I was very excited to participate in this event! Without Rob's help, how else would I potentially embarrass myself getting caught posting signs and taking pictures in a hardware store?

As you can see, cockeyed.com is a first class operation.

Having purchased a home just a couple years ago, I'm very familiar with the local hardware stores. First stop: OSH.

Orchard Supply and Hardware is like Home Depot Lite - while you could probably build a house from the stuff inside, You'd have to buy most of your stuff shrinkwrapped and for more money. There's also not much in the way of construction debris on the tiled floors. What the heck? They do, however, sell large plastic sheds.

I decided to take a fact-finding walk through the store (mostly because it's a short walk from the house), but was dismayed to find none of the sheds had signs anything like those I had in hand - mine would look conspicuous. I was so dismayed, in fact, that I didn't take any pictures. But you can believe me - I left and decided to try my other local stores first.

Next stop, several days later, Home Depot. Now THIS is hardware store - huge piles of lumber, a faint chemical-wood-mulch aura, and impressive acreage. If there were going to be an aisle just for plastic sheds, it'd be here.

I also decided to bring the family on this mission - non-parents don't realize the large amount of contraband that will fit in a baby's diaper bag. Carrying a camera and stack of signs alone would be asking for trouble.

We wandered the store a bit, and luckily for us, Home Depot isn't one of those places where you have to worry about pesky employees asking if you need help. Still, we couldn't find a display of sheds, so finally flagged someone down and asked. They were out in the garden section - perfect! It's typically quiet and less traveled. Let's see the sheds!

We found the unassembled sheds, available for purchase, but were were the displays? I know I'd seen them here before, but they weren't here. We asked again, and were pointed toward the front of the garden section.

Those were gonna be hard to get to, seeing as they were 20 feet up. In the whole store, not a single accessible shed!

How's a man supposed to try them on for size?

One last stop - Lowes. I brought my own backpack and left the family at home, since it was my on lunch hour. Lots of people browse and look for a long time at things at hardware stores, so I wasn't worried about loitering. I wasn't sure how many pictures I'd be able to snap, but the camera phone could come in handy.

Again, I went looking, and for every employee Home Depot didn't have, Lowes had 4 - the place was swarming with them. I asked about sheds, and was pointed in the right direction.

Up. Did they know we were coming? Up in the sky is a totally useless place for these things, but that's where they seemed to be. But wait! I turned a corner and found more - some humanly accessible! Maybe this trip wouldn't be in vain.

Lowes had 4 at ground level - the large one here, a closet sized one, a smaller closet sized one, and a top-loading box style container. The large one was in plain view, but some of the others were a bit more hidden.

First sign - "Escape from your wife" went up in the larger closet style shed. The light in there sucked, but I got a camera phone image. It's on the left wall, inside, easy to see if you open either door.

I should add at this point that like OSH, none of these sheds had any signs on them, so mine were the only things people would see.

Next up: "Guaranteed not haunted for 3 years". This one was much easier to pull off - while the box shed was in pretty plain site, it was closer to the wall with other sheds on either side of it. I put up the sign and got these pics. Everyone who opened the box would see it, right off the bat.

By this point I'd been in the store almost 20 minutes, and there were employees everywhere, so I cut my losses, left the signs there, and went home with the last one. I'll check back a few times to see if they're still up. Hopefully someone else enjoys them, or at least buys a non-haunted shed!

Michael Doss
http://www.insignifica.org

please continue reading Justin's story of the shed prank .