Greatest Shop Ever

About Greatest Shop Ever

This is the Greatest Shop Ever. Often imitated, never duplicated. The only shop with that Greatest Shop Ever apparel. Located in Saint Peters, MO so stop by.

The standard About Us sections are typically an overwhelmingly history of the business as told by the owners themselves, so one never can be sure of just how legitimate the story is. For example, how many businesses have the “humble beginnings” that they claim? No asshole wants to tell you that he got started with a $9,000,000 (that’s 9 million) loan from his dad and from those “humble beginnings” he has risen to such great heights. (Yes, I was talking down to you by spelling out the word million).

Seriously, how can one ever trust someone to give a true and accurate accounting of their story, the “how and why” they came to be where they find themselves today?

Listen, we are not going to spell out the specific steps we took to arrive at where we are. What idiot would give a road map for those behind him to follow?!

So here’s an “About Us” element that no one wants to acknowledge: LUCK. Next to no one admits that they are where they are and they’ve experienced the success they have in large part to luck. Really ask yourself how come some make it and some don’t? We all know the cliché of the third string quarterback getting called into the game as some series of unlikely events unfold in which the first two quarterbacks have been injured. All of a sudden, it turns out the third string quarterback is a phenom and the team goes on a giant winning streak, wins the championship, and hooray for the team: the Cinderella story of that quarterback. Why aren’t you asking the why? Why was it? How could it be that a quarterback so talented, as clearly his on-field success proves, was overlooked in favor of less-gifted athletes? Luck. In this case, lack of luck.

Businesses like to throw around labels for relationships they haven’t done shit to earn. Words like “family” and “team” are commonly used by large corporations, to conceal the view that their employees are not people but labor, a resource to be exploited. A resource to be used until it is depleted and more need be acquired. Sound too harsh? Sound too critical? Why is it called the Human Resources Department? Why can’t they even say people? Who. the fuck. ever calls people “humans”?! Those that view people not as people but as an “it”. They break all elements of a business down to its essence and in doing so lose all their humanity, personality, and character. They are void of the thing that makes us all what we are, a soul. Soulless Corporation is the sort of phrase used by some 3am genius at your local diner that only does enough reading to sound like he knows what he’s talking about OR the post-adolescent thinking brooder that feels he can see through the lies perpetuated around him by such specters as big business, media, and advertising. Right. If the college kid wanted to avoid indoctrination, he might start by wondering why exactly he is paying such exorbitant and outrageous prices for a product (yes, an education is a product) that has an ever-decreasing value AND is not about opening one’s eyes to the world as it is (science. DATA.) but rather how their professors wish the world to be (feelings. Emotions). Fuck the SCAM of “higher education”. Kids, college is bullshit.

Businesses like to use terms of endearment the same way all abusers do as a method of manipulation. These words are used to create confusion in the victim as to the nature of their abuse and exploitation. These words create expectations of care in the mind of the victim, aka employee. These words paint a vivid picture (complete with photos and often in a “manager track” program folder) of a life and a future that is, extremely unlikely to be.

The mule will pull harder if he believes good things are coming to him. If the mule believes that he is on the path to the good fields, he will continue pulling the load. As one step becomes another and years become decades, the human resource (someone’s actual life) is used as one small piece of the energy (resource) necessary to pull the corporation forward.

Businesses throw around these terms because they wish to receive the benefit of the commitment described without having the pay the fair cost required to earn them. You’ve heard that you have to give love to be loved. Otherwise it’s not love. If a relationship is not mutual then it’s not a genuine relationship. Only a fool confuses a prostitute with a lover. Prostitution is a genuine relationship though. Genuine because both sides are aware of the situation and the nature of the relationship. No one is fooled into having an expectation of a future that is not to be. Unless the prostitute has watched Pretty Woman far too many times.

The individuals that work in Human Resource Departments across corporate America who are responsible for this mirage are nothing but white collar life-rapists. They say they are doing one thing, all the while doing a different, if not completely opposite thing. Their desire is to acquire the maximum from the resource, to squeeze the employee’s bone until the last of the marrow is gone.

In light of how terms like “family” and “team” have had their meanings destroyed (and we didn’t even get to the scourge of current day “hippies” (nearly all of them frauds) we have chosen to self-identify as. . . . . we’re still working on it.

Brief background: this shit show started in 2008 in a strip mall office. There was an outside door and then you had two more doors and one was ours. It wasn’t the most glamorous, but it was ours. That location is no longer available for photographs or pilgrimage as it has been architecturally changed and now is occupied by a liquor store. Just to paint a picture, it’s one of those liquor stores with the BRIGHT AS FUCK white LED lights strung around the perimeter of every window. Yeah. Sad. We agree. Visual shit-pot.

Second location of the store was 3995 Mexico Road. It’s likely that our success comes entirely from having a cool address. You want the secret to our success? You want the road map to get here? You read far enough into this diatribe that you deserve something. That’s it right there. Get a badass address and people will come . . . that’s what we’ve arrived at after all these years of trying to explain why the folks kept coming.

It may have helped that 3995 was an anchor store in a small strip mall 2 blocks away from our original location. So we looked big time and for the era (2011) we were. In 2010, almost anywhere in the States, there weren’t pipe shops the same size as “genuine” retail stores. You’ve experienced this, at least you have if you’re over the age of 25-30. We wanted to bring the pipes out of the back room and into the main room, the only room. Since 2008, what we do is sell pipes. It’s not a side business and no back rooms. We were one of the first hardcore ride or-die-pipe shops. Our whole clothing boondoggle is just our way of spreading our message of mayhem. We’re smokers. We sell stuff to smoke with. If you’re down, here’s a shirt with a logo some moron thought was a good idea but that can’t be googled for shit so only really signals to people that already know what it is that you are down. Yep. Exactly how we like it.

Who needs business school? The lessons we’ve learned along the way have gotten us here and that’s pretty good for Saint Louis kids.

Well, okay. I appreciate that you’re still with me. Let me give you a brief history of how our business genius was created. Let’s begin your education. You will likely have to re-enroll formally in the education system. Here’s your curriculum:

Preschool: Take the cool toys that you like to play with and hide them in your cubby. When you depart for the day, use your sweatshirt as a wrapper so as to prevent any adults or other children from seeing your new acquisition

Grade school: steal toys, stuffed animals, action figures, don’t store in your locker, they’ll look there dummy, instead bury the toy outside or hide in an unmowed area. When exiting school return quickly to the spot and remove your new acquisition

Business School: Awww fuck, if you think that sitting in a lecture hall and hearing some asshole talk about making money sounds like a good idea to you I would ask, if this knowledge is so effective that he is giving you, then why is he not applying it in the real world and making money himself, instead of teaching and preaching.