My Craziest Crazy Customer: The Legend of Jimmy P, Part 1

If you read my last blog on job-site fire hazards, thank you. If you did, you probably saw my little “teaser” about Part I of this multi-part blog. You, our valued readers, have probably noticed by now that I really enjoy taking on anything technical or challenging regarding hardwood flooring issues. However, there are many qualified technical contributors to WFB Magazine and I like to (from time to time) write about the customers that my coworkers and I have found over the years to be “entertaining.”

Often, at Christmas or the short days before any holiday, we share a pizza and wings and have our own “Woodcademy Awards.” We break down our customers into categories and share a lot of laughs. They are categories like: Favorite Customer, Weirdest, Who Could Beat Who In a Cage Match, Who We Most Want To Shop Elsewhere, Customer Most Likely To Steal, Favorite Stoner, Worst Paying Customer, Best Paying Customer … and … Most Outrageous! And THAT is where our story begins.

It was probably about 15–20 years ago when we opened our New Hampshire location, and back then we all had many jobs to do. I worked the counter and warehouse for about the first two to three years while the rest of the guys delivered flooring. On this particular morning, I recall being alone in the facility. If the security alarm chimed, we knew someone just came in either the back or front door. Working the counter, I looked at the front entry first (I knew the back was locked). If no one showed themselves quickly, we knew it was someone (probably a homeowner) sent to use our showroom. (You can recognize homeowners right away, because they always freeze like a deer in the headlights—they want to see and take in EVERYTHING!)

When the front door alarm tripped and it was a hardwood floor guy, we could recognize them in an instant because they would go straight to the counter: “Hey! $4!T HE4D! I need four gallons of poly … gloss, a roll of ‘half’ [old term for 60-grit], two boxes discs … half!, one box 100 screens, and a lamb’s wool. Get me outta here; I got work to do.” BOOM! Straight to the point … love it. He speaks our language! When someone sends in their customer, I know it’s gonna be two hours of explaining how the acorn fell from the tree, and I can’t skip a detail up until the tree becomes a floor in their home. They speak differently: “Hey! Dotty! They got that PREGO! Is this Prego?!” Me: “No sir, that is real wood, prefinished, it came from the tree we talked about for the past two hours. It is NOT, um, Prego, it’s Pergo, P - E - R - G - O! Prego is a spaghetti sauce. Or a woman with child.” “OH! Dotty this is that real wood, like, from a tree and $4!T. The real stuff. Okay, so, what you got on this ‘prefab’ stuff? Latex? You got that latex?” ARRRRGGGGG! You get the picture. However, on this warm spring morning it was not a homeowner. HE came strolling in.

He looked like the actor Paul Reubens (famous for being Pee Wee Herman):

Photo credit: Shutterstock

No insult intended—Reubens is actually a fine actor and not a bad-looking guy.

Our guy, with shorts just over his knees and running shoes with no socks, sporting a classic white tank top, stalked my pro shop. Stalked it! He walked slowly from the front entrance toward me, looking all over like a lion just released from a cage. He scanned the room, not looking at the merchandise ... scanning like the enemy was three clicks off the perimeter with Charlie everywhere, waist-deep in rice patties with ‘ack-ack’ and the smell of gunpowder burning his nostrils. Like a 19-year-old Vietnam vet looking to survive. I was mesmerized! And it was then … he trained his gaze upon me.

I had no time to say hello or welcome him. He drew closer! He was at the counter now and could go no further and then …

“Hey…” (More scanning! I could see the whites around his eyes, and I don’t know if you know this, but that is not good! Not good if someone is chilled out, that surely means crazy!) He lifted his chin and flicked it at me twice. “You wanna go to a party? Twenty bucks a head. I got two dancers out of Lowell. I threw them an extra hundred so it’s gonna be good. All the beer you can drink.”

I have never seen this person in my life!

I passed on his offer but thanked him. Didn’t faze him a bit! He turned and grabbed a few small supplies and asked me what poly I had, and I helped him. When he finally got to the counter, I had to ask: “I’m sorry, I don’t know you. What is your company name?”

“Ahhh … I’m Jimmy PXXXXXXXX.” WHAT?! He had a complicated and long Italian last name. He looked at my puzzled face and said, “I know, I know … no one gets it, even I’m not sure I got it right.”

I asked, “How would you like me to set up your account? You obviously know what you are doing; you look like a floor guy to me.” He replied, “Jimmy P. Set it up as Jimmy P.” So, I did. I added his address and all pertinent information. I didn’t know it was history in the making. Jimmy P?! Not Jimmy P Hardwood Floors. Not Jimmy P. Custom Hardwoods. Nope, just “Jimmy P.”

Jimmy needed a couple of bundles of red oak strip, so I told him I would meet him around back at the warehouse door. To my surprise, Jimmy P met me out back with a helper. "Hey, he has a partner!" I thought. Well, not quite. Jimmy had this young thick hulk of a kid, but he stood idly by as we loaded the bundles into a 1980-something lift-back compact car! Jimmy bungeed the hatch, and it was then I found out why the helper was in attendance. Jimmy P’s work vehicle did not start with a turn of the key. This “vehicle” had to be jump-started! Jimmy P leapt behind the wheel and put the lift-back into second gear, the “kid” put his back to this Urban Assault Vehicle, and Jimmy P yelled, “GO!”

The kid started pumping his legs, and the vehicle lunged forward. Jimmy P shouted, “ALMOST THERE! FASTER!” The kid literally kicked it up a notch! I could hear the starter wind and the car sputter, and sure enough, VROOM! VROOM! “Get in!” Jimmy P yelled. The kid ran to the passenger door, ripped it open, jumped in and off they went.

What the heck did I just see?!

Jimmy P became a regular, and you know what? We loved him. He was amazingly entertaining. He talked and walked like a character that fell out of movies like "My Cousin Vinny" or "The Godfather." We are at the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border, but Jimmy P said things like: “Hey…How you doin’? You good? All good? That’s good.” There aren’t enough words to describe him, but some that come to mind are: swagger, cocky, out there, three bricks shy of a load? Any way you slice it, Jimmy P was almost hypnotic! He was confident as hell, oddly entertaining, and found himself right at home wherever he was. When smart phones came out, it would be no surprise that Jimmy P would send us pics of him and a bevy of young ladies live from clubs on the docks and beaches in Florida! We knew NOTHING about Jimmy P! But to Jimmy P, everyone was a brother.

By now you got just a bit of the Jimmy P vibe. In my next blog, I’ll share the truly crazy things we found out about Jimmy P.