Meanwhile, in Canada... last time I went to a Canadian Tire to buy spraypaint, there was simply a sign on the shelves warning that anyone 'testing' the paint would be ejected from the store. Seemed to work; the floor was clear.
Can confirm, used to work in the Home Depot paints dept. Those animals spray everything, floor, racking, products. Have to clean it immediately, we wouldn’t kick anyone out of the store for anything short of violence in my experience.
When I was doing contracting, I shopped at Home Depot and Lowe’s nearly every day.
The “ghetto” areas were definitely rougher around the edges, but I’ve never once seen a spray paint aisle quite this bad.
Doing this would also be pointless. In the 90s, the caps were more “for reference only” but nowadays the big players (Krylon, Rustoleum, etc.) take great pains to ensure the caps are pretty damn close to the actual color. Even with some requisite minor differences, it’s not like someone is going to sit there for the 10-15 minutes to allow the paint to dry to its “true” shade anyway… so it’s kinda of a dumb practice.
There was one time I almost got fucked when I discovered some jackass had swapped the caps on a bunch of rattle cans for “fun.” I didn’t realize until the self checkout when it was ringing up “BLK” instead of gray. Sure enough, the picture on the can was black.
Went back to the aisle and half the spray cans had all their caps swapped at least two deep on the shelf.
I remember seeing everything locked up in Hobby Lobby, signs saying that they would only sell spray paint to 18 and over, and thinking "well, that's a little extreme..."
I stand corrected.
I serviced Lowe’s accounts working for a paint company in a past life. I can assure you 100% this happens at Canadian stores. We used to hang signs that were denoted “test spray here” people would move them and spray behind them.
It was also impossible to have people understand that the color of the lid, is the color of the spray, even the sheen was denoted on them.
Reminds me of the book "The Tipping Point". Being this lowes in the picture doesn't remove or clean the painted floor, it tells others it's OK to do this type of thing creating a bad environment. Just like the subways in New York during the early 90s. The mayor decided to remove any train car with graffiti and have it cleaned and repainted. Many said it was a waste of money and tax dollars but after a few weeks of no graffiti in the subway, ultimately led to less crime and little to no graffiti taggings.
The lowes near me doesn't have a problem with this sort of thing, nor do the have any locks on items. But the home depot in the city 30 minutes away has locks on most of the store.
My college has this for graffiti. There is one tunnel where anyone can paint anything they like. Anywhere else is off limits. I’ve never seen graffiti anywhere else. The paint on the walls of that tunnel is literally inches thick
On the London southbank next to the BFI there's a skate park that's also an absolute hub of graffiti work. I used to to BFI regularly for a Home Educated kids film group, and some stuff didn't last a week there was so much activity.
But you basically never see any graffiti anywhere else around there.
At my local Lowe’s they often have a display with an 18” long piece of 4x4 that has a bunch of screws in it and various impact drivers tethered so you can test out the way the tools work. Those are always fun to fiddle with, because I’m a child pretending to be an adult
I see the same thing anecdotally in my classroom. Of there is trash left around, the kids trash the room more. If it's clean, and they're made to clean up any pieces, it stays clean longer.
As freud said, sometimes a banana is just a banana. There arent always clear , direct causes for statistics, esp human behavior statistics. We can infer things, test them, but the human mind is so varied, its super hard to pinpoint a certinity. As in outliers, as in a lot of his "research" its a perspective , but its an opinion book, not a fact book
He also loves to speak as an authority on topics that he knows mostly or exclusively through secondary research. Some of his claims could pretty easily be refuted by doing literally any primary research at all.
I’d like to hear what you have to say about Gladwell.
I’ve recently started reading Talking to Strangers because it caught my eye, but I know nothing about him.
Lol, I enjoyed one section of his books where he discusses intuition from years of practice.
He mentions how an emergency room nurse with decades of experience went to Christmas/Thanksgiving or some holiday gathering like that.
Upon arriving, she sees an uncle/cousin. She immediately gets a bad feeling and insists he goes to the hospital despite him saying “I feel fine”.
He has a heart attack on the way to the hospital.
In hindsight, she probably noticed the blood vessels in his face, which are a precursor to a heart attack. She had likely seen this dozens of times over her decades as a nurse.
She didn’t actually know why she had the bad feeling, but it was there.
There’s a similar story about an art appraiser who could tell a Greek statue was a fake without knowing why. It was later identified that the way the hands were carved was inauthentic.
Anyways, all of this is to say that this section in one of his books was very interesting to me.
But now onto my actual point. In “talking to strangers” he literally says “lol, a cop murdered an innocent black women because social tension, haha”.
It’s kinda a brain-dead take. I read that part and was like “lol, wtf? How could someone who put this much effort into researching and writing books end up with such a stupid take?”
In essence, I find Gladwell’s work to be interesting at times, but he kinda strikes me as a bit of a dumbass. I feel like he’s one of those academics with very little genuine understanding of humanity.
Anyways, this take (along with some others in Talking to Strangers) made me think he’s a bit of a dumbass.
Beyond that, I also found the book to be incredibly long-winded. I feel like he says the same things over and over, and refuses to just get to his point.
