Fucking Home Depot

The BBQ Pit
1

I love tools and gadgets. I’ve got every little backpacking and mountainbike widget there is. I’ve even got a set of tools for small electronics repair (and the fried motherboard to prove it). My basement is littered with tools I hardly ever use for lack of time, yet I guard my tool cache jealously, and would feel somewhat bereft without some of the more prize implements.

So, Home Depot should be an adult Toys-R-Us. I should be hog heaven, strolling with my cart up and down the aisles, throwing drill-bits and torque-wrenches in with gleeful abandon.

Instead every time I walk into that fucking place I come out frustrated and not a little pissed-off. Home Depot has a massive inventory; I understand that’s not an easy thing to manage. But some of the so-called Depot service does little more than wander about the piles of merchandise like slack-jawed zombies conditioned to avoid eye contact. I cannot count the number of times I’ve gone in there and meandered aimlessly through the seemingly haphazard columns of home-project supplies trying to find, say, a garden-hose adapter, or a cam lock, or a Square D circuit breaker, only to get an endless stream of apathetic shugs (if I can find anyone to speak with at all) from the useless fucknuts in orange aprons who neither know nor apparently give a steaming shit where the items I want desperate to buy from them might reside.

After maybe two hours of painstaking searching, having found (or not) my quarry, I saunter up to the two, or at-best three open registers to attempt exiting the massive warehouse and its looming frustration as quickly as possible. But there is always a line. There could be five other customers in the whole building, and still there is a line. Finally, I get ready to check out and run. But wait! There’s no bar code or SKU on the $1.99 anodized wingnut or whatever-the-fuck, and the cashier stares helplessly at it, not knowing what to do. I get interrogated about where I found the item (as if I can recall precisely after wandering like an exhausted lab-rat in the maze of shelves laden with hardware). Several people nearby are called over. They all stare at the one-inch metal thingy, heads shaking, resigned to their oblivion. Finally one gum-chewing burnout offers to go back to the shelf from whence the thingy came to read off the number.

So I pull my card of $178 worth of overpriced inventory and wait for the answer to this $1.99 conundrum, while other customers who, fortunately for them, are only there to buy fans, gas-grills, and other big-ticket items with clearly-read bar codes, sail right through.

Aftern (no joke) 15 minutes, there’s a call on the cashier’s phone. Ahh, we have the SKU#! Except, the stupid fucking dumbass dipshit TOOK THE WINGNUT WITH HIM! It’s clear across the store! WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO NOW, PAY FOR IT AND LEAVE? WHERE IS HE? We wait. It’s clear, after a while, that he’s not coming back. FUCK!

I storm off to where I thought the wingnuts were. FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, I can’t remember where the aisle is. GOD-FUCKING-DAMNIT!. And, stupid me, I ask somebody where the wingnuttamajigs are.

<shrug>

:confused:

:frowning:

:mad:

FUUUUCK!

After another 15 minutes of frantic searching, I find it. I pirate a carpenter’s pencil and write down the SKU# on a torn-off half of a label in case it’s been lost since I left my cart so tragically close to freedom at the checkout counter.

Ten minutes later, I’m unloading my purchases into my trunk, temples throbbing, fists clenching and unclenching, pretty much ready to do something attrocious to the next H.D. employee I see in my path. I shove the cart into an empty space, not wanting to do the clods the courtesy of bringing it to the cart-corral. I return home three-and-a-half hourse after leaving, another afternoon almost completely wasted in that fucking hellhole that should have been a paradise, HOME FUCKING DEPOT.

2

Maybe it’s just me, but I can never find what I’m looking for in Home Depot. The stuff seems to be “organized” along some principles that escape me utterly. A few days ago, I was looking for desiccant, the stuff that you put into someplace like a damp closet to absorb the excess moisture and get rid of the musty smell. Where would that be? It’s a tough one, because it isn’t “like” anything else. Cleaning supplies, maybe? That would make some sense, but no…

In fairness, it was actually a helpful HD employee who closed his eyes for a moment, obviously to bring up a mental image of where he’d seen the stuff, and who then led me to… wait for it… the paint department. There it was. Of course. :rolleyes:

3

That’s what you think. He was either communing with the mother ship or accessing his servos to get you the info.

4

I gotta say, if there’s one around you, check out a Loew’s.

Every one i’ve ever been to blows away any Home Despot ever.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any here in Wisconsin that I’m aware of. :frowning:

5

Think it’s bad to try to find things there? I once had a job in high school doing inventory. We had to inventory a fricking Home Depot. By counting everything in there. What a godawful job.

