I Don't Think She Can Do It
- Mark Lipton
- May 26
- 3 min read
Updated: May 28
On the front pages of the national news last week was a tank fire in California, which exposed the Garden Grove area to the chemical contents of that tank. Which at the time of that fire was 6,000 gallons of the hazardous monomer Methyl Methacrylate.
In response to that risk of exposure, the government of California mobilized three state and one federal agency and installed 24 stationary air monitoring stations over the nine-square miles around the fire. To track every fugitive gram of MMA, each molecule a risk for cancer, autoimmune disease or neurological mutation grave enough to justify the response.
And the response of California’s bar, which in just days sprang into action.
But in Southwest Pennsylvania Sherwin-Williams dumps MMA with impunity, far more over eight years of illegal operations than was in the tank in Garden Grove at the time the fire erupted. A failure of the Pennsylvania’s government which seems stark in comparison to California’s response, which included evacuating more than 50,000 and deploying another 1,000, in an effort to contain the poison.
A failure Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection will one day have to answer for.
On my podcast this week I reported the Q1 results of Pittsburgh Paint’s stores division, even complimenting CEO Brian Carson for making a liar out of me by not closing any stores, after I had forecast that he would. It turns out though that I was too fast with my self-reproach because in the days after that podcast dropped I heard from sources who shared that Pittsburgh had closed at least four stores in the Northeast region, from Boston to the Hudson Valley. From my understanding, the employees affected were laid off, though I have not made contact with any of them to confirm.
The stores were all low-performing with expiring leases, the low-hanging fruit on Pittsburgh’s tree, which I suspect will continue to be pruned. It’s my understanding that as many as a third of all Pittsburgh stores may be unprofitable, making lease expiration an easy driver of attrition. A strategy likely employed in other regions, which if you know anything about you can share with me here.
Sorry and Atta Boy Dan
On LinkedIn last week a defense (ish) of Sherwin-Williams penned by a former employee appeared on one of my threads, reminding me that not everyone agrees that #SherwinSucks. And that there is more to that company than a collection of bad deeds, a point well-made with which I agree, which may get lost in my coverage of late. But also in their post was a sentiment I often suffer, one I admit causes me ire as it offends my inherent bias towards objectivity.
Monty, that means I try to be fair. And that it hurts my feelings when people think I’m not.
A month ago, I received a message from an employee at Benjamin Moore, alleging illegality on the part of that firm. Nothing on the order of magnitude of the crimes Sherwin commits against its customers, employees, the government or the planet, nonetheless the claim was credible enough to warrant further investigation. Which cleared up the misunderstanding, or you would have read about it here.
It’s only the breadth and depravity of Sherwin’s crimes which urges my obsession to expose them, a quest I intend to continue until I run out of crimes to write about. Making it easy for CEO Heidi Petz to keep her name out of this blog if she wants to.
But I don’t think she can do it.
