Who's Who: Kafi, ACE Hardware Clerk

Name:  “Kafi, no last name, just Kafi”

Age: 34

Occupation: Clerk at

How long have you been here at ACE? On and off I would say it will be ten years. 

You seem to be the expert on building things here. No, I actually wanted to quit after one week first working here.

Is your knowledge something that came over time? Yes. You learn by doing and there’s no training; it’s on the job training. You learn from people, mostly listening and I never did anything harder in my life before coming here. I had no idea. I’m from a different country.

Where are you from? I’m from Bangladesh. Where I’m from hardware is something people don’t do on a regular basis: It’s something for professionals, or you hire someone. It’s not something very socially acceptable to do as a business. There’s a sense of elitism there. Not like here where you have the "Bob the Builder" concept. It’s not there. I had no idea about hardware. I just walked in and the owner took my application.

At this time I had returned from the military. I started working here and yes I wanted to quit after the first week: My ignorance was overwhelming. This is not like a Home Depot job; we don’t get a commission for what we do. We change people’s lightbulbs, we fix people’s flashlights, we don’t charge a single penny. We don’t sell anything sometimes, nothing. And we have no pressure selling at all.

A lot of people come here for information? Yes. It’s totally free. Most people actually charge for this information. If you hire someone – the time you spend – sometimes you talk ten minutes just to explain to them how to change certain things on the phone and a real situation you’d be hiring someone to do that job and they would be charging fifty bucks an hour. We charge nothing.

Out of the kindness of your heart. That’s our store; (it's) like that.

What do you do for fun? I collect books. It’s on and off. Mostly graphics. I collect stamps. And biking once in a while.