Bad Management
P.T. Barnum, the co-founder of the Barnum and Bailey Greatest Show on Earth circus, said, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.” I’m not buying that and neither are the citizens of Gadsden, Alabama.
For more than five years, Mama Cat has been roaming the aisles of Gadsden’s Lowe’s hardware and home improvement store, serving as their “Quality Assurance Cat.”
Are you looking for a DeWalt 13-in W 15.0 -Amp Benchtop Planer? Just ask Mama Cat and she’ll point you to Aisle 62, Bay 3.
Seen a mouse running around the store? No problem, Mama Cat will deal with it.
Want clarification on the socioeconomic impacts of the Trump administration’s policies on your pocketbook? Grab a beer for yourself and a bowl of milk for Mama Cat and she’ll purr you the details, which include pie charts, bar and line graphs.
Management at the Gadsden Lowe’s has consistently given Mama Cat outstanding job reviews.
That didn’t matter because Mama Cat was fired!
Not because of AI, not because of poor sales or a salary dispute, but because a small group of people had some unfathomable complaints sent to Lowe’s corporate office .
What exactly those complaints are is a mystery and the home office isn’t talking. Not even a “We are moving in a different direction” response.
Mama Cat’s canning occurred soon after the feline was named “Pet of the Day” by WBRC-TV.
Maybe a Lowe’s corporate wonk was jealous their cat didn’t get the title and decided to remove the competition.
Whatever the reason was for Mama Cat’s axing, the response from the good people of Gadsden was loud and angry.
A petition was started with several thousand people signing up to express their dismay about Lowe’s knee-jerk response to a couple of cat haters.
“Mama has been a positive and incident-free presence at the store for a significant period of time and has become meaningful to both customers and employees. Her presence has contributed to a sense of community and goodwill that many shoppers associate with the Gadsden Lowe’s location,” the petition stated.
Then, Gadsden Mayor Craig Ford took the official route of support by declaring “Lowe’s Mama Cat Day.”
The document concluded by saying, “This day shall serve as a recognition of Mama Cat’s five years of service, her positive role in the community, and the goodwill she inspired among residents, customers and employees.”
That’s who the complaints were directed at? I’d promote any employee who has that written about them.
Not at Lowe’s corporate.
Let’s see, a couple of people on one side complaining about Mama Cat, and on the other, thousands of boosters for the feline.
Which way would you side if you were trying to pump up your business?
“That cat didn’t bother a soul,” a Gadsden resident named Shelby wrote on the petition website, “She actually would make mine and my kids day better just by getting to see her. My kids would literally ask to go see the cat if we was over that way and we would. I would end up purchasing different items while there so I think it’s safe to say she is the perfect mascot. Bring Mama back home asap! Hundreds of people are upset over this.”
Sorry to correct you, Shelby, but that’s thousands of people are upset about Mama Cat’s firing.
While corporate Lowe’s is clueless about the reaction to their removal of the beloved cat, an employee of the Gadsden Lowe’s has brought Mama Cat home to enjoy her way too early retirement.
Lowe’s slogan is “Lowe’s knows home improvement.” Apparently, they don’t know good PR even if it hits them in the face.
Speaking of getting hit in the face, a can of tuna whizzed by my head that clanged off the wall.
Looking in the direction of the missile launch, there was our cat Chester, looking furious.
“What was that for, Chester!” I yelled.
“I just saw the story about Mama Cat,” Chester hissed.
“Okay, but why did you throw that can at me?”
“Because I’m angry at humanity,” Chester snarled. “And since you’re the only one in the house, I look at you as representing your entire species.
“You’re lucky I just woke up from a nap, or I wouldn’t have missed.”
“But I didn’t do anything to Mama Cat,” I pleaded, trying to prevent something else from being thrown my way. “I’m sympathetic to her plight.
“I’m on your side,” I said, sounding like a hostage negotiator trying to calm down a bad guy from pulling the trigger.
“Really? What are you going to do about it?” Chester raged.
“Do what?” I stammered.
“Get Mama Cat’s job back!”
“How am I going to do that?”
“Blackmail,” Chester sneered.
“Blackmail?”
“Yeah, blackmail you, dolt. I’ve been watching the news. Surely one of those Lowe’s bigwigs has to be mentioned in the Epstein files.
“Start going through them and let me know when you get the goods,” Chester said, accompanied by a sinister smile.
“Sorry, pal. But you can do that yourself,” I said as I walked out of the room, making sure to keep an eye on our pet in case he grabbed another object to throw.
An hour later, an excited Chester ran into the living room where I was reading.
“Dingo, I found a name!” Chester said with joy.
“You mean bingo. And what name are you referring to?”
“Some guy named Steven Tisch,” Chester said breathlessly.
“The co-owner of the New York Giants?”
“Yes. But he’s got something to do with the Lowes’s Corp too,” Chester said proudly as if he was Sherlock Holmes having identified Jefferson Hope as the killer in A Study in Scarlet.
