You know, tools wear out. They lose their effectiveness, get dull, sluggish. Their owners consider replacement with a younger, shinier and overall more durable model.
But enough about erectile dysfunction. I was on my way back from the islands. Working, not playing, and aside from the obvious big box tool sheds, there were no tool-buying options but this one. Stopped at Harbor in need of three things: a folding workbench, a three-pack of vise grips, and some nut drivers. Okay, that could be about eight things. I'm not a tool fetishist; they don't have to be name brands, or even brand new. They do, however, have to be well-built and designed to last.
In short, they don't sell those.
I suppose if you only use a tool a few times a year, or if you're the kind of guy or gal who just loves to have a peg board full of every possible implement, these off-shore jobbies will be just fine. If, though, you make your living with hand tools, saws, compressors, pullers and all that manly-man stuff, don't bother with Harbor. You'll be three weeks into a project, still reveling in having saved thirty bucks on that ratchet set when it will peel off like Tampa stripper lettuce at the GOP convention. I've seen better hardware at Lido audition night.
The sales staff were relentlessly cheerful, kind, outgoing, personable and, were this another establishment, with better wares, would have welcomed my money.
"Faith is a kind of winged intellect. The great workmen of history have been men who believed like giants."
- Charles Henry Parkhurst