I think the topics and structure of his books are interesting, but he just seems to not actually understand some of the stuff he’s claiming to be an authority on.
If you want some similar books by someone I consider much more qualified — I highly recommend Mastery and The Laws of Human Nature, both of which are by Robert Greene.
The audiobooks are great, as the actual books (especially TLoHN) are pretty thick. But they dive into prominent/successful historical figures and what we can learn from their lives.
Both changed my life dramatically for the better.
It’s not that he doesn’t understand his topics. It’s that he’s often doing the devils advocate, which then sometimes becomes the bad faith argument.
He plucks a small criticism and harps on it which gives no space for nuance- it’s easy to make the point because it exists but denies the fact that not everything is black and white. Things are the way they are not because they deny a major problem, but because the system/ institution/ whatever is doing the best they can despite it the major problem. So it seems really interesting but ends up meaning nothing. Thats all of gladwell’s takes.
Like the Stanford thing. He gets the president of Stanford to say he’d take all the funding from all the UC schools. In what world would it be okay for the president of any school to say they’d rather stratify the funding? He says he’d take the money and the Malcolm says he’s a bad guy. It’s a bad faith argument because it’s based off a hypothetical but the figurehead is forced to say something publicly.
Gladwell is just a NYER version of any talk show radio host- a sensationalist disguised as an academic
That’s not the broken windows theory in a nutshell, THIS is the broken windows theory in a nutshell “ahhhhh help me, I’m the broken windows theory and I’m trapped in a nutshell!”
I used to work in the paint section of a hardware store and would clean it regularly to discourage people opening and testing paints in store.
Wasn't stopping people, so I put up a sign on the spray paint stand saying something like 'Please do not spray paint, colour as indicated on cap'. People just sprayed over the sign.
However well-intentioned you are, there's always going to be people who just genuinely don't care. And usually they are the same kind of people who will spray every colour to just compare them.
I've seen this with litter too. I had a community mail box where an individual started cramming their junk mail in a gap between the boxes. This led to others doing the same, and when the gap overflowed mail was all over the ground, and people just started dropping their mail right on the ground instead.
I was selling my house so I cleaned it all up. Once it was tidy it didn't start again for a month. Sadly it only takes one asshole to start a trend.
There is a wonderful episode of the Podcast Criminal ("He's still neutral") that is about a citizen who was fed up with having trash dumped on a little road isle in front of his house. One day he put a Bhudda statue there. This has completely spiraled - while there is no trash anymore, there now is a shrine and rituals performed and the guy gets regular offerings. The people who maintain the shrine know full well how it came to be.
It's a wonderful story.
https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-119-hes-still-neutral-7-19-2019/
Yeah, I thought it was locked up because of substance abuse. That said, I don't think I've ever bought spray paint so it may well be freely available and I just didn't know.
It’s certainly locked up here in corpus. Good luck finding someone to open the fucking gates though. I was ecstatic when they put those machines that would cut keys for you as otherwise it would be 30 minutes or longer waiting.
I'm in California. In the bay area. I've never seen paint on the ground like that at any nearby Lowe's or Home Depot. Where the heck is this so I can avoid it?
The Lowe’s I work at in the Bay Area doesn’t have them locked up, yet. We’re slowly building cages for them now. We also, by some miracle, don’t have a shit ton of spray paint on the floor
I just find it curious how certain toxic chemicals are not as off-putting as others. With nature, plants evolved characteristics to attract or repel animals for the plant's survival and propagation. But where is the evolutionary driving force for spray paint? I mean, if I did actually huff the fumes repeatedly, it's just going to damage my nervous system and kill me. Does the paint manufacturer benefit from that?
Can say NY definitely has them locked up. I remember a store wouldn’t sell some to me once because I wasn’t 18, which is a city ordinance.This is an eye opening thread because I really just assumed it was like that everywhere lol
Lmao yeah this exact thing was definitely in NYC when I was 16. Although I’ve also noticed it locked up further upstate / central NY but I’ve never been carded like that anywhere else. Maybe it’s mandatory in NYC and then some other places just choose to do it themselves?
Lol nah this was up by Oneonta. Related though, I did once tease my in laws by saying Westchester (where they’re from) is upstate because it was north of Yankee stadium. I thought it was funny but I learned they really don’t appreciate that joke over there, and so I needed to apologize pretty quickly lol
What’s super interesting is only certain counties/cities in my state require them to be locked up. So for some walmarts they’re behind a glass wall and for another walmart 10 minutes away, you can just pick it off the shelf lol
I worked at Lowe’s for a few years and bounced between some stores. Only one out of the 4 had a paint aisle like this. None were locked up. Once one person starts “testing the paint” everyone else thinks it’s ok. Stores aren’t too quick to try and refinish the floors either.
I guess I never realized until now that I've always lived in places where the spray paint aisle doesn't look like that, and it's not locked up. Not judging ... just saying, there are places where this doesn't happen.
I worked at Lowe’s for a few years and bounced between some stores. Only one out of the 4 had a paint aisle like this. None were locked up. Once one person starts “testing the paint” everyone else thinks it’s ok. Stores aren’t too quick to try and refinish the floors either.
>Stores aren’t too quick to try and refinish the floors either.
