A day in the life: Jerry’s greeter Bill Sullivan

“Toilets,” says the burly guy. It sounds like a statement, but it’s a question. 

Bill Sullivan, the unfailingly genial, indefatigably pleasant greeter at the Eugene location of Jerry’s Home Improvement Center, has not even had a chance to actually greet this man. “Hello, welcome to Jerry’s. How can I help you?” is what he says, or a variation thereof, to everyone who walks through the door. Each time he says it, it sounds like the first time. This morning, in 90 minutes, he has said it to 109 customers. 

“Toilets? Sure, sir,” Bill replies. “That would be right down there,” he says, pointing to the back left quadrant of the massive retail complex.

This Jerry’s store—the main retail floor, the lumber yard and the garden center – is 350,000 square feet. That’s six football fields. That’s the equivalent of seven Target stores, two and a half Costcos. Six White Houses.

It’s big.

There are 22 departments. The aisles—more than 30 of them in the main retail floor—stretch 200-250 feet, horizon to horizon.

And Sullivan seems to know where everything is.

“Well, not quite everything,” he says, during a rare 20-second lull between customers. “I can be stumped.” He smiles. “But not all that often.”

Sullivan, 80, has been working for Jerry’s since 2019 when he retired from a 45-year career in sales and operation management at a local pipe fitting company. His job at Jerry’s is not just to say hello, to be the “customer-first” public face of this local, worker-owned 65-year-old company. He is an in-the-moment problem-solver and navigator. A home improvement maître d’.

“Hello! How are you? Come on in,” he says to a man in overalls. “How can I help?” The man takes his phone from his pocket, scrolls for a few seconds, then shows Sullivan a photo. “This,” the guy says. “Look at this.” They study the image together. “Your basement?” Sullivan asks. The man nods. “Looks like you might need water-stop cement,” Sullivan says. “That would be over in the building material department.” Let me get someone to help you.” He calls on his walkie-talkie.

“I’m looking for insulation,” the next customer says. “What kind? What size?” Sullivan asks.

“Ant traps?”

“Wire mesh?”

“Linchpin?”

“That would be aisle B4, half-way down on the right side,” Sullivan says, as if he had a map of the entire store in his head. He doesn’t, he insists, but he is modest about his knowledge. He has worked in the store long enough — and answered enough questions — that he knows the location of an astonishing number of its 100,000 items by heart: lunch pails to lug nuts, bolts to brooms, faucets to fasteners, rakes to rebar, shingles to shop vacs. He can quickly recall not just the department that houses an item, but the aisle, and often the precise spot in the aisle. He manages to make this enormous place human-sized.

Sullivan works three or four shifts a week, usually at the front entrance but occasionally at the building supply side doors, a job he finds a bit less rewarding. “Those guys come in knowing exactly what they want and where it is,” he says, with a twinge of regret. A shift is from 5 to 5½ hours long with a 15-minute break halfway through. He could, if he wanted to, take a seat on a nearby stool. He rarely does.

He rattles off his own personal miracles of modern medicine: Two knee replacements, a mechanical aortic value, two neck fusions, two back fusions. You wouldn’t know it. His posture and gait — not to mention his energy — are those of a man 30 years younger.  

“When you’re my age, the body wants to die,” he says, while rearranging a line of carts. “You can go either of two ways: You can sit in a chair and let it happen, or you can stay moving.”

He stays moving. And then some. When he’s not at Jerry’s, he’s at home working on landscaping projects, at the gym or out golfing. Or just enjoying his time with his wife of 40 years. Together they have five children. How many grandchildren does he have? He hesitates for a moment, counting in his head, when a smiling woman walks through the front doors, makes a beeline to Sullivan and gives him a hug.

“My wife,” he says. “I don’t get this kind of hello from just any customer.” They confer briefly about a gardening project – and about family statistics. She doesn’t have to count in her head. “Eleven grandchildren, seven great-grands,” she says, shaking her head as she maneuvers a sharp right-hand turn around her husband and heads out to garden supplies.

  He redirects his attention to the front door. “Hello,” he says, smiling, “I’ve been waiting for you!” The customer, who is a stranger, looks momentarily startled, then pleased. He returns the smile, pulls out his phone, and huddles close to Sullivan as he scrolls through several images.

“What I need is, well …” he hesitates. “I don’t know what I need.” He shakes his head. They study the image. “A stem wall?” Sullivan asks. “It looks like you might need footings. Let me direct you to the experts over in building materials.” He points to the right. 

A young father comes in with a toddler. Sullivan pushes through the line of carts until he finds one with a baby seat.

An octogenarian couple with a tiny grizzled dog walks in, very slowly. Sullivan greets them and grabs a cart. “I bet that dog would love a ride.”

A guy comes in holding a small object in the palm of his hand. “Ah,” says Sullivan, after greeting him and taking a quick look. “B8, left side of the aisle, about three-quarters of the way down.”

In marches a trio of construction workers, their matching T-shirts emblazoned across the chest with their company logo. “You look like you know exactly where you’re going,” Sullivan says. “Third time’s the charm,” says the guy in the middle, laughing and shaking his head.

An older man walks in unsteadily. In one hand he grasps a cane. The other hand is holding on to a companion, maybe his daughter. “Wait right here, sir,” Sullivan says. He walks quickly to get what is called a “mart cart,” a motorized cart for those who need help making their way through this immense store. The man slowly lowers himself in the seat. “Now don’t go speeding,” Sullivan says. They both laugh.

Jerry’s does not stock everything a person needs for every home improvement project. But if a skilled and enterprising soul wanted to build a house from the ground up, this person probably could, from foundation to framing, electrical, plumbing, flooring, roofing, sheetrock, sinks, cabinets, bathtubs (toilets!), paint. Down one aisle — Sullivan can tell you exactly which one — is a $0.43 steel screw. Walk over a few departments to find the $20,000 premium, solid wood, semi custom cabinets. On the other side of the store, just past the shiny, industrial green and yellow riding mowers with the $5,000 price tags is a sale on work gloves for $8.49.

Sullivan takes a short break. Then he’s back at his post.

An older man wearing a Korean War vet hat walks in, followed by a tattooed young woman in cutoff Carhartts, followed by a grandmother with two restive toddlers. “You stand here, and you see it all,” Sullivan says. “Not everyone needs help. Not everyone smiles back.” That does not deter him.

He is not a man easily deterred. After high school in southern California, where he was briefly a record-holding pole vaulter — ”I got bested the very next year” — he started junior college with an eye toward a career in law enforcement. He didn’t meet the eyesight requirement. He changed direction, took a job as a forklift operator, then moved into sales, and climbed the ladder into operations and then management, moving from California to Oregon early in his career. When his first marriage ended after 18 years and three children, he found the woman of his dreams — “I mean that!”— and they made a new life together.

He doesn’t know how long he’ll continue working at Jerry’s. “I am still standing,” he says. “And I just love this place.

“It’s all about the customer. I love seeing repeat customers, recognizing them and they recognize me. And I love these, I guess you’d call them ‘momentary relationships’ I get to have with the people who walk in the door.

“I am — I guess this is obvious — a people person.”

Two men in splattered white painters’ pants walk in.

“Welcome, welcome,” Sullivan says. “I bet I know where you two are headed.”