One of my earliest awareness moments upon my return to live in Guyana (I have mentioned it before) took place in a visit to a major hardware store in Georgetown in search of some half-inch bolts to secure the posts of a wood fence. I was able to find the bolts six inches long that I needed but the bin holding the nuts was empty. The sales person calmly told me, “We have none” and was unable to tell me when new supplies would arrive. Taken aback by this information, I said to the young lady, “Without the nut to hold it, the bolt is useless.” Her response was an embarrassed smile and a shrug.
The experience in Guyana reminded me of the time in Toronto when a Guyanese friend of mine who worked at Canadian Tire, the hardware store, took me into the company’s warehouse showing me the stocking process involved in procuring items. It started with a customer’s request for a part, with that person’s address and phone number and, if the part was out of stock, an automatic resupply request from within the company. It was an introduction