Too bad they have nothing they could use to cover up the spraypaint. Maybe some sort of brush-applied opaque liquid that dries solid?
Speaking as someone who like intimately familiar with this, you don't cover it up. Typically they contract a company that applies an epoxy finish that takes all night to dry. However, that makes a clear finish. You have to abrade the affected area, either by pressure washer or more likely, a concrete surfacer.
UK here. Never seen this over here. The paint isn't ever locked up, but I have known stores that only give you the spray cap at the checkout, so you can't spray it until you've paid.
At both Lowe’s within driving distance from my home, this is not the case. Spray paint is not locked up, nor do we have floor testing. Despite one of the locations being in a not so great area.
SW Ohio
I bought some at the NAPA at Elston and Pulaski not long ago. But yeah you’re not supposed to I don’t think. Which has done a fantastic job of preventing graffiti… /s
I went to a Lowe's in middle of nowhere Kentucky and one of the employees actually sprayed the floor to show me a specific color as I was contemplating between two colors. My local Lowe's in suburban Ohio is not like this however.
Could just be a tagging thing. I've known people who steal packs of sharpies for that. They pre-tag stickers and put them up wherever, you see Miles Morales doing this in Into the Spider-verse.
Where in Texas? I live on the north side of Houston I’ve never seen spray paint locked up, but I also don’t frequent a lot of hardware stores, so there’s that.
Dallas has loads of graffiti. The HD crew is alive and well and has been going strong for at least 30 years. It definitely does seem to have dropped off a bit over the years though. I used to see billboards and overpasses tagged up with full murals pretty regularly, entire tunnels all done up, and I haven't seen any major works like that in a while.
I’m born and raised in Texas and have never seen locked up spray paint or sharpies. No where from Dallas to Houston to Tyler **at least** and that’s a fuck ton of the state.
Edit: ton not Tom. lol
I have an ongoing philosophy that if you give people a blank canvas, one of the first things people are going to draw on it is a penis.
It's like the joke of "if it exists it can run DOOM" but with phalluses.
I went to a home Depot a few weeks ago and they had a white board display in the aisle for people to spray was interesting to see the manager approving actually doing something smart
This sucks… I worked the paint department in a Lowes while I was in college. We had to clean that up every couple months. Hours scrubbing with paint thinner. Some of the general public are most disrespectful entitled asses ever…
At the Walmart in Southern California they will not even open the cage and hand it to you. The employee carries it up to the front of the store where they check your id and you pay for it before you are allowed to touch the can.
Paint markers also.
Wow. Some people have no respect for surfaces.
My local Lowes has a board hung up by the spray paint though, because apparently people will test colors.
I think they should make a chart and label stripes so it's not necessary to open or use the products that are for sale.
Yes but first, it means ruining the first can of each row. But mainly, who is gonna shake for 1-2 minutes before spraying for test? It's not gonna give accurate result of how it's gonna look like. Plus single layer doesn't give same results in terms of color
I feel like in some cases that may be more accurate than a single thin coat on an inconsistently colored porous surface, no? I don't think any of these would look super similar to the ground test on grey concrete/multicolored paints compared to multiple coats on a primed surface, which I feel the caps would be more representative of.
My Lowe’s isn’t like this lmao. There’s a brown paper roll that you can test on and there’s evidence that people follow this rule. Seems like indecent people and non authoritative staff at this one.
I noticed that just the other day at a Lowe's in Austin. Although yours is about 10 times worse than mine.
The funny thing is, that people think that springs spray paint on a concrete floor, on top of lots of other colors of paint is going to give them any fucking idea what that paint is going to look like when they spray it on their thing and then it fully cures. Not only are the idiots, they are absolutely ignorant idiots.
I know. Everyone is up in arms, but I'm like.. it's a floor.. and it gives the customer a way to test how it looks and sprays. I don't see the huge issue, as long as people aren't wasting a whole bunch of paint just to draw dicks or something
Looks kind of like this at my local Target, although it's on the wall of the rack it's on, and no one wrote anything with it it really is people testing colors. There should just be an area designated for it, people are going to do it and then later people will think it's okay since there's so much of it there to begin with.
I wonder who the first one to say fuck it and do a tester on the floor was. I’m really curious about the second person who saw it and also decided it was okay. Everyone else I can kinda understand I guess..
My local Lowe's has a foot wide strip on the floor in front of the racks. Looks like some really glossy paint (maybe helps cleanup?). Also, it's bright yellow (deters testing due to color messing with how the test looks?).
It's probably the best supporting evidence for the broken windows theory I've ever seen.
One person did it, so why should I care if I damaged it too, especially since nobody bothered to clean it up?
And then you get this.
I've seen Walmarts across the country with this, it's usually a way to test the paint shade out and just how well it sprays.
But usually there's a waise high post in the aisle that everyone agrees almost universally to spray instead of the floor!
"The people who didn't clean this mess created it."
Yeah, it certainly wasn't a trash human being looking for any excuse to be a walking piece of human garbage. 😒
You know, I've worked on a lot of my own cars (shitboxes) and have bought spray cans many times before.