OK, back to the OP. I have to say that, while I can never figure out where anything is located, I always get very helpful service from the Orange Folk. I don’t know if it’s because our stores are any better or because I’m female, or what, but when I ask where something is, they’ll actually walk me through the store right to it. Finding an Orange Workerbee who is not occupied with someone else’s question is another story, of course.

I used to have a job where we had a corporate credit card at Home Depot. Whenever I had that puppy in my wallet (usually 3 days a week), I had to work hard to restrain myself from buying out the store. (Especially since the things I bought were often re-billed to a client…) I love tools and gadgets, all the way down to the lowly nail.

6

You’ve got to be kidding me. I think the only question on the application form at Lowe’s is, “Are you an anti-social slack-jawed mouth breather?”

And that’s management…the emplyees are worse.

7

I don’t like Lowe’s either. The only good thing about either one of them is that they hate each other and have occasional price wars. You can get a christmas tree for example for arount ten bucks from either one of them.

8

I have noticed this also.
And because I can never find what I’m looking for, I think I have made only one purchase.

The only reason (on the few occasions) that I have gone to HD, is because the parking lot at Menards was full, and I didn’t feel like dealing with crowds.

I guess there is a reason why everybody always goes to the Menards here.

And I’m reminded of that reason everytime I go to HD.

9

No, he was using the Force. The economy’s so bad that even Jedi Knights are reduced to retail drudgery.

10

You know, I kind of wondered why the package just sort of floated off the shelf and landed in my hands!

11

Ummm, not in MY neck of the woods. In Anchorage, they’re right across the street from each other.

I think they have the same employee pool from which to choose, because except for the color of their aprons, my exeriences in BOTH places have been almost exact duplicates of the OP’s.

I absolutely DETEST both places. I prefer Spenard Builder’s Supply a local business, smaller, slightly less merchandise, and a bit more expensive, but OHHHHH so worth it!!!

12

Ah, the joys of big-box shopping.

You can always try the local hardware store or contractor’s supply house. They generally have what you need and the supply houses will generally have better prices (although you’d best call first to make sure they’d sell to you). Service at the local places is generally the best (retired tradesmen) but the supply houses are polarized between talk your ear off and treat you like a low-volume idiot.

13

I shop at both Lowes and Home Depot.

Both have extremely poor customer service. Just a couple of weeks ago, I went to Lowes to by spreader for lawn fertalizer. I asked no less than 3 employees where I might find one. All three gave me different answers. None of them were right.

They must have a high turnover rate or something.

14

I don’t feel like digging it up right now, but I had quite a Pit thread going months ago on HD because I happen to live behind one and they spent five months last year keeping everyone on my street awake from 11pm to 3am or so with their remodeling, hammering, forklift fun, and other shenanigans. They’d knock off for a couple of hours, then start up again because the store opens early. After they repeatedly blew off phone calls and ignored letters, we had to get a couple of police officers come out because they handle community disturbances. Things finally settled down more or less, but I have vowed never to shop there again. I go to the independent hardware places when I need something now, even though they are a bit farther away.

15

I am a recent hiree at Lowe’s, summer job and all. In the store, which is right across the street from HD, there is actually a pretty low turnover rate. I’d say about 80% of the employees have been there for at least 6 years. Probably the biggest problem comes from the fact that people in other departments are usually in a hurry to go help customers in their department and the cashiers who are moving through the store don’t know absolutely everything in the store and its locations. I’m a cashier and for the most part I can either take people to the item or at least get them to the department; we can get fired for not leading the customer to the product or someone who knows for sure. My biggest problems come from the fact that we have a ridiculously high amount of different products, so its pretty much impossible to expect the cashiers to know every single item. If someone asks me where they can find something and I have no clue what they’re talking about, I’ll ask what kind of project they’re working on. That’s enough to let me at least get them to the right department. Every so often I’ll get that lovely customer who gets exasperated at the question and just repeats the item name so of course I have no clue. The more you can say the better, because then we’ll be able to at least get you into the department where the people who know every single item will find it.

I do get frustrated often. When I work at the return/service desk one of my jobs is to answer the phones. Transferring calls is always an adventure. Certain departments won’t answer their phones routinely so the calls bounce back and I have to page over and over again. Also some people won’t even answer the phone while they have a customer (even to let the person on the phone know that they’ll be with them in a second), so people tend to get irate on the phone and there’s nothing I can do short of walking down to lumber and kicking some ass with a 2x4.

Oh well, such is a summer job.

16

Gosh, in the time that it took you to write that post, I could have been through my local McCoy’s, paid up, loaded in the yard by the help (I try to tip them a bit if they help me pick lumber or open a new unit, and notice that the stuff went straight from the pile to my truck) and back on the road home. Also, while the inside goods sometimes cost a little more, it’s not always the case and the yard goods are both cheaper and better (that “#2 Select” that Homer tries to pawn off looks like #1 rejects to me), and also I’ve known most of the people at the store for years, one for a decade, and also also, the store is one company with no subsidiaries or subcontractors, so everyone is accountable up the chain of command.

Now that I’ve said that, here is how I survive at Home Depot/Lowes/WalMart With Wood/The Wooden Circle of Hell:

-First off, I shop at the Depot a lot, but I treat it like a Seven-Eleven. It’s convenient and the late hours are nice, but it won’t have everything that I want just cause I want it. Also, the quality may be off and or the prices may be high.

-Second, look for old, pissed-off men in store uniforms. A lot of times, the store will have one guy for each department who is retired from that trade. Even if they didn’t work the trade, the old farts are most likely to have grown out of their bad work ethics and will have taken the time to learn their department. To give only one example: a few months ago, I was running gas to our new dryer (in the late evening, so I had to go to the box.) I had a few questions, so I asked a zit-faced kid in windows if he could call someone from plumbing. He answered that he was a master plumber (at eighteen!), pointed to some stuff that I had been trying to avoid and told me that it was what I needed. About that time, the old guy came around the corner. In five minutes he had 1) agreed with me that the kid wasn’t worth a shit, 2) competently answered my questions and 3) walked back and forth between shelves on both sides of two aisles and found every piece that I needed.

-Third, if you can’t find an old guy, find someone who has a strong back. A lot of guys and gals get jobs at a box when they can’t get construction jobs, and they know how to work.

-Fourth, don’t mention code. This freaks out the kids, and the old guys either know what’s right, or they know what they think is right and that’s what they’re going to tell you.

-Fifth, find another checkout line. I usually check out in the tool crib, sometimes in the contractor checkout, sometimes the front manager will check you out at the self-serve thingie (I’ll use these myself when they put me on payroll), and sometimes I’ll find a checkout register in another store. I have, once, dropped almost one hundred pounds of stuff on the floor and walked out of the place when they had one casheir with ten or more orders in line.

17

Now why do you have to do stupid shit like that? You know who has to clean all of that up? ME, the worthless summer hire. Please, find a manager and bitch them out for cutting hours to the cashiers. Find the store manager and tell him that the front managers aren’t opening more registers (at lowes if there are more than 3 people in a line, the head cashiers HAVE to open new registers until the lines die). I HATE it when morons decide to make MY job tougher because of something I can’t control. Its like stiffing your waitress because your food was made poorly.

18

I will also vote Lowes. I’ve shopped at both Home Depot and Lowes and usually get the same service from Home Depot as the OP. Lowes on the other hand is usually very friendly and knowledgeable about where stuff is at least. They may not be able to tell you how to do it, but they can at least find what you need.

19

I have to say, my experience has been more like Lily’s than anyone else’s in this thread.

A few examples:

  • When I was tiling my countertop and installing a new sink and faucet, I made myself a list of the things I thought I would need, went to Home Depot and the plumbing manager walked around the entire store with me, putting the things I needed in my cart, adding things I’d forgotten and then explaining to me how to actually install some of the stuff that I’d never had to do before.

  • When I overcut the tile around the sink, the people in the tile area pointed me towards a pair of tile nippers and walked me to the back where they had a bucket full of tile pieces and demonstrated how to nip tile and then let me practice it before I went home and tried it for myself.

  • When I bought a new gas lawnmower a few months ago, the guy opened the box to show me the few simple things I was going to need to do to set it up (folding out the handle, adjusting the height, etc.), got me a gas can and showed me how to use it (it had a weird non-spill nozzle that needs to be pressed against the edge of the tank to dispense gas), assured me I didn’t need to mix the oil/gas and showed me where to put the oil and how to check it, and then…this is the most amazing part to me…when I said I would open a HD credit card to take advantage of the discount, he said “Go on over to the service desk to fill out the paperwork, and I’ll load this box up on a cart and bring it over to you.” Holy crap.

So, yeah…my HD is awesome. Sorry that the rest of you are getting boned. :smiley:

20

“May-nards is my friieeennnddd”

The last time I went to Home Depot was to purchase roofing supplies. My roofer will only use the HD nails. Luckily, the roofer gave me a detailed shopping list. I found an ex-roofer at HD and he helped me with everything.

(Of course HD did not deliver in anything that resembles what they promised. Was supposed to be in my front yard between 8am-noon, appeared at 630pm. My roof had already been torn off and it was beginning to get dark out. Calls to the manager didn’t help.)

I have never had any problems with Menards. Well, like HD, you do get a couple teenagers with grandious tool belts attempting to assist you, but otherwise I prefer them hands down.

Between Menards and my local