When I got back from Hungary in 1994, I worked odd jobs through a temp agency over the holidays. One of my assignments was to work the Home Depot parking lot December 23rd and 24th. I’m pretty sure it was a Home Depot. Do the dates line up?

Anyhow, there were two of us working the lot, corralling shopping carts and returning them to the store. Me and a retarded guy who wore stirrups and a fake sheriff’s hat. I forget what his name was, Sheriff Dave or something like that.

Sheriff Dave was a madman on the carts. We had pouring rain on Christmas Eve but that didn’t slow down Dave. He was all over the lot, grabbin’ carts and bunching them together. Problem was that Dave, being retarded and all, didn’t put much strategy into collecting the carts. So, if there was a cart sitting by itself 500 yards away from the store, the sheriff rustled it in and brought it back to the ranch. It didn’t matter if it was the only cart in the lot, he was on it.

This gave the our work breakdown a look that made it seem particularly lopsided, as my approach was to let carts build up to a level I felt dictated the need for a cleanup run. The 40 degree weather and pounding rain had a lot to do with that. I tried to share the strategy with the sheriff but he was too busy chasing down leaving shoppers and bringing their carts to justice to listen to my reasoning. It was this unbalanced appearance that caused the store manager to pull me aside and chastise me for letting the sheriff do all the work.

Not being particularly interested in a long term career at Home Depot, I was happy to give it to the man straight. “Hey, if that retard wants to run all over the fucking lot in the pouring rain, who am I to tell him otherwise? I don’t fuck with the law.” That was my last day at Home Depot.