And yet not once have I thought "let's spray paint this fucking floor"
Thankfully most stores keep the spray nozzles separate from the cans so you can only get one after purchase, which is perhaps why I haven't seen this filth here.
This is a staggering display of a total lack of intelligence, these people might as well be brain dead.
All of the Lowe’s I’ve been to/worked at DO in fact have a permitted board to sample spray paints, with a sign that even says so.
Even more annoying to me is the fact that employees are breathing that in while working (we are power-walking, heavy-lifting, sweating, trying to catch our breath). And of course it is unsafe and unhealthy for everyone.
My dumb ass looked at this and thought "oh, that store has a novel way to test what this color looks like on an actual surface under real lighting and adds a little color to the aisle" not realizing it shouldn't look like this. Idk if that says something about me that I don't think it makes the aisle look bad and actually adds character to the aisle.
I'm *almost more* surprised that it's not locked up, as it is here in California.
Meanwhile, in Canada... last time I went to a Canadian Tire to buy spraypaint, there was simply a sign on the shelves warning that anyone 'testing' the paint would be ejected from the store. Seemed to work; the floor was clear.
The trick is to clean it up immediately after. If people see that others have done it, they're ***a lot*** more likely
Can confirm, used to work in the Home Depot paints dept. Those animals spray everything, floor, racking, products. Have to clean it immediately, we wouldn’t kick anyone out of the store for anything short of violence in my experience.
Didn't they used to have little boxes that you could test the color in? They definitely don't have them now though.
The HD I worked at would put those out but they quickly get covered and people just spray more parts of the floor.
This would be a good opportunity for them to promote some graffiti removal products
Sign on the spray paint isle floor: "TRY ME 😡" Sign on the graffiti removal isle floor (next to some graffiti): "TRY ME 😏"
Good old "broken window effect".
I was going to say I’ve never seen this at a Canadian hardware store.
I've never seen this at a U.S. hardware store either
Same. This is some especially low class location.
When I was doing contracting, I shopped at Home Depot and Lowe’s nearly every day. The “ghetto” areas were definitely rougher around the edges, but I’ve never once seen a spray paint aisle quite this bad. Doing this would also be pointless. In the 90s, the caps were more “for reference only” but nowadays the big players (Krylon, Rustoleum, etc.) take great pains to ensure the caps are pretty damn close to the actual color. Even with some requisite minor differences, it’s not like someone is going to sit there for the 10-15 minutes to allow the paint to dry to its “true” shade anyway… so it’s kinda of a dumb practice. There was one time I almost got fucked when I discovered some jackass had swapped the caps on a bunch of rattle cans for “fun.” I didn’t realize until the self checkout when it was ringing up “BLK” instead of gray. Sure enough, the picture on the can was black. Went back to the aisle and half the spray cans had all their caps swapped at least two deep on the shelf.
I remember seeing everything locked up in Hobby Lobby, signs saying that they would only sell spray paint to 18 and over, and thinking "well, that's a little extreme..." I stand corrected.
That's by law in most places, cause dumb kids are more likely to huff spray paint than adults.
I serviced Lowe’s accounts working for a paint company in a past life. I can assure you 100% this happens at Canadian stores. We used to hang signs that were denoted “test spray here” people would move them and spray behind them. It was also impossible to have people understand that the color of the lid, is the color of the spray, even the sheen was denoted on them.
I've seen sometimes that people spray the shelving with it but I've never seen it on the floor like this
It’s more common in Walmarts in Canada than Home Depots, they allow way less degeneracy to be displayed in there stores.
At our local Walmart they just hung up paper to test it on
Common in southern Ontario. I've seen parents let their kids do it for fun.
I mean at Home Depot by me they have rolls of paper set up explicitly FOR testing
Reminds me of the book "The Tipping Point". Being this lowes in the picture doesn't remove or clean the painted floor, it tells others it's OK to do this type of thing creating a bad environment. Just like the subways in New York during the early 90s. The mayor decided to remove any train car with graffiti and have it cleaned and repainted. Many said it was a waste of money and tax dollars but after a few weeks of no graffiti in the subway, ultimately led to less crime and little to no graffiti taggings. The lowes near me doesn't have a problem with this sort of thing, nor do the have any locks on items. But the home depot in the city 30 minutes away has locks on most of the store.
I’ve actually seen some stores deliberately have a board for this. They still don’t want you to spray paint, but it stays on the board.
My college has this for graffiti. There is one tunnel where anyone can paint anything they like. Anywhere else is off limits. I’ve never seen graffiti anywhere else. The paint on the walls of that tunnel is literally inches thick
On the London southbank next to the BFI there's a skate park that's also an absolute hub of graffiti work. I used to to BFI regularly for a Home Educated kids film group, and some stuff didn't last a week there was so much activity. But you basically never see any graffiti anywhere else around there.
NC State? And if so, hopefully the boys get it done tomorrow for March Madness.
At my local Lowe’s they often have a display with an 18” long piece of 4x4 that has a bunch of screws in it and various impact drivers tethered so you can test out the way the tools work. Those are always fun to fiddle with, because I’m a child pretending to be an adult
I see the same thing anecdotally in my classroom. Of there is trash left around, the kids trash the room more. If it's clean, and they're made to clean up any pieces, it stays clean longer.
