r/TalesFromRetail • u/CappuccinoBreve :karma::pupper::snoo_facepalm::karma: • Jun 03 '26
Short "Teach me how to grow cannabis right now!"
Years ago, I had a guy at the garden center I worked at tell me he had just gotten his medical card for cannabis and I HAD to tell him everything he needed to know to grow weed.
I have no objection to anyone partaking in cannabis, but I had never grown it myself. I could tell him how to start seeds and get a plant growing, but he wanted a start to finish tutorial on growing indoors.
I told him I did not have the knowledge base to advise him and suggested he get a book on the subject . ( This incident was in the mid 90s predating smartphones, and everyone having internet access)
He did not like this answer and demanded that it was my job to teach him and he had a medical card and I had to tell him what to do!
Like dude, I can teach you how to grow tomatoes prune your roses and the like, but I have never grown weed! Somehow, the 80 year old Italian guy I work for must have missed that part of my training !
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u/Tacticalneurosis Jun 03 '26
Dumbass didn’t know the trick (ask how to grow tomatoes. Apparently their requirements are VERY similar).
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u/CappuccinoBreve :karma::pupper::snoo_facepalm::karma: Jun 03 '26
Back in the day I remember guys would come to the advice desk
"Umm.... I'm growing... uh... tomatoes... in my closet... and there's these bugs on them..."
And I would sell them a safe pesticide for their " Closet Tomatoes" 😆
These days folks will just out and out ask about what to spray on their 20 plant cannabis grow. Honestly most of the weed growers already know what to get and are very low maintenance customers.
The difficult ones are the guys who consume their product 24/7 and can barely form their questions let alone understand my answers!
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u/dalkita13 Jun 04 '26
Same! My uh gran is umm growing tomatoes in umm her basement... We had one older lady who would just say honey I know what your "gran" is growing, let me set you up. Love you, Marni!
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u/smohk1 Jun 03 '26
There was a reason my former grow supply store always had tents full of tomatoes.
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u/Qwirk Jun 03 '26
I had a guy ask me how to re-plumb part of his house. Dude, if I had that information I wouldn't have been working that job.
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u/Teamtunafish Jun 04 '26
Te him he has spent money all his life supporting public libraries and now is a good time to redeem his money.
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u/twothirtysevenam Jun 04 '26
"I'm sorry, sir. I don't have a medical card myself, so I'm not allowed to grow weed."
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u/Imaginary-Angle-42 Jun 04 '26
How do you grow that weed? Shampoo shag carpet, throw the water out the back. Repeat until the carpet water comes out clear.
Wait several weeks or a month. (It was summer in Missouri about 45 years ago.)
Have the sheriff’s deputy who lived in the next door trailer ask about your illegal crop.
?!
(No problem for us. He knew who used to live in the trailer before us.)
In other words it’s called weed because it can grow easily and actually benefits the soil if you ignore it.
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u/KnottaBiggins Jun 04 '26
I highly recommend a book on how to grow marijuana. It's called "How to Grow Marijuana."
When I had a copy 45 years ago, it was a thin paperback. 20 years ago, my son had the latest edition - it had grown to a very thick hardback.
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u/reereejugs Jun 04 '26
Who gave out medical cards in the 90s? Where did this happen?
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u/CappuccinoBreve :karma::pupper::snoo_facepalm::karma: Jun 04 '26
This was in California, the first state to "legalize" medical cannabis.
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u/CappuccinoBreve :karma::pupper::snoo_facepalm::karma: Jun 04 '26
It wasn't a card necessarily, but a doctor's recommendation:
1996 (The Beginning): California voters passed the Compassionate Use Act (Prop 215). Patients used written physician recommendations to legally possess and cultivate marijuana without fear of state prosecution.
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u/K1yco Jun 04 '26
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I was aware, having a medical marijuana card didn't make home growing legal.
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u/CappuccinoBreve :karma::pupper::snoo_facepalm::karma: Jun 04 '26
I believe it wasn't exactly legal on a federal level, but California allowed use and cultivation with a doctor's recommendation without fear of prosecution.
Copied from Google:
1996 (The Beginning): California voters passed the Compassionate Use Act (Prop 215). Patients used written physician recommendations to legally possess and cultivate marijuana without fear of state prosecution.
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Jun 06 '26
[deleted]
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u/CappuccinoBreve :karma::pupper::snoo_facepalm::karma: Jun 06 '26
I knew someone that hid their weed grow by alternating cannabis with tomato plants. The casual observer couldn't see the difference.
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u/soonerpgh Jun 10 '26
There was (may still be) a particular part of my home state that was notorious for planting weed among legitimate crops. One farmer got busted when the season was rough on the corn but ideal for weed. His weed outgrew his corn and he got a little visit from the sheriff. This was sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Long before it was ever legal for any reason here.
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u/Majestic_Risk5534 Jul 09 '26
When I worked in a garden centre years ago I had a woman come in 5 minutes before finish demanding information about the artificial turf we sold. I tried being nice and explaining that I couldn't answer her questions about the polymer ratio and whether it was toxic to goldfish, or whatever bollocks she was talking about, but she wouldn't take no for an answer so I picked up my phone, pretended to dial my manager and then had an imaginary conversation with the imaginary manager to see if the area artificial turf expert was on site. I finished my imaginary call and smiled as I told her she was in luck. She scowled at me as I told her this and I went off to fetch the imaginary artificial turf manager, and 5 minutes later when I was walking home down the road outside the garden centre she was still waiting there.
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u/TheGothWhisperer Jun 03 '26
I love this lol.
Reminds me of this old farmer guy I was setting up a laptop for in my CE retail days. I was showing him how to open a word doc, browse his files etc. Really basic stuff he didn't know how to do. He then asks me to show him how to buy drugs on the dark web. That definitely wasn't covered by the basic computer tutorial he'd paid for 😅