Menards has a problem with height discrimination, and I have decided to be brave enough to talk about it. I’m 5 feet, 6 1/2 inches tall, provided the measuring tape is feeling charitable, and I’m wearing shoes with ambitions.
Today, while shopping at the home improvement store, I passed a married couple studying an item on a shelf. They asked me to get it for them, and I had to look around to see which actual adult they meant.
Nobody was behind me. The husband looked a little shorter than I am, which meant the couple had apparently chosen the tallest shrub in their immediate vicinity.
For a moment, I considered telling them that the top shelf is technically in another time zone for people like us. Instead, I went to work. I climbed like the Manney-monkey I am, reached the item, and brought it down with all the dignity available to a man whose legs appear to have been sold separately.
The couple thanked me profusely. I gave them two pieces of wisdom accumulated over close to 59 years of vertically economical living: “Us short people need to stick together,” and “Those of us with negative inseams always know how to figure things out.”
Nobody applauded, although I feel Menards management should consider a small (pardon the pun) plaque. Perhaps they could mount it beside the employee-of-the-month photograph: NOT AN EMPLOYEE, JUST RELUCTANTLY ABLE TO REACH THINGS.
I’d request a commemorative orange vest, but I doubt they have one in my size.
If You’re Curious: Here's a little trivia for you. Bestselling author Lee Child, 6 feet 4 inches tall, came up with the name Jack Reacher because of an incident remarkably similar to my Menards adventure. While shopping with his wife, Jane, at an Asda supermarket in England, the towering author was asked by an elderly woman to retrieve something from a high shelf. After watching her husband perform this heroic act of vertical superiority, Jane joked that if his writing career didn't work out, he could always become a professional "reacher" at the supermarket. The name stuck, and Jack Reacher became one of fiction's most recognizable characters. Apparently, helping somebody reach a grocery item can launch a literary empire. All I got was a thank-you and the realization that somewhere in Wisconsin, two people actually believed I was tall enough to be useful. I'm beginning to think I got cheated.
Only afterward did I realize I’d had my very own Michelle Obama moment. Except hers happened at Target, involved laundry detergent, and somehow became a commentary on America.
Mine involved Wisconsin, a high shelf, and the startling discovery that somebody considered me reach-worthy.
In 2011, Obama, who stands about 5 feet, 11 inches, went shopping at Target near Washington. A woman asked her to reach detergent on a high shelf. The First Lady later described the encounter in 2012, laughing about being unrecognized, saying the shopper was short, and remembering how good it felt to help.
Yet in 2014, the same incident appeared in an interview about racial slights. Obama said the shopper saw her as someone who could help, not as the First Lady.
Interesting. It took my Menards couple less than a minute to discover a useful stranger. It took Washington three years to turn a detergent retrieval into a seminar about microaggressions. The shelf hadn’t changed height, the detergent hadn’t become controversial, yet somehow the interpretation did all the climbing, more than I accomplished without a forklift.
I wasn’t at Target, so I can’t tell you what the woman thought. Neither can anyone who wasn’t inside her head. But Obama’s original version featured a short shopper, a tall shopper, a bottle of detergent, and a thank-you.
I’ve seen more suspicious circumstances in the Menards clearance aisle.
If I interpreted every request through the darkest possible lens, I’d be furious. Here I am, practically eye level with the shopping carts, and these people expect me to perform feats of altitude? Were they profiling me as a member of the underappreciated miniature working class? Should I call a press conference? Would a stool make a suitable podium?
Instead, I got to make a couple of strangers smile. They made me smile, too. The one thing that was obvious was the Milwaukee Brewers jacket I was wearing, which led to the question: “Do you think we’ll win tonight?”
Author’s Note: As I write this, game 4 is moving to the bottom of the ninth, with the Brewers leading the Dodgers 6-4!
Scratch that. The Brewers swept the two-time defending World Champion Dodgers, marking their first World Series since I was 14.
I’m weeping with joy, as are 3.5 out of 5 BUCA members!
I had to tell the couple the truth: I’m a lifelong Brewers fan. I told them, “I hope so, but man, I’m waiting for that other foot to drop.”
For a minute, politics, race, and even the cruel arithmetic of inseams didn’t matter. It was a shelf, a problem, and three people willing to share a little kindness.
I hope I run into them again, though not hard enough to hurt them. Next time, I might bring a stepladder, though I’d hate to ruin my reputation as the tallest short guy at Menards. They didn’t know my name, and I didn’t know theirs; we didn’t need introductions for a simple kindness.
Worse things exist than being mistaken for someone who will help.
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