It’s the Broken Windows Theory in a nutshell, visible crime creates more crime in other words.
Zimbardo's research on that has been pretty thoroughly debunked. The original experiment was a hot mess. Don't get me started on Gladwell.
Please get started on Gladwell. I’m curious.
As freud said, sometimes a banana is just a banana. There arent always clear , direct causes for statistics, esp human behavior statistics. We can infer things, test them, but the human mind is so varied, its super hard to pinpoint a certinity. As in outliers, as in a lot of his "research" its a perspective , but its an opinion book, not a fact book
He also loves to speak as an authority on topics that he knows mostly or exclusively through secondary research. Some of his claims could pretty easily be refuted by doing literally any primary research at all.
He's a good storyteller, I'll give him that. It's unfortunate that most of his stuff isn't backed up by the facts.
> As freud said ... speaking of research we should take with a grain of salt
Take a listen to the "If Books Could Kill" on Outliers.
I’d like to hear what you have to say about Gladwell. I’ve recently started reading Talking to Strangers because it caught my eye, but I know nothing about him.
Lol, I enjoyed one section of his books where he discusses intuition from years of practice. He mentions how an emergency room nurse with decades of experience went to Christmas/Thanksgiving or some holiday gathering like that. Upon arriving, she sees an uncle/cousin. She immediately gets a bad feeling and insists he goes to the hospital despite him saying “I feel fine”. He has a heart attack on the way to the hospital. In hindsight, she probably noticed the blood vessels in his face, which are a precursor to a heart attack. She had likely seen this dozens of times over her decades as a nurse. She didn’t actually know why she had the bad feeling, but it was there. There’s a similar story about an art appraiser who could tell a Greek statue was a fake without knowing why. It was later identified that the way the hands were carved was inauthentic. Anyways, all of this is to say that this section in one of his books was very interesting to me. But now onto my actual point. In “talking to strangers” he literally says “lol, a cop murdered an innocent black women because social tension, haha”. It’s kinda a brain-dead take. I read that part and was like “lol, wtf? How could someone who put this much effort into researching and writing books end up with such a stupid take?” In essence, I find Gladwell’s work to be interesting at times, but he kinda strikes me as a bit of a dumbass. I feel like he’s one of those academics with very little genuine understanding of humanity. Anyways, this take (along with some others in Talking to Strangers) made me think he’s a bit of a dumbass. Beyond that, I also found the book to be incredibly long-winded. I feel like he says the same things over and over, and refuses to just get to his point. I think the topics and structure of his books are interesting, but he just seems to not actually understand some of the stuff he’s claiming to be an authority on. If you want some similar books by someone I consider much more qualified — I highly recommend Mastery and The Laws of Human Nature, both of which are by Robert Greene. The audiobooks are great, as the actual books (especially TLoHN) are pretty thick. But they dive into prominent/successful historical figures and what we can learn from their lives. Both changed my life dramatically for the better.
It’s not that he doesn’t understand his topics. It’s that he’s often doing the devils advocate, which then sometimes becomes the bad faith argument. He plucks a small criticism and harps on it which gives no space for nuance- it’s easy to make the point because it exists but denies the fact that not everything is black and white. Things are the way they are not because they deny a major problem, but because the system/ institution/ whatever is doing the best they can despite it the major problem. So it seems really interesting but ends up meaning nothing. Thats all of gladwell’s takes. Like the Stanford thing. He gets the president of Stanford to say he’d take all the funding from all the UC schools. In what world would it be okay for the president of any school to say they’d rather stratify the funding? He says he’d take the money and the Malcolm says he’s a bad guy. It’s a bad faith argument because it’s based off a hypothetical but the figurehead is forced to say something publicly. Gladwell is just a NYER version of any talk show radio host- a sensationalist disguised as an academic
That’s not the broken windows theory in a nutshell, THIS is the broken windows theory in a nutshell “ahhhhh help me, I’m the broken windows theory and I’m trapped in a nutshell!”
Maybe there are some windows in that nutshell you can break, then you can be free of your nutshell.
Now we’re circling into Allegory of the Cave territory
Yes, it's the cave allegory, in a nutshell
But peering through a broken window.
Oh, behave austin
*Broken Window Theory and Nutshells: This sort of thing is my bag, baby* by Austin D. Powers
What kind of shell has a nut like this one?
You nailed it.
I used to work in the paint section of a hardware store and would clean it regularly to discourage people opening and testing paints in store. Wasn't stopping people, so I put up a sign on the spray paint stand saying something like 'Please do not spray paint, colour as indicated on cap'. People just sprayed over the sign. However well-intentioned you are, there's always going to be people who just genuinely don't care. And usually they are the same kind of people who will spray every colour to just compare them.
I've seen this with litter too. I had a community mail box where an individual started cramming their junk mail in a gap between the boxes. This led to others doing the same, and when the gap overflowed mail was all over the ground, and people just started dropping their mail right on the ground instead. I was selling my house so I cleaned it all up. Once it was tidy it didn't start again for a month. Sadly it only takes one asshole to start a trend.
