Money-Saving Tips for Unemployed Suburbanites

Hey, homeowner! Do you have garage clutter? Are your yard tools just leaning against a wall and making the space look like the unkempt shop of Slingblade or perhaps the backwoods hideout of a serial killer/child molester? Don't accept that fate! Now you can purchase this handy yard tool organizer for only $49.99! That's well below the manufacturer's suggested retail price!

But maybe you don't have a spare $50 right now. At Where's My Jetpack? we understand your situation. Why spend $50 on something you really don't need right now when what you need is gas in your tank to go to a job interview? So, do what we did! Go to Lowe's and find a display of those car washing wands. You can usually find two or three of them sitting together, none of them full. Consolidate the wands into one display rack and find a clerk. Ask the clerk if you can have that empty display rack that's just sitting there doing nothing. He or she will likely shrug and say something like, "I don't see why not."

Not Exactly Mom & Pop - But Better Than a Big Box

It's almost summer, so yard work and home repair are picking up. Some ceiling fans on the back porch needed new blades, sagging after too many humid summers spinning. So naturally, like a dumb American, I went to Lowe's and bought two sets of blades for $25 each, the red-vested salesman assuring me that they were "universal" and indeed the packaging indicated the same. "Only ones we have and they should work," he said. Get them home and they don't line up with the brackets that hold the blades. Take them back to Lowe's. Get a refund. Go to Home Depot across the street. (Lowe's and Home Depot always do this, just like Walgreen's and CVS like to set up new stores at opposite corners of a busy intersection.) This time I brought the bracket to avoid the same mistake. Fan department guy says, "No, don't have that size. But you can buy a set of brackets along with the blades, but by the time you do that, you may as well buy a whole new fan." Sensing my reluctance to do that, he said, "You know where you should go? Dan's Fans up the street." "Think he's open Sundays?" I asked. "He'd better be if he wants to make any money," said the orange-aproned man.

Dan's was open, spinning fans in the window announcing that fact before I ever saw the neon "Open" sign. The parking lot of the little strip mall was fairly bare, and upon entering, I now made up the entire clientele of the store.

Two hundred fans hung overhead, at least a third of them spinning, and yet there wasn't a sound from one of them. Blades in hundreds of styles hung from the walls and I knew the guy at Home Depot had sent me to fan heaven. I suspected the prices were going to be extravagant, noticing one beautiful model that had two heads that spun sideways like propellers marked at over $1,000.

The only other person in the store was a white-haired man who was on the phone behind a counter. He eventually approached me. I held out my dirty old bracket. "Need a couple sets of blades that'll fit this." He examined it and offered that while it was an unusual size and rightly guessed that it was from an outdoor fan, he could sell me some new blades that came from units that they'd sold but the buyers wanted different blades. "Not plastic like you should use for outdoor," he added, "But they'll last you five or six years." I noted to the gentleman that there wasn't a sound in the store, even with all these fans running. "Dan's fans aren't like other fans," he said, going on to give an explanation about dual motor bearings that I half-understood.


He disappeared into the back of the store and returned with two sets of the orphaned blades, still in their packaging.

Eight dollars per set. Paid with cash. Hand-written receipt. A Sunday afternoon time warp.

Long live Dan's Fan City.

A Fan Story

"You don't control the message," we tell the client these days, because one stupid blogger with a beef against you can do damage to your brand in a single post. I don't have that kind of blog power, but Home Depot is starting to piss me off.

I love a good fan. When I’m at Home Depot, I like to look at those giant fans on wheels that stand about four feet high. I’ll imagine how easy it would be to clean an area with that thing on top speed, blowing away everything that isn’t fastened down. But mainly, I just like a nice breeze.

Up until this week, I had a “commercial grade” fan from GE that ran pretty much 24/7. I’m a fan of GE stuff and this rugged fan served me faithfully and quietly. Any motor that runs nonstop for seven years is pretty good, so when it died this week, I determined to replace it with a similar fan, hopefully even the exact same model. Kind of like if a faithful dog died unexpectedly, you might be inclined to replace the pet with one just like it.

A trip to my not-at-all-friendly neighborhood Home Depot (you people have such attitudes) resulted in the purchase of the closest thing I could find. Boxed, there was no way of seeing what was inside, but by the drawing on the box, it seemed to be roughly similar to my recently departed GE fan.

Out of the box, this fan revealed itself for the poorly made Chinese piece of crap that it is. On the lowest speed, it sounds like a small plane is buzzing the house. What passes for metal in China is apparently just shiny chicken wire. And I should’ve been tipped off by the very silly name “King of Fans®.” I can now picture the prototype being tested at the factory. A group of engineers hit the “on” switch and marveled at the noise and the gale force wind. “This fan is the King! It is the King of Fans!” they congratulated one another. Then they named their new company King of Fans. “It will tell of the majesty and glory of this fan, and we will sell them to Americans through their Home Depot. Oh, and don’t let them see inside the box before they purchase.” Then they rounded up some local children and put them to work in the factory so Americans could have cheap fans.

King of Fans® is now a garage fan. Pissed at the Depot, I tried Lowe’s, who had absolutely zero fans in stock, as they apparently think it’s winter season and people don’t need fans now. Idiots. So I had to go back to the Depot, where I purchased an oscillating Pelonis™. All plastic, with a freaking remote control. If I ever use a remote control for a fan, just shoot my stupid, lazy, American ass right there on the spot. Same price (roughly $35) as King of Fans®, but quiet and with a relatively normal name. Oh yeah - and made in China.

Verdict: Not all Chinese fans are the same. And Home Depot sucks. Still.