Today I ventured into Bakersfield, a 50 mile drive – or more- to buy fig trees and rhubarb plants. First, I paid Garmin fifty bucks for their map update because the road that Robby’s Nursery is on wasn’t in the Garmin map. After spending 2 hours doing the download, it still wasn’t, so I tried Google Maps. Not on Google Maps either, so I called them and talked to this older-sounding (she is) woman, who gave me an address on Hageman Rd. and said I could see the place from there.

The address she gave me took me the wrong way on Hageman Road. When I called, she didn’t know where the cross street was whose name I gave her, that her address had taken me to,  and asked me to name other cross streets, right after I told her I had never been there before ever and didn’t know West from East, either. It was around 1:30, the sun was straight up.

So I drove back the way I came for a little bit and turned back down the main drag that I’d turned off of, caught the name of it, and called her back. Told her that the train overpass that she’d mentioned was right in front of me, the name of the street I was on, and that Hageman was just the other side of that overpass. To any guy who knew the area, that would be all they needed to know to tell me which way to turn.

She said to turn West. I told her again, I don’t know which way is West. Do I turn left or right? She then asked me which way I was heading. I told her I DON’T KNOW, told her where I was in relation to the overpass and Hageman and asked again, do I turn left or right. She then said I needed to find more cross street names.

At that point I asked her, “and no offense meant, but is there a GUY there I can talk to?” She got pissy and said she’d lived there all her life. Well, if this idiot had lived there all her life, then why didn’t she know where the streets I named were and where the overpass was? She then started running her mouth non-stop and after 3 tries of getting her attention, I hung up in disgust.

After driving around for awhile in the area I finally spotted a sign pointing to Robby’s Nursery. I had to go up a road marked Road Closed to get there, which turned out to be literally the only way there, and got my damned fig trees.

I have only known one woman in my entire 73 years who knew how to give directions, and she was a bulldyke. She was all guy and no gal. Women are inherently selfish in their world-view, like this gal at Robbys’ is. She’s sure she knows right where she is, therefor she gives directions as if everyone else knows exactly what she knows. It never enters her head that strangers don’t know where they’re at. She does. What’s the matter with them? Why don’t they see things her way?

By the time I was almost to Robbys’ Nursery, a guy from there finally called to give me directions the final few twists and turns. Better late than never, I guess. The impression I got on entering the store was that the old gal was likely the owner of the place. Another typical case of the tiniest little bit of authority creating a jackass out of an otherwise perfectly good human. IMHO, it would be a good idea to hand off the giving of driving instructions to someone better qualified, especially since the place is a true nightmare to find.

They lost a chunk of area to Eminent Domain when the state put new roads through, and they’re now on a road that has to be reached from a blocked off road that says Road Closed, on a street that no one knows the name of. It’s played hell with their business, so you would THINK that telling people how to get there would have a pretty high priority. But, not when it comes to getting past the ego of the owner, apparently. Good luck, Robby’s Nursery.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2012 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Bleats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.