With Susanne Beck
“My thing is, I can teach anybody anything. [But] I can’t teach people to be nice”
Catching up with the over-the-top obliging crew at Charles Street Supply
Spend any time talking to employees at Beacon Hill’s long-standing Charles Street Supply and you’d think they were serving cocktails in the aisles.
“It’s like social hour,” beams recent hire Paul Sweeney. “Kind of like the Cheers of the hardware stores.” Manager Chase Lyon agrees. “It’s gotten to the point – it’s almost overwhelming – where the majority of the people who come in now know me and I consider them friends. It’s all day long — almost like a social club.”
Such is the welcoming vibe that any visitor or passerby experiences when they dodge the outdoor display of seasonal items (shovels and salt in the winter; beach toys and an oversized gumball machine in the summer) that decorate the sidewalk at 54 Charles Street. While owner Jack Gurnon is often tucked away in his basement office, or out and about enroute to a business call, his loyal crew can be found, behind the counter, restocking the shelves, or fielding questions on any number of construction or repair issues, ever smiling, and always at the ready.
Their good cheer seems to come naturally and according to Jack, is a key reason they were hired. “My thing is, I can teach anybody anything. [But] I can’t teach people to be nice….I just ask them: Why do you want to work here? Can you be on time? Can you work weekends and early mornings? And just give me the name of someone else you’ve worked for.” He relies on instincts to determine the rest.
Recent retiree Paul says he was already a familiar face in the store as he lived nearby and often stopped in for this or that for tinkering at home. When he stopped working full-time, he says, “I realized I didn’t want just to sit around and asked Jack one day if he ever needed help.” He started soon after. Another colleague, college junior and film major Joanne Kwon, was taken with the store the moment she walked in to buy a pot for a plant her mother gave her. She thought to herself: “I would love to work at a store that’s a local business, that has ties to a community and that I don’t want to go and clock in and just get my hours. I want to be part of something.” She mentioned that to Jack during her interview. “He basically told me he hired me because of that answer. I didn’t have any experience in hardware. I was only 18 at the time and there wasn’t much to me. But he said he liked what I said.”
Staffer Katherine Holman is another good example of what it takes to get a job at Charles Street. She grew up in the neighborhood, went to school with Jack and Cassie’s kids, and was looking for a part-time job while working as a research assistant at Massachusetts General Hospital. “I gravitated to the position because while ultimately I wanted to go into healthcare, I want to help people. And I think you can help people in different ways.” She walked into her interview knowing almost nothing about hardware either. “I’d hung a shower curtain before, but that’s about it,” she smiles sheepishly. But Jack took her on, drawn by her caring nature. “My first day was the 5:30 AM Monday truck,” she remembers – better known as Jack’s standard trial-by fire-indoctrination. “We were pulling boxes off the truck and unpacking inventory and stuff. I had no idea where anything went,” she laughs.
Michael Eberle had much the same experience when he signed on about a year and a half go. One of his very first shifts was also the 5:30AM Monday morning truck offload. “Baptism by fire!” he chuckles, in retrospect. Jack, more pointedly, calls it a “giant game of concentration” and, for him, an unspoken test of attitude and work ethic.
The early AM shift is also a good way to begin to learn the unfathomably long list of goods that Charles Street Supply has on hand (estimated at about 20,000 SKU’s today). “Even last week, I found out about something and thought, ‘oh, we sell that?” notes Michael. “Every time you turn around it’s something. Recently, I saw goldfish food,” he marvels. It makes sense, though, given the range of requests that employees are asked to answer to. Again, Michael is quick with a knowing snicker. “The people of Beacon Hill and Back Bay have what I would refer to as a unique set of needs,” this from a man who used to own and run a large lighting store in Fort Point Channel. “People just come in and plunk things on the counter. It’s like, whoa, okay — I wish I had my rubber gloves for this one, but we’ll take care of it for you,” he says with a good-natured ring.
Chase could not agree more. “People come in with challenges all day long. It’s really nice to be able to help them with that, or to at least steer them in the right direction to someone who can help them.” Katherine says much the same. “I like working with elderly people… somebody will come in with a shopping list and they can’t really necessarily make their way around the whole store. I really like those customers where I’m able to actually help them and pick out exactly what they need and bring it to the front counter for them.”
“Things that people do here are just over-the-top kind,” Michael remarks admiringly. “Things so far out of the realm of what a hardware store would do — whether someone needed a medical thing done, a personal thing they’re unable or unwilling to do themselves. There’s a lot of reliance on the people here.” Chase estimates that in his ten-plus years at the store, he has been inside almost every building on Beacon Hill to provide some kind of service. And Katherine recalls a similar experience just days into her new position. “[Jack] said, ‘Katherine, I have a job for you.’ So, I hopped in the back of his car with Cassie and we drove up the hill to one of their family friends, an elderly person from the church who was moving into a nursing home.” The job was to remove some valuable paintings and deliver them to his new facility. “You never know what you’re going to get at the hardware store for a job,” she laughs before adding “That’s so Jack and Cassie.”
For all that the staff puts out for those in need, there are more than a few benefits for them, too. Grateful customers often drop off cookies or coffee or sandwiches, and on holidays, related treats. Psychically, they develop a deep connection to the customers and the community at large. Katherine observes that now that she is behind the counter, “I feel like I’ve entered into kind of a whole new world.” “Somebody said to me, maybe from Gary Drug, ‘Now you’re one of us’. It was so nice to know both sides.” She also recounts a recent encounter with a customer outside of the store. “I saw an elderly man on the street after I had seen him in the store the same day. He was with his wife and stopped when he recognized me and said to his wife, ‘This is the lovely lady that helped me today. She was so great.’” The warmth in her voice swells with her clear joy at the memory.
Michael loves the many ages he encounters. “I can see generations in a day. The grandchildren, the children, the parents, and the grandparents. You can really feel the family or the village experience in Beacon Hill. Within the store and within the neighborhood, there’s a symbiotic relationship. People are looking out for each other.”
And every staffer goes out of their way to shine the brightest spotlight on their owners and the affection they feel toward them. “Jack and Cassie are just the best,” oozes one. ““There’s no replacing a Jack Gurnon,” says another, emphatically. More than one describes him as “inspiring.” And “I respect what it takes to run something like this in this day and age. I’ve kind of been there. So, it’s with a lot of respect and appreciation that I show up here.” Finally, one more: “I feel like Charles Street Supply has made me feel really valued as an individual and also I feel like I’m part of something bigger. No matter how small your role is, your role is always important.”
And they all enjoy the inevitable humor that comes with the job (many have told Joan, the film student, that the store is perfect sitcom material). Jack remembers a call he picked up not too long ago. “I had this phone call: ‘Hi, Charles Street Supply? Yeah — what do I need to do to sell my car?’” Jack starts to laugh. “I tell him, ‘This isn’t the RMV.’ ‘Oh, I know,’ he says. ‘But I called them and their phone was busy, so I knew I’d call you.’”
Joan shares one of her uplifting moments. “There was this man who came in and he was like, ‘Oh, I’m a professional accordion [player].’ And Chase knew — I don’t know how or why – that we had an accordion in the basement, but we did. The guy proceeded to do a little impromptu show in the back of the store… I was like, wow, this would only happen at this store.”