Contractors Edge of Rt 309

 Located on the side of Rt. 309 you will find a lengthy store building called Contractors Edge of PA. It shares its location on a gravel lot with 2 other companies. Cermaniro Stone and its sister company TreeEx. 

You park your car on the gravel lot behind the freshly laid stone sidewalk and walk into the black gates that separate the store from the lot. You open the hefty glass door, walk inside, and are greeted with the harsh, nose-curling smell of pesticides and fertilizers. To your left is a wooden shelf filled with mailboxes and buckets with handpainted flowers. There's fake grass on the left side of the floor and you'll find that this side of the store has more products focused on hydroponics, fertilizers, and pond care. To your right Kelly green shelves line the store all the way to the back, you can see that's where the smell of pesticides is coming from. On this side, products are more focused on contractors and arborists. 

You walk along the patchy brick-red floors and approach the wooden U-shaped counters. The counter still has its COVID barriers up and has fliers with information about the store clipped to the sides. Behind it Scott the manager sits with his computer patiently waiting for customers. He's a tall man with coarse black hair who is always wearing his grey Old Hickory carhartt sweatshirt.  Just as you're about to start a conversation with the manager a very fluffy and long hard German shepherd struts around the corner wagging her tail in anticipation. She's a bit smaller of a German shepherd from the ones I've seen and she's very unique looking. She has a black coat on top of her but intertwined in the black hair is white fur. When you brush it back it almost looks as if you are petting a porcupine. 

“She's kind of the store mascot I bring her to work with me every day since I've gotten her and she's just the staple of the store now. It's better than just leaving her at home where nobody's at. Here she can get a lot of experience meeting new people and everybody just loves her. She’s got a bit of separation anxiety when I leave the store though…she tends to act like a bit of a nutcase, but other than that she's a great dog.” exclaimed Scott. 

As evident while observing the store I noticed that frequently customers would go and say hello to the dog first before talking to the manager or would stop their conversation mid-sentence to say hello. 

Every afternoon the store owner will come out from the back to give the dog a treat. He showed me how they have a routine where every afternoon he'll sit in a plastic grey rocking chair right by the mini fridge and he pushes the door open ever so slightly to where the dog comes up and slams the door open with her nose to get her treats. The owner then takes out a bag of these small multicolor dog treats no bigger than your index finger and feeds her 2 of them. 

While observing I noticed a lot of customers came in for the sheds they sold. A lot of them came in to price-match other sheds they had found in the area. They would either shop on the lot by themselves or come in first and talk to Scott who would take them outside and down the lot to the rows and rows of sheds. He would go over all their different options. He would explain how Contractors Edge has a partnership with the shed company Old Hickory. How they are Amish built made down in Lancaster and come in a variety of shapes and colors. After, he would hand them a blue pamphlet to take home so they could go back over everything they talked about at the store. Every time Scott and a customer would leave the store the dog would bark at them wanting to be taken with them. 

The other portion of customers that showed up worked for companies and were coming to buy stone/sand/etc for their company. 

"We sell a lot of things for arborists, but we also sell a lot of stone and sand. Another big seller is our sheds. Our lot is filled with them, but they go quickly sometimes during the summer I'll go from 30 sheds down to 5 within the course of a week." 

"I've been working here for around 11 years now and before that, I worked 30+ years in logistics. I prefer this over logistics it's not a stressful job and I don't have to travel constantly like I did when I worked in logistics," says Scott calmly 

Scott is the happiest he could be in his life at the moment working at Contractors Edge. He gets to bring his dog to work and he's finally in a non-stressful environment and likes doing what he does at Contractors Edge of PA.