Good Ol' Fashion Hardware Store

What ever happened to the old time hardware store, where you could walk in and get a single piece of hardware. You know; nuts, bolts, washers, screws, nails, and any other sort of fastener. You go to the big boxes and you can buy them in multi-packs, either by count or weight, but if you need just one, no frickin' way...

I have a pair of hand grass clippers that lost one nut, instead of throwing them out, I decided that I am frugal enough to just go ahead and repair it myself. After several stops and not finding the 1/4" by 20 nut (that is the size it turned out to be, once I was allowed to open a package and trying it- they don't let you do that at the big boxes) I needed, I finally went to the auto parts store (still a chain, but nice enough to let me open a few packets) and found the part. I still had to buy the entire bubble container of them, but there was only three in the box...<insert needle across the record or skidding sound>...

Now it has me wondering why packets of three? Why not in pairs, or half or full dozens? Counts of 10? But 3, seriously?

What if I needed four? I would now have to buy two packs of three and get two left over. Are they expecting me to lose one right away, so they actually pack them in sets of two and throw in the extra at no charge? This reminds me of the hot dog in packs of 10 and hot dog rolls come in packs of 8, you have to but 4 packs of hot dogs and 5 packs of rolls to get it to balance out evenly.

The bottom line is, they are not expecting many people to actually fix and repair anything in this throw away society...so they go with the inconvenient packaging and counts to discourage my frugalness.