Home Depot, Lowes Sold Out of 3/8 Inch Hex Nuts as Hanukkah Arrives

East Hanover, NJ (Dec 17, 2014) – Big box hardware behemoths, Home Depot and Lowes, have once again completely sold out their entire supplies of 3/8 inch hex nuts for the 31^st consecutive December.  The shortage of these hardware staples, around since 1568, seems to coincide each year with Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights.  Industry analysts have been puzzled for decades as to what the correlation is between the holiday and the shortage.

“I’ve been an exec at Home Depot for twenty years and I still can’t figure it out,” laments John McConnell, Senior Sales Executive and Notre Dame Graduate, of Greenwich, Connecticut.  “Some years the run on hex nuts begins in early December, some years it’s the middle of the month.  Last year it was right after Thanksgiving.  Never the exact same time.  I’ve been studying my “Great Churches of the World” desk calendar for months and just don’t see anything on it that would cause this.”

Carpenters, handymen, and craftspeople around metropolitan hubs New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have been struggling to find hex nuts to go with the hundreds of thousands of bolts and washers they use on a daily basis.  Local artisan, William Petricelli of Roseland, has created dozens of hand-crafted custom wooden rockers to be shipped to customers in time for Christmas.  Unfortunately for his clients, Petricelli cannot complete any of his items without properly securing the pieces together.  “I’ve tried all kinds of glues, tapes, nails but nothing works for me like the nut and bolt combination.  Without the nut, the bolt is pretty useless.   It’s like peanut butter without the jelly,” a disheartened and frustrated Petricelli explained. 

While a myriad of professionals struggle to make deadlines and complete projects, thousands of Jewish children around the country are creating horribly constructed, overly glittered, personalized menorahs to the dismay of their parents.  Usually starting with a piece of scrap wood or a simple tongue depressor, the children use ten bolts as candle holders, eight representing the nights of Hanukkah and two stacked together for the Shamash or “middle candle”.  Rarely are these menorahs true works of art as the children, ages 2-6, usually put on an overabundance of glue to each nut which results in it sliding out of line with the other nuts.  Before the glue even has a chance to dry, the little girls typically pour on a half to three quarters of a jar of glitter while boys tend to over-marker their projects by starting with a few bright colors which eventually blend with the glue to meld into a dark brownish tint.

When these “precious works of art” come home with the budding Marc Chagalls, parents enthusiastically overreact to the “beauty” of these atrocious monstrosities.  Livingston real estate agent, Jon Lieberman, 37, recently was gifted a menorah by his six year-old son, Jake.  “When I came home from work it was there on the kitchen island.  It honestly scared me.  It looked like a dead animal.  My wife said it’s our new menorah that Jake made.  As I hugged him, telling him how much I loved his work, I mouthed to my wife ‘It’s disgusting, no?’  She looked at me in tears and sobbed ’Our son is a no talent hack.’”