Popular Metals

Being at Vijayanagar East 161/1 means we hear the traffic all day long. Popular Metals isn’t much to look at from the outside, just a big shutter and a lot of heavy stock inside. We deal with all sorts of metal pieces, mostly steel and iron bits that people need for building things or fixing up their homes. The floor is concrete and always has a bit of grey dust on it. It’s a lot of heavy lifting, so my back usually hurts by the time I close up for the evening. We don’t have a website or anything like that. People just know to come to this part of Vijayanagar when they need something solid. I spend a lot of my time measuring things out with a worn-out tape measure and marking them with a piece of chalk. Sometimes we have to cut things to size, which makes a lot of noise, but the neighbors are used to it by now. It’s just me and a couple of guys helping with the loading. We’ve got stacks of pipes in the corner that have been there for months. It’s not a clean job, my hands are usually stained with grease or rust, but it’s honest work. We keep a ledger on the wooden desk for all the accounts. It’s a simple system that’s worked for us for years without any fuss. The rain sometimes gets under the door, but we just sweep it out.