Chapter 6: Kitchen Supplies (4/7)
The Millennials Learn to Cook
It was April now, and the government had decided that restaurants could not be open for … reasons. In South Boston (in Boston in general, really, but particularly in South Boston), millennials are the dominant demographic. These young professionals love living in the neighborhood where they filmed all those famous Boston movies. Particularly Good Will Hunting.
But the hardware store was the exact location of the flower shop in the movie The Town.
As seen in the pivotal final scene here:
(We would, in fact, have people visit and take pics just to say they went to the flower-shop from The Town.)
But especially in majority blue cities where there are no churches—or really any older people to be seen in any way except in hiding—everyone walking around is a millennial.
Millennials have no idea how to cook (in addition to having no idea how to do many things). So we started to sell out of our kitchen supplies. They couldn’t go eat at the restaurants anymore, and none of them had any pots and pans; or any way to shuck an oyster, or peel or mash a potato, or cook a steak.
So all these items started selling out.
We didn't sell a lot of kitchen stuff—the kitchen stuff was on the back wall—it was never a priority in our world.
Until now.
In fact, at one point, we would take the kitchen supplies and move them to the section where the toilet paper used to be, to make it easier to browse the kitchen supplies.
One busy Saturday as I found myself stocking the index (that’s what they call the aisle with all the nuts and bolts), I could hear two customers perusing the kitchen supplies. Dropping on conversations might seem like an invasion of privacy, but for a salesperson it can lead to a bigger ticket, so I gave it an eavesdrop.
"So you want to sear it in butter…
“Okay.” …
“and give it a good dousing of the butter as you're cooking it." …
“Okay.” …
“And then you want to, you know, put it in the oven for say 5 to 10 minutes
“Okay.” …
“… just until you get it to the right temperature…”
“Okay.” …
“You'll know it's done when it starts to smell good that's how you know when things are done, in the kitchen, is when it starts to smell good.”
“Okay.”...
And then, after a brief pause:
“Thanks Dad.”
Next week, these lonely people locked into their rooms have to set up home offices to have meetings on the internet:
