The dissatisfied customer is clearly one of the many islanders who depends on the summer tourists for his livelihood, and, like many such people, he refers to his clients in mildly derogatory terms ('the summer ginks'). His supply chain has been disrupted ('You haven't got one thing on here I ordered. Not a beach umbrella, not a sun lounger, no beach balls.') and the prospect of a financially successful season is under threat ('This stuff ain't going to help me in August.'). The litany of beach accessories - completely innocent in itself - acts as a kind of grim counterpoint given the knowledge that both Brody and the audience possess in much the same way that a neighbour's innocent repetition of the word knife plays on the murderess's guilt in Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929).
The customer's last but incomplete line ('If I can't get service from you, I'll go and get service from -') is later echoed in Larry Vaughn's observation of economic competition ('If the people can't swim here, they'll be glad to swim at the beaches of Cape Cod, the Hamptons, Long Island.'). The movie's pop critique of capitalism appealed to Fidel Castro, who praised the film for its Marxist sympathies in conversation with Francis Ford Coppola.
The brief scene in the hardware store ends with another instance of Brody's clumsiness, cutting to the next scene as a jar of paint brushes crashes onto the shelf.