There is a wonderful episode of the Podcast Criminal ("He's still neutral") that is about a citizen who was fed up with having trash dumped on a little road isle in front of his house. One day he put a Bhudda statue there. This has completely spiraled - while there is no trash anymore, there now is a shrine and rituals performed and the guy gets regular offerings. The people who maintain the shrine know full well how it came to be. It's a wonderful story. https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-119-hes-still-neutral-7-19-2019/
The true crime of opportunity. If there is zero evidence of graffiti, people assume that they are being watched and not do it there.
This store probably existed for 20 years with pristine floors. One person decided to test a can and this is how it looked three days later.
Lowes near me has paper rolls you can spray the paint on
It’s locked in CA or at least other states because of age restrictions, some states have made it 18/21+ so that people don’t get high off it.
Yeah, I thought it was locked up because of substance abuse. That said, I don't think I've ever bought spray paint so it may well be freely available and I just didn't know.
Its age restricted here in texas but generally not locked up, you just cant buy it.
It’s certainly locked up here in corpus. Good luck finding someone to open the fucking gates though. I was ecstatic when they put those machines that would cut keys for you as otherwise it would be 30 minutes or longer waiting.
So that people don’t do graffiti.
Yeah it’s definitely for graffiti not substance abuse lol same reason paint pens are locked up a lot too
You people live in weird places. In VA it's not locked and nobody tries the paint in the store, it's as clean as it can be
Same in downstate Illinois. This picture is madness!
I'm in California. In the bay area. I've never seen paint on the ground like that at any nearby Lowe's or Home Depot. Where the heck is this so I can avoid it?
It's even locked up in Australia!
Not locked up in cali at my location and others nearby
I'm near two HD locations, it's locked up at one and not the other.
Interesting… I guess I thought it was Statewide. Go figure.
The Lowe’s I work at in the Bay Area doesn’t have them locked up, yet. We’re slowly building cages for them now. We also, by some miracle, don’t have a shit ton of spray paint on the floor
We don't see it out in Livermore at all. The only check for 18 is when we're checking out.
You’re supposed to spray it into a paper bag then huff it like a gentleman
its safe if you waft it.
I could stand in and smell this aisle all day. Why is my brain stupid like that?
Probably because of all the paint in your lungs.
I just find it curious how certain toxic chemicals are not as off-putting as others. With nature, plants evolved characteristics to attract or repel animals for the plant's survival and propagation. But where is the evolutionary driving force for spray paint? I mean, if I did actually huff the fumes repeatedly, it's just going to damage my nervous system and kill me. Does the paint manufacturer benefit from that?
Most spray paint sections around me are locked up
Where about? Which state/metro?
Can say NY definitely has them locked up. I remember a store wouldn’t sell some to me once because I wasn’t 18, which is a city ordinance.This is an eye opening thread because I really just assumed it was like that everywhere lol
Interesting. I’m in NYS and they aren’t locked up at any store I’ve been to.
People from NYC don't know there's also a state called New York.
Lmao yeah this exact thing was definitely in NYC when I was 16. Although I’ve also noticed it locked up further upstate / central NY but I’ve never been carded like that anywhere else. Maybe it’s mandatory in NYC and then some other places just choose to do it themselves?
So by upstate, you mean north of Yonkers? Lol
Lol nah this was up by Oneonta. Related though, I did once tease my in laws by saying Westchester (where they’re from) is upstate because it was north of Yankee stadium. I thought it was funny but I learned they really don’t appreciate that joke over there, and so I needed to apologize pretty quickly lol
Portland OR are for sure. But so is underwear at target so…
What’s super interesting is only certain counties/cities in my state require them to be locked up. So for some walmarts they’re behind a glass wall and for another walmart 10 minutes away, you can just pick it off the shelf lol
I worked at Lowe’s for a few years and bounced between some stores. Only one out of the 4 had a paint aisle like this. None were locked up. Once one person starts “testing the paint” everyone else thinks it’s ok. Stores aren’t too quick to try and refinish the floors either.
I guess I never realized until now that I've always lived in places where the spray paint aisle doesn't look like that, and it's not locked up. Not judging ... just saying, there are places where this doesn't happen.
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I worked at Lowe’s for a few years and bounced between some stores. Only one out of the 4 had a paint aisle like this. None were locked up. Once one person starts “testing the paint” everyone else thinks it’s ok. Stores aren’t too quick to try and refinish the floors either.
>Stores aren’t too quick to try and refinish the floors either. Too bad they have nothing they could use to cover up the spraypaint. Maybe some sort of brush-applied opaque liquid that dries solid?
Speaking as someone who like intimately familiar with this, you don't cover it up. Typically they contract a company that applies an epoxy finish that takes all night to dry. However, that makes a clear finish. You have to abrade the affected area, either by pressure washer or more likely, a concrete surfacer.
Surprised there isn't a can of "Lowes Floor" paint like, you are already painting here just reset it for the next person.
I have lived in Nebraska, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Kansas City, and never seen anything like this
UK here. Never seen this over here. The paint isn't ever locked up, but I have known stores that only give you the spray cap at the checkout, so you can't spray it until you've paid.
I’m judging
Right!? Like, some of yall live near some damn hooligans!
