Bummed out as I’m sitting at the Starbucks inside this newly constructed Target, on Trueman Boulevard in Hilliard. Just watching the traffic zip up and down this fairly inconsequential street is enough to give me a bad case of the blues, thinking how it was deserted just a handful of months ago, and that the relentless march of progress cannot be stopped.
Before wrongly accused of hypocrisy – I’m guilty of biting the hand from which my food is delivered, sure, but not hypocrisy – let me state for the record that I work here. I sit at one of these tables every morning that I’m scheduled, for breaks and lunch, at these windows facing the street. And while watching interiors of cities as they are transformed and repurposed can be a thing of beauty, a marvel to hold up to the light and admire, something about plowing that which was formerly frontier will always bring out the inner treehugger, somehow, even when one wasn’t entirely sure such an inner voice existed. And I’m sure that with or without my presence, this Target would continue to exist.
Since the Target went up, they’ve built another strip mall on this road already, in between the Home Depot and Cheeseburgers In Paradise. A Radio Shack sits there, who knows what else. And of course this line of concrete shopping options will likely extend north clear up to Davidson Road, soon enough, where Trueman truly ends. In time, who knows, I can see Trueman being expanded until at least Hayden Run. As will Britton someday, too, Trueman’s vaguely parallel counterpart on the other side of the I-270 outerbelt.
Such developments are tolerable when population and lack of space demands it. But sometimes you can’t escape feeling certain acres are bulldozed specifically because they are new, because formerly occupied plots are considered passe. Such as, one other restaurant sitting across the outerbelt, one of those carbon copy “western” steakhouses (I can’t keep them straight, can’t remember which franchises I’ve frequented and which I haven’t as they all look exactly the same), sits deserted, it has been for a couple of years now. Texas Roadhouse was lined out the building when I was dating a girl in this neck of the woods eight years ago, but at present there’s nary a soul dining there. And a Chili’s just closed at this exit as well, demolished and replaced by another goddamn CVS – a development which would otherwise be deplorable, except that I happen to kind of respect that they at least used an existing retail space rather than dropping a bomb in some field on the edge of town. All of these establishments existed along a busy corridor, Cemetery Road, which is itself an exit off of I-270, yet none of those could survive. And even so, they’re still building a bunch of new restaurants along this stretch? I guess the failure of past tenants explains why movers and shakers involved with some of these newer companies declined to take over shuttered locations, but I wonder what makes them feel so confident about their own demographic studies and carefully razed coordinates.
II.
Okay, so the above was written in either 2005 or 2006, i.e. roughly 20 years ago. But what does this area look like now? A couple of these I already know off the top of my head: Cheeseburger In Paradise? Completely toast. Radio Shack? This one is toast as well. The Home Depot, however, survives. And while the Target still looks refreshingly modern on the outside, its exterior, in an opinion probably influenced by the relative emptiness of their parking lot (even at rush hour on a Friday afternoon), makes me think that this location was never of the company’s top performing outposts.
It seemed totally apparent, when this Target was built, that the Trueman Blvd corridor would immediately blow up with all manner of retail and traffic. And while it seems this is eventually coming, it’s somewhat refreshing that it still has not done so as of this writing. As it stands, this store is in a funky, out of the way spot that is almost counterintuitive now, one that you wouldn’t just stumble upon in your travels without looking it up on a map app first.
Farther north, there are some isolated businesses here and there, and of course this TruePointe development is coming. For the time being, though, a surprising lack of development marks much of the rest – which I would not have bet any money on, twenty years after I sat out that window looking at this road.
I wound up working at this Target for a little over a year, from the fall of 2005 to the very end of 2006. This was during a positively nutso era, even by my standards, that I’ll be discussing very soon on other posts here. But anyway, I took this on as a “second” job, pretty much by necessity…even though the hours were 4am to 12:30pm, five days a week. It ended up being a pretty cool gig, though, and the schedule not too horrific after I got used to it.
We all worked together as a team, unloading the semi truck, then stocking the shelves in whatever section they’d assigned each of us that day. And all took our breaks from 8-8:30am, which is one of those periods that I wrote the above little poetic mini-essay about Trueman. We had a Starbucks there, so I got locked into this weird little ritual, stumbled upon by sheer happenstance. I would order a coffee, and sip at it here and there, while nodding off at the table. Occasionally awake with a start, take another sip, and lightly doze off again. Repeat. But then would come out of these half our breaks positively on fire with the energy level (and it was amusing to me, recently, to read some online piece, where the writer was saying he had this similarly accidental epiphany, after drinking coffee one day and then taking a nap, after which he was firing on all cylinders; I couldn’t help but think of this Target era, with a warm smile, and recall haphazardly making the same discovery.)
Before the nickname was ever bestowed upon Albert Pujols (I think?) they began calling me The Machine – management figures, even, not just random employees. I was usually assigned to MMB, which I think stood for multimedia & books, because I’d developed some methods for flying through that category with maximum speed and organization. But even so, every so often the odd management person would question things, and argue with a straight face that if I would just do things the same way as everybody else, I would be even faster! After overcoming my bewilderment, I typically responded by asking if they ever maybe thought that my methods were the reason I was quicker than the rest of the employees.
When I was hired, it turned I already knew exactly one employee who was part of this late night stock team – M.J., this short, slightly older lady who coincidentally enough was also an original cast member at the Bethel Road Kroger, same as me. I probably hadn’t seen her in about 7 years, though, until bumping into her here. As far as memorable occurrences, I would have to say at the forefront is something that merely occurred on the way to work one morning, and which I thankfully didn’t even see. Dozens of employees arrived and reported that day that these two dipshit guys, who looked to be maybe in their early twenties, were streaking buck naked back and forth across Cemetery Road. They were clearly timing their runs to startle oncoming motorists, at which point they’d hide on the other side of the street and wait for the next one, before crossing again.
How I was spared this sight, I’m not quite sure. If only the same were applied to everybody else on the really rad morning I was pulled over by some cop, directly in front of our store, for having too loud of a muffler. And then had to answer a bazillion questions all day, from every employee who passed us before parking. As far as the actual work, though, I would tell anyone that Target was actually a great company to work for. For the first handful of days, in fact, I couldn’t stop laughing, before finally catching myself and pausing to analyze what was so funny, exactly. Thinking about it this way was when it first occurred to me: everything they were doing here actually made sense! It was as though my brain reflexively couldn’t believe it, that a company would so consistently behave in a manner so logical and sane. I’m sure any of you who have ever worked in retail, or for that matter maybe held a job, period, can relate.
Well, a part of my big master plan, and a major component of my working here in the first place, concerned wheels I was setting in motion for transferring to another of their locations, elsewhere. I wanted to have a job already secured upon arrival there, and succeeded on that front. But it just wasn’t the same. For starters, they had their stock crew working 10pm to 6:30am there, instead, and even an unrepentant night owl like me just couldn’t hack those hours. I lasted about 5 months before throwing in the towel. The people were also on balance not quite as hilarious, which is no small consideration. Another factor that can’t be overlooked is that the head honcho at that new location, Rodolfo, was not exactly anybody I would ever wish to sit down with dinner or for that matter even a quick donut with. And it still cracks me up to think that my manager here, at store #1969, Bridget, actually had to converse with that lunatic over the phone, while they negotiated the details of my transfer.
“Whoa!” she related to me, eyes wide, after speaking to him for the first time, “that dude is INTENSE!”
I guess I should have already smelled disaster. I didn’t know how good I already had it, here at Trueman Boulevard.
