Hitchhiker Diaries Episode 5 – Wallpaper is Back

This past week I picked up a woman on my way down to work. Her name is Jackie. She is an attractive middle-aged woman with long straight black hair. She was dressed business casual and was very clean – she did not live in a campground like a lot of hitchhikers I pick up.

She was going down to her new job. She had been working at the local grocery store in Nederland and her new job was in Boulder. She thinks she’ll have saved enough for a car by October. Her new job is at Guiry’s in Boulder. At Guiry’s, you can buy all kinds of things for home decoration. She is working in their design department. She got the job because she has a lot of experience selling window coverings.

She said this job is interesting because she needs to become the wallpaper expert. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen much wallpaper around these days. Apparently, it’s becoming popular again. She also said it has come a long way. She says that the textures you can get with it are impressive. There is even a style you buy that comes in many different texture patterns, and it’s just white. It’s meant to be put right up on plain drywall (no spackle or paste). You can get diamonds, wavy designs, circles, spirals, etc… It is meant to be just wall texture that you then paint over.

She also said that you see a fair amount of photographs blown up to be put on a wall. I remember we had a wall like that at my house when I was growing up – it made the wall look like a big garden window. Apparently, National Geographic makes a good wall paper version of many different nature scenes.

She was afraid to take the job because she has to deal with a lot of rich people. I asked how dealing with the rich people has been. She said fine, that 90% are good to work with and 10% are snooty folk that keep a wall between themselves and her. When I was thinking about this later, I was thinking that if you take any demographic or economic slice of american people, that there is probably at least 10% that are difficult to deal with. Difficult in different ways – there’s probably not 10% of people who work at McDonald’s that are snooty, but still difficult. I would like to hear your thoughts on this one.