Winston-Salem, NC -- Ol' pal and golf-cheating pro, "Tommy B." informed me of how he "helped" his son, er... the neighborhood, order mulch for a proposed single house project. Prior to tackling more important things in life such as restoring used U-Haul trucks and collecting anything that has been made under the sun, Tommy B. was a teacher in the Knoxville, TN school system. Here goes his account, no pun intended, of the infamous mulch story.
"So, [my son] Patrick called me the other morning to help him figure out how much mulch to order for this guy up the street. Patrick got the contract to mulch his gardens and didn't remember from high school how to calculate square feet. I took the opportunity to impress him that we would be dealing in cubic feet, not ordinary ol' square feet.
Patrick had drawn out 4 rectangles and he gave me the length and width of each. He wanted to spread his mulch 3" deep. I multiplied length times width for each rectangle and ended up with a square foot number for each rectangular patch of garden. I then added the four numbers together and ended up with a total of about 520 sq. feet. 3" deep is 1/4 of a foot, so I multiplied 520 sq. ft. times .25 and came up with 130. Then, I double-checked my figures and finally recalculated a third time so there would be no problems. I told Patrick to call and order 130 cubic feet from the nursery (they were going to deliver). Then, I remembered these dump truck guys work in cubic yards, not cubic feet -- so many "yards of dirt." I didn't want the nursery to think they were dealing with a couple of weenies, so I divided 130 by 9, since there are 9 cubic feet in one cubic yard and I ended up with 14-1/2 cubic yards, which Patrick then ordered.
The mulch was delivered this morning and when Patrick got off work at 2pm, he and his friend, Kemp, went up the street to spread the mulch while I babysat with Baby Kaylee. Patrick and Kemp showed up at dusk and Pat told me to drive up the street as I was leaving and look at the nice job they did and that somehow they still had a lot of mulch left over, even after spreading it a little thicker than 3". I assured him the doofus running the loader had put too much mulch in the delivery truck, but maybe he could find somebody else to sell the extra to. I said my good-byes and drove by the house and saw a pile of mulch sitting in this guy's driveway as big as my van. It was huge! Totally bumfuzzled by the outcome of events, I went home and got thoughty as to what might have happened to leave us with so much extra mulch. Patrick obviously had not given me the correct numbers to begin with or else the nursery needed to hire a new phone guy. Halfway through my beer, I came to the realization there are 27 cubic feet in 1 cubic yard, not 9. Dividing by 27, instead of by 9, we should have ordered 5 cubic yards, not 14-1/2. I ordered three times as much as we needed! That dumptruck must have been the size of a house. Now I'm on the hook to shovel all this extra mulch into several loads for my small pickup truck and pay this guy back for 2/3 of the mulch bill! I've got enough mulch left over to cover the neighborhood! Patrick told his customer that he (Patrick), would park his car in front of the mulch pile tomorrow so nobody would steal it, because the customer doesn't want Patrick to work on Sunday. So, I've got to give up my car tomorrow, and shovel all the mulch by myself on Monday because Patrick will be working then. I hope this guy has a sense of humor. - Yikes!
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