent fault with the auto-leveling headlight system. Which would have been helpful, if (you guessed it), that system was even fitted to my car. It wasn't even an option in other countries.

And once that fault appeared, my car wouldn't idle properly.

It was caused by (drum roll), a faulty catalytic converter. I never kid about things like that.

It took the very clever mechanics a lot to find that. And my wallet still gets an ache when it thinks back to how painful it was to pay for that event.

But it's now a gem. Sometimes ya just gotta persist.

[Peter]

Honestly, if all you did was write these OT posts, TOP would still be among the best sites on the web. The camera stuff is fun, too.

[Luke]

Remember, all those extra steps in the Big Box Store count toward your total. Enjoy!

[David Elesh]

Since hardware stores are in steep decline due to the rise of Home Depot, Lowes, Target, and others, and big boxes typically involve a drive somewhere, I have sought to make sure that they have what I need by checking their databases. Unfortunately, I have found that they are rarely reliable. When I go to the store, I often find that they are out-of-stock or never had any stock or it is nowhere near where the database said it was. I seldom can find a knowledgeable employee; most of the time they have little idea of what their stock is--even when they are employed in the department I need. The situation too often drives me to Amazon.

[Dave Glos]

I am going to appropriate "Wonder and Hope" for my personal lexicon, to reside proudly beside "Lost" (Lowes) and "Hopeless Depot" (Home Depot). Of course, credit will be provided upon enquiry.

As Speed relays, there are software assistants rolling out that may provide some relief. To truly be helpful, they might need to go a step further, if allowed by the user. In an ideal universe, you would get a message on your phone when stepping into a store asking if assistance was needed. However, in our real world, this would entail signing away all cloak of personal privacy and allowing for an obtrusive barrage targeted marking, thus ruining the experience.

Once watched a fascinating segment on the psychology of shopping on CBS Sunday Morning. One of the key takeaways was the time a customer stays in a store, and the more items they are exposed to, correlates directly with sales. Knowing that, stores intentionally make it hard, to the point of annoyment, to shop efficiently.

Any wonder why Amazon, and any number of online retailers, have become our new default 'go to' providers of stuff we mostly do not need. Of course even the new King, Amazon, is sliding down the slope of usefulness as once powerful search algorithms are being poisoned with targeted advertising and product ranking. Ironically, targeted product placement has been a thing in the retail space for decades, with more powerful companies 'buying' better placement in stores. Old ideas mined, reformulated, and passed off as new.

I think the British punk juggernaut The Clash fully captured the existential crisis of stepping into large retail emporiums with 'Lost in the Supermarket,' a song so embedded in my grey matter as to silently auto play with every visit.

I'm all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for that special offer
A guaranteed personality

[Robert Roaldi]

I had a 1986 Colt Turbo whose engine would occasionally just shut down. Then later start back up again. I took it to a dealer in Toronto who did a diagnostic test and told me that I needed a mass airflow sensor and throttle position sensor, grand total close to $2000. That didn't sound right to me. I bought a big fat service manual for the car so I could figure out how to read the CPU's error codes, this was before ODB. I had to uncover this thingee, stick a voltmeter on a contact and visually count pulses. Then you compared the count to a chart, which told me that the CPU had received bad signals from the mass airflow and throttle position sensors. I found the colour of the wires for those two sensors and traced them with my thumb and forefinger along the wiring harness. At a spot where the huge bundle of wires took a 90 degree bend around a piece of metal, I felt that the conductor of one of the wires had broken inside the rubber insulation. I cut it open, soldered it back together and the car ran fine for 5-6 more years. The story is short but it took about 4-5 months to do all this, lots of false starts and bad guesses including two other mechanics who didn't have a clue. That was the one and only time I managed to do a decent auto repair. Good thing I owned a voltmeter.

I just read in the morning news that someone around here has been waiting for 2 years for the parts for an urgent safety recall for their pickup truck.

