I find this very strange. I have a couple of various types, and I know one can make a push stick fairly easily. But I was in the middle of something and had a really awkward cut, so I wanted one of those that look like the letter D with a tail that curls over the top- it would have been perfect and I don’t happen to have one.
Much to my surprise, while they can order them to the store for you, neither Home Depot nor Lowe’s has a single push stick of any kind in stock. At least, none that are near by me.
I don’t know about hardware stores but a lot of stores (pharmacists like CVS and Walgreens are the worst) seem to have just given up keeping stuff in stock, other than the big sellers. I think they were forced to during the post Covid supply chain crisis, and they realized people still came to the store (not like you are going anywhere else, the only competition is Walgreens and they are just as bad) so why bother with keeping well stocked shelves? It’s expensive and people come and buy stuff anyway.
Speaking of Home Depot and Lowes, in my area neither store sells the narrow wooden slats you need to make the canvas seat of a director’s chair stay in place. Without them the chair will collapse if you try to sit on it. You’d think that would be standard.
Maybe you have to be in an area where many actual film directors live.
Out of the three grocery stores nearest to me, each of the three sells at least one article that we need on a regular basis but that the other two don’t sell. So it can sometimes happen that I have to go to all three stores in a single trip.
A push stick is used to push the workpiece through the blade of a table saw while keeping your hand a safe distance from the blade. Since they sell tools, including table saws and blades therefor, I thought it odd they don’t sell an essential accessory.
Every table saw comes with one so it’s not the kind of thing people often come there to buy. In addition the manufacturer may not have them available in individual packaging and certainly wants a lot more money for parts than fits the Home Despot cost/price model. OTOH you can but a lot of them online from 3rd party suppliers of power tool accessories. Home Depot someday might carry a line of products from one of the companies including push sticks if they can work out a deal. Lately though, I don’t see them extending their product selection in that direction. Even when they expand their line up of parts and accessories it often appears to be a short term arrangement and they don’t restock the product as it sells out.
I see that they do carry some PowerTec dust collection products, and PowerTec makes some push sticks. Of course, people lose their push sticks all the time and just grab a piece of wood to use.
I’ll just note that my homeowners basic craftsman table saw from ca 2002 did not come with one. I have a few I’ve made, and mostly I use my Grrrripper, but as I mentioned I needed to rip a small and very light piece. The d-shape style would be perfect, and stopping to make one wasn’t really where I was at with my project.
Staples is awful for not carrying a lot of things - but they will offer to order them for you for later pickup. Pisses my husband off. All he wanted was a pack of divider tabs for an 11X17 binder. I think he would have had to order the binder, too, but he had one already.
Yeah, I know, it’s not something many folks use, but still, since COVID, the store near us is half the size it used to be and it seems to be limited to the sort of stock one can get at WalMart.
On the other side of the coin: our local grocery stores cater to different clienteles. The “snooty” store is Safeway, which is most likely to cater to the tastes of mainland transplants and carries non-local foods like couscous, plus it has a large selection of organic produce.
Foodland is more oriented toward people born and raised in Hawai’i; it has a delicious deli counter selling all kinds of poke, seaweed salad, and lomi-lomi salmon, but if you want something “foreign” like phyllo dough, head for Safeway.
So guess which of these two stores reliably stocks tahini and 00 flour?
I definitely most places have stopped stocking the more “exotic” ramen noodles since COVID. Now you can just get Beef, Chicken, and Shrimp. Finding the “weirder” flavors like “Oriental”, Chili, Roast Beef, Roast Chicken, Pork, and others is basically impossible unless you order online.
My guess would be that they don’t sell enough of them to warrant having them in-stock, and taking up shelf space, at the brick-and-mortar stores (as @TriPolar states).
Especially with online shopping making it possible to easily buy the most obscure stuff, many physical stores now focus on the higher-velocity items, to maximize sales per square foot of shelf space. They don’t want to have a shelf, or a peg on the pegboard, stocked with something that only gets bought once in a blue moon.
I saw something today at the Dollar Tree store that I didn’t know that consumers wanted. It was fresh fruit and vegetable wash. The instructions said to apply it directly to the fruit or vegetable and then rinse with water. The ingredients were basically the same ingredients found in shampoo. I didn’t buy any.
This must be the result of a lack of competition. I have three large (by UK standards) supermarkets and two smaller ones within a five minute drive. There are also a lot of smaller chain and independent stores within easy reach.
Of course, if all else fails, there is reliable next-day delivery from the likes of Amazon.
When I was younger, all corner stores had a magazine rack. Comics, Time, Life, Redbook, Esquire, comic books, and so on. The magazine rack was huge. Today, my local corner store sells daily newspapers and that’s it for reading material.
I know that print magazines are dying. And in fairness, my local supermarket has plenty of print publications on offer, everything from pencil puzzles to National Geographics, but I miss those days of going down to the corner store and buying some reading material.
International Delight Southern Butter Pecan Creamer. For some reason the grocery store I usually shop at (Harris Teeter) stopped carrying it. I know that ID still makes it, and I have found places I can order it online. But I prefer to buy it locally, preferably when it’s on sale.
Oh one random thing that bugs me: big jars of Italian seasoning. All the supermarkets from fanciest to cheapest decided en masse stop selling Italian seasoning in anything but the tiniest sized jar. You’ll sometimes get “season all” seasoning which has Italian herbs but also salt and bouillon powder in it, but never just Italian herbs (mixed herbs in UK parlance) on their own.
Before I switched to just half & half, I was always switching creamers because my favorites kept disappearing from the shelves. I suspect coffee creamers are almost always first on the chopping block when people (coffee drinkers) make an attempt to lower their blood sugar.