Mission: Follicle Lobber

in paul's effort to cut out barber costs (pun not intended) he wanted to get a hair trimmer. we decided to check out the warehouses supply. if you haven't heard about the warehouse, you now will. we believe its new zealand's version of, dare i say it, wal-mart. there are two locations within walking distance for us, one is four blocks west of us off queen street, the other is a couple miles away on broadway. the farther one is, of course, the better one: clean, neat, huge selection. the closer one is...well...crappy. their shelves are filled with product but the store resembles a forgotten carnival recently ransacked by prepubescent vikings and if you want to track down a sales representative practice first by trying to capture a bunny or a chicken in forest. they thoroughly train in evasive maneuvers. we had only one goal, find and buy a hair trimmer. paul had done some pre-op surveillance so he knew where the desired items were kept. not wanting to waste time we headed directly to the site. the shelf, like the rest, were ransacked and this time not only could we not find one for sale, the one that had been on display was missing, leaving its box and length adapters behind. we didn't like the idea but we knew we were going to have to ask for help. we zoomed in one red-shirt uniformed 'gary'. he caught our gaze and dashed. we followed him to the back-stock doors. you can run gary but you can't hide for long. he came back out and we had him surrounded, all two of us. he suddenly put on a polite customer service smile realizing his running was futile. we asked him if they had any more hair trimmers, in another place? maybe in back-stock?? he searched his obviously vast mental inventory for all of one second and answered with a definite 'no', he chuckled, motioning to the shelves, saying he was waiting for replenishment. as if his only job was to wait on quickly disappearing hair trimmers. we got the message that he now realized his store looked like crap too. ya think? we said thanks and he hurried off. we did another look-a-round. we had a feeling there were more. somewhere. as we were rounding the aisle a second time i looked up on the top shelf where they keep their overstock boxed items. i saw two boxes with the words 'hair trimmer kit' and 'item count: 8'. so up above us were supposedly 16 hair trimmer kits. now, how to get our hands on one. we surveyed for another red-shirt. they had scattered like cockroaches when the kitchen light comes on. we expanded our search. paul found a wheeled ladder 3 aisles down. that would be pretty bold and we weren't sure if we'd get away with that so we were left with one option: monkey style. climb the shelf. i climbed first. i reached the box but it was too heavy and i wouldn't be able to hold on and lower the box at the same time. paul's turn. his height was a severe advantage since he only needed to stand on the second shelf up to reach the top whereas i had to stand on the 4th to merely touch the box. he pulled the box down. another customer wandered into the aisle and ignored our shenanigans. apparently this was common procedure here. we opened the box. ahhhh! victory! we extracted one and made our way to the cashiers. we bought it and headed down the escalators for our champion exit. we high-fived each other and exchanged the words of one controversial borat, "great success!"