[Jeff]

Lowe’s introduced a phone app to locate products in store back in 2013. The phone started substituting for people interaction about that same time in history, for better or worse.

https://corporate.lowes.com/newsroom/press-releases/lowes-introduces-product-locator-mobile-technology-make-shopping-easier-11-27-13

[Dave]

So what, exactly, was the problem? Bad tire valve/sensor? Software restore to default or reboot? Something else?

I did not know those edge lines had a "proper" name. Learn something new . . .

[Jim Arthur]

I remember reading something about automakers using highly trained diagnostic specialists who travel between dealerships. These guys diagnose and repair tricky electrical/computer issues in modern computer controlled cars. In some cases they fix programming issues or repair circuit boards (PCB's). I can’t seem to find the article this morning…need more coffee.

Back in the day, The Simpsons TV show worked hard to create funny store signs and they liked to refer to the local Big-box store as Sprawlmart. I’m not sure why I remember that…I had to look up the one below. :-)

OEDIPUS RX
A Mom and Pop Son Pharmacy

[Jeff1000]

The tire pressure sensors are equipped with a non-replaceable battery. Obviously it's a matter of time before they fail. The bad news is that the entire unit needs to be replaced. They're around two to three hundred bucks a pop, if not under warranty.

That's just one more thing I love about my Subaru manual Crosstrek: no TPSMs.

[Eric Rose]

I gotta laugh. Each TPMS sensor has a battery with a life of about a decade (2014 car, now 2024, get it). On most, the battery is not serviceable, and the entire TPMS sensor must be changed. The sensor stem is also subject to damage, as is the sensor itself, when the tire hits a curb or the car gets into an accident. And each time a sensor is changed, it generally has to be reprogrammed into the control module so it can be recognized. Not an expensive fix, unless of course you can convince your customer that a much more expensive item caused your flashing TPMS light and it had to be replaced.

[Dillan]

That was hilarious, and very relatable.

[Chris Y]

This description of a 2024 Big Box Store deserves a Pulitzer.

[robert e]

re cleaning: My sister introduced me to 'Zap Cloths', which are astonishingly good at cleaning surfaces with just water, and they're reusable.

https://www.amazon.com/Zap-Cloth-Streak-Free-Cloths/dp/B00JOQWPNG

Treated wipes work well enough, but I find most of the treatments irritating and I feel bad about the waste.

I'm grateful for your "Chicken Little" keyboard episode. It made me aware that I can and should do more to heal and protect my damaged hand and arm, and goaded me into action.

[Rick]

Great post. I laughed out loud. Thank you.

[Bob Johnston]

The best humour is based on real life. I found this post absolutely hilarious.

[Sean]

Being stuck in a checkout queue provokes the same grumbling as when I'm stuck in traffic. Until it suddenly dawns on me that I’m not stuck in traffic. I am traffic, a part of the existential hole I got myself into. Which leads me to a question: Are there wipes for such holes?

[Patrick Perez]

My friend who is smarter than me told me that the TPMS in my 2015 VW wasn't really measuring the tire pressure. Lower-end TPMS systems such as mine, are actually inferring the reduction in tire pressure by monitoring the rotation of the tires with sensors in the anti-lock brake system. Higher-end TPMS systems are actually measuring the pressure.

The first time I got the low pressure notice was on a 400 mile road trip to Southern Oregon, 30 miles from my destination. I was very nervous, until my friend explained the above. A quick trip to Les Shwab and all was well. No tire damage or major leak. After getting the tires filled for free, a quick calibration in the car's computer made it all good again.

Patrick

[Dave Kee]

This very old man has found the cure for the Walmart wander. I use their app to buy all my needs online. You simply park in the assigned area and login and they deliver your goods to your car. I always try to tip the employee a few bucks for their assistance but most refuse. I tell them no one is watching but it doesn’t seem to matter. Maybe someone is watching. Creepy to think so.