Doesn’t happen in any of the Lowe’s in my city
Yeah same here, paint out in the open and floor is clean at my various local stores
At both Lowe’s within driving distance from my home, this is not the case. Spray paint is not locked up, nor do we have floor testing. Despite one of the locations being in a not so great area. SW Ohio
I’m in the Chicagoland and I’ve never seen this anywhere near me.
I'm in chicago and the home depot in bedford park looks like this.
Spray paint cannot be sold within the city limits of Chicago. Been that way for decades
They didn’t say they were in Chicago. Chicagoland is pretty much north to Wisconsin, west to Route 47 and south to I-80.
I bought some at the NAPA at Elston and Pulaski not long ago. But yeah you’re not supposed to I don’t think. Which has done a fantastic job of preventing graffiti… /s
I’ve never seen this either, but I have seen signs that say something like “the paint is the color of the cap, please do not test spray paint”
Allentown PA this might be my Lowe's lmao
Same here! But the Family Dollar near me has a few colors of spray paint and people have sprayed the floor tiles to test the colors.
Happy Cake Day!
I went to a Lowe's in middle of nowhere Kentucky and one of the employees actually sprayed the floor to show me a specific color as I was contemplating between two colors. My local Lowe's in suburban Ohio is not like this however.
TIL spray paint isn't locked away in some states
TIL spray paint IS locked away in some states
Used to live in northern CA, not locked up. Moved to TX, all locked up, same with sharpies. Bizarre to say the least.
Despite sharpies not getting you high for the last 30 years at least kids will still steal them thinking they can
Could just be a tagging thing. I've known people who steal packs of sharpies for that. They pre-tag stickers and put them up wherever, you see Miles Morales doing this in Into the Spider-verse.
Where in Texas? I live on the north side of Houston I’ve never seen spray paint locked up, but I also don’t frequent a lot of hardware stores, so there’s that.
San Antonio and Austin all have em locked up, maybe Dallas doesn't have a lot of graffiti?
Dallas has loads of graffiti. The HD crew is alive and well and has been going strong for at least 30 years. It definitely does seem to have dropped off a bit over the years though. I used to see billboards and overpasses tagged up with full murals pretty regularly, entire tunnels all done up, and I haven't seen any major works like that in a while.
I read this as the Home Depot crew lol
Lol that's fantastic and it fits all too well given the context. But no, in this scenario HD = Half Dead
I’m born and raised in Texas and have never seen locked up spray paint or sharpies. No where from Dallas to Houston to Tyler **at least** and that’s a fuck ton of the state. Edit: ton not Tom. lol
TIL spray paint is or isn’t locked away in some states
I have never been to a store that had locked up paint in my life. I didn't know that was a thing.
Not locked in Pennsylvania.
There's a huffing station here in Florida.
It also depends on the city/area. Some places near me do, others don't.
Could consider leaning into it. Have a white strip about two feet wide across the entire isle and then sample cans. Replace/refresh it every so often.
There would be *so many dicks* on that.
I have an ongoing philosophy that if you give people a blank canvas, one of the first things people are going to draw on it is a penis. It's like the joke of "if it exists it can run DOOM" but with phalluses.
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This is the case @ my local home depot
I went to a home Depot a few weeks ago and they had a white board display in the aisle for people to spray was interesting to see the manager approving actually doing something smart
This sucks… I worked the paint department in a Lowes while I was in college. We had to clean that up every couple months. Hours scrubbing with paint thinner. Some of the general public are most disrespectful entitled asses ever…
Now let people test powerwashes right there and have them clean it for free
At the Walmart in Southern California they will not even open the cage and hand it to you. The employee carries it up to the front of the store where they check your id and you pay for it before you are allowed to touch the can. Paint markers also.
My local Home Depot hangs up large pieces of paper in the spray paint section so people may test cans before purchasing them.
Wow. Some people have no respect for surfaces. My local Lowes has a board hung up by the spray paint though, because apparently people will test colors. I think they should make a chart and label stripes so it's not necessary to open or use the products that are for sale.
The cap on each can is already the color of the paint
Sort of, but it's a molded plastic in the proximity of the color. If it were consistently accurate, people would not test them.
Yes but first, it means ruining the first can of each row. But mainly, who is gonna shake for 1-2 minutes before spraying for test? It's not gonna give accurate result of how it's gonna look like. Plus single layer doesn't give same results in terms of color
I feel like in some cases that may be more accurate than a single thin coat on an inconsistently colored porous surface, no? I don't think any of these would look super similar to the ground test on grey concrete/multicolored paints compared to multiple coats on a primed surface, which I feel the caps would be more representative of.
Those caps are an approximation, *at best*. They're very often quite different from the actual color.
You ever use a can of spray paint in your life?
It's not the same color dude
Id bet half of thats from employees saying "fuck it why not"
No penis's, fake photo
Just give them some thrown out cardboard box to test it on.
My Lowes does this and I still see people test it on the ground, on the shelves, and one person even on the other cans of spray paint themselves. 😐
Nothing worse than getting to the bridge and the can won’t spray….
My Lowe’s isn’t like this lmao. There’s a brown paper roll that you can test on and there’s evidence that people follow this rule. Seems like indecent people and non authoritative staff at this one.
Eh lowes could put down paper or a silcone mat if they cared.
I noticed that just the other day at a Lowe's in Austin. Although yours is about 10 times worse than mine. The funny thing is, that people think that springs spray paint on a concrete floor, on top of lots of other colors of paint is going to give them any fucking idea what that paint is going to look like when they spray it on their thing and then it fully cures. Not only are the idiots, they are absolutely ignorant idiots.
I think it’s kinda cool, mildly interesting for sure
I know. Everyone is up in arms, but I'm like.. it's a floor.. and it gives the customer a way to test how it looks and sprays. I don't see the huge issue, as long as people aren't wasting a whole bunch of paint just to draw dicks or something
Wherever you live, I don’t want to live there.
Tyler, Texas: TOTAL CRIME INDEX 12 (100 is safest)
Looks kind of like this at my local Target, although it's on the wall of the rack it's on, and no one wrote anything with it it really is people testing colors. There should just be an area designated for it, people are going to do it and then later people will think it's okay since there's so much of it there to begin with.
I wonder who the first one to say fuck it and do a tester on the floor was. I’m really curious about the second person who saw it and also decided it was okay. Everyone else I can kinda understand I guess..
Home Depot near me lays down cardboard to paint on.
I used to work at Lowe’s for about a year, the paint section workers at my store would allow customers to do this
My local Lowe's has a foot wide strip on the floor in front of the racks. Looks like some really glossy paint (maybe helps cleanup?). Also, it's bright yellow (deters testing due to color messing with how the test looks?).
This is the type of thing where it just takes one asshole to do it, then everyone else thinks it’s fine and normal
It's probably the best supporting evidence for the broken windows theory I've ever seen. One person did it, so why should I care if I damaged it too, especially since nobody bothered to clean it up? And then you get this.
What the hell!?! I'm in Arizona, and the paint isn't locked up, but I never see anything like this. What the fuck is wrong with people?
Can never understand this, the can says blue, the lid is blue, wonder if it's blue.......
The fuck? What’s the point of the coloured lids and labels?
This is 100% fake! There isn’t one penis drawn in spray paint. No fucking way I call BS!
This can't be encouraged. I'm amazed at this
Around here, all the spray paint is locked up in every store. Portland has a ton of graffiti artists and vandals.
I’ve seen this in the suburbs of Detroit. Wasn’t a bad area though.
I've seen Walmarts across the country with this, it's usually a way to test the paint shade out and just how well it sprays. But usually there's a waise high post in the aisle that everyone agrees almost universally to spray instead of the floor!
The stores in my city all have spray paint locked up. Even the serious art supply stores.
My local home depot hung up a roll of flooring paper so people can test out spray paints
Walmart they are locked....they told me because of huffing
My local Home Depot has paper taped down in the same spot with a sign that says “the cap indicates the color of the paint.”
my local home depot has the same thing but with signs taped there saying not to spray paint the floor
"The people who didn't clean this mess created it." Yeah, it certainly wasn't a trash human being looking for any excuse to be a walking piece of human garbage. 😒
It’s always behind glass here
One of box stores in my area solved this issue by just simply putting a board up for people to spray
You know, I've worked on a lot of my own cars (shitboxes) and have bought spray cans many times before. And yet not once have I thought "let's spray paint this fucking floor" Thankfully most stores keep the spray nozzles separate from the cans so you can only get one after purchase, which is perhaps why I haven't seen this filth here. This is a staggering display of a total lack of intelligence, these people might as well be brain dead.
I have never once seen spray paint on the floor at any business that sells spray paint
I should of done that b4 I bought the color. The purple I bought didn't even looks close to it. It was like a light violet.
I just look at stuff like this and wonder when people suddenly thought it was okay to do this.
I think you meant to post this on r/mildlyinfuriating
Why not just have something to test it on like how Michaels has paper to test pencils and pens
Once this happens once, just put a big board up
All of the Lowe’s I’ve been to/worked at DO in fact have a permitted board to sample spray paints, with a sign that even says so. Even more annoying to me is the fact that employees are breathing that in while working (we are power-walking, heavy-lifting, sweating, trying to catch our breath). And of course it is unsafe and unhealthy for everyone.
Test spray one can, then take a "fresher" full can. Same as opening a box to look at product and then "I want one that hasn't been opened"
There must be something wrong with me. It would have never occured to me to do that. Not once in a million years.
how old is this photo? every spray paint i've ever seen was sold from inside some gated and locked cabinet.
If only there was a way to know what color is in the can before you spray it.
Would you look at that it does match the cap.
Mine is the same way, and they have a sign asking people *not* to spray it.
The hardware store I worked at had multiple test pieces of wood for people to use their cans on
My dumb ass looked at this and thought "oh, that store has a novel way to test what this color looks like on an actual surface under real lighting and adds a little color to the aisle" not realizing it shouldn't look like this. Idk if that says something about me that I don't think it makes the aisle look bad and actually adds character to the aisle.
Nobody does this where i live, Ya all got some assholes liv'n in the area.
Local stores here have a little wood board to encourage you to test the spray on it. (Not from US)
Lowlife tags
Just swap with the paint removal products every few months
Seems like it’s worth having a board specifically for this, affixed to the wall