“By the way, the Giants sucked this season,” Chester added. “This Tisch guy is a loser in football and with cats.”
“Sorry to ruin your discovery, but Steven Tisch is a major stockholder in the Loews Corp., not Lowe’s, the giant hardware retailer.
“If you’re looking for season tickets to the Giants, maybe you can coerce him into giving you a pair.
“He has nothing to do with Mama Cat.”
“Nothing?” said Chester as his shoulders sagged.
“What about a boycott?” a perked-up Chester said.
“That’s not going to work,” I said. “There was a Lowe’s boycott last year and it had virtually no impact on them.”
“Then let’s get Delta Force to take over Lowe’s and make them give Mama Cat her job back,” Chester said excitedly.
“You want the President to authorize a military operation on U.S. soil?”
“Why not? Isn’t he doing that with those ICE people?”
“Good point by you,” I said.
“So we call President Trump and tell him they’re selling drugs at the Lowe’s corporate headquarters parking lot,” Chester said as the wheels were turning in his head.
“Then he’ll order Delta Force to helicopter in, take their leadership and hold them until they give Mama Cat her job back.
“That’s what he did in Venezuela. Trump said it was about oil, but we all know it was about cats.”
“Tell Trump they’re also holding cats hostage, that’s what Delta Force specializes in. You’ll get more bang for your buck,” I suggested, not believing I was falling for this idea.
“Great plan!” Chester squealed. “I’ll call the White House. Do you have their number?”
“Look it up. It’s on the internet.”
A few minutes later, Chester came back into the room.
“I left a message,” Chester said. “It won’t be long now until Mama Cat is cruising the aisles at Lowe’s.”
“Well done,” I said encouragingly, and forgot about the matter.
A week later, I was napping on the couch when Chester flew into the room.
“Did you see the news?” our pumped-up pussycat yelled, waking me up.
“No, what are you talking about?” I asked groggily.
Chester turned on the TV and there was footage of Delta Force and SEAL Team Six executing a perfect deployment onto the Lowe’s corporate headquarters roof.
Footage showed bewildered C-suite executives being escorted onto two helicopters and flown away.
Then the scene on the screen shifted to a Pentagon news conference where Secretary of Defense/War, Pete Hegseth, surrounded by generals, gave a detailed briefing on Operation Steel Whiskers.
“Yesterday, our brave warriors of Delta Force and SEAL Team Six, rescued several cats while conducting a drug raid at the woke corporate headquarters of Lowe’s,” Hegseth said.
“Lowe’s is run by a bunch of Harvard elitists, another woke institution.
“For too long, this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard, hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” he said. “Instead, too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard — heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.
“Harvard is a drug-infested, cat-hating school and thanks to a tip from a patriotic citizen, we learned of this monstrous situation that our special forces dismantled.
“As President Trump mentioned after our successful operation in Venezuela, we once again used our top-secret Discombobulator device. With that system, we were able to dismantle not only their security, but accounts receivable too.
“Our troops also seized several boxes of Lowe’s coupons, which we will take advantage of at a time and store of our choosing.
“But the main objective of this mission was to get the incomparable Mama Cat her job back, which was taken away from her by this leftist, atheist, Deep State company,” Hegseth concluded.
As the political commentators on CNN started to debate the merits of what had just been revealed, I turned to see a beaming Chester, pleased with the chaos he had created.
“Wow, Chester. I’m impressed,” I said.
“What a great country we live in,” Chester chirped. “That any cat can have the opportunity to achieve the American dream and our core values of don’t mess with us cats.”
“You should get a medal for this, Chester,” I said.
“I was going to,” Chester said meekly. “But not anymore.”
“What happened?”
“I was to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Chester started. “But, once Trump saw it, he decided he deserved it more than me, so he kept it.
“I was told he’s putting it next to his FIFA Peace Prize, Fox Nation Patriot of the Year award and the Nobel Peace Prize that was given to him by María Corina Machado after that Venezuela thing.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said sympathetically.
“No worries,” Chester said. “Like they say at Lowe’s, ‘We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries. We got to move these refrigerators, we got to move these color TVs.”
“That wasn’t Lowe’s,” I corrected my Spotify of a cat. “That was from a musical group called Dire Straits.
“You’re an old soul, Chester. You sound like a boomer.”
“Boomer?” Chester responded. “I can’t boom boom, you know, because of what the vet did to me as a youngster.”
“Never mind. So when does Mama Cat go back to her job?” I asked.
“She’s not,” Chester said sheepishly.
“Why not!”
“Mama cat got used to life chilling on the couch and likes being retired.”
“So this whole thing was for nothing?”
“Absolutely not,” Chester said in a correcting voice. “The Department of War sent me a case of Lowe’s coupons for tipping them off.
“I’m going to live large, buying a ton of kibble, a Xspracer cat house and a dual bowl food dispenser. So it was worth the effort.
“Do you need anything from Lowe’s?”
“Yes, Chester. Get me a hammer so I can use it on my head to forget that this ever happened.”
The Chester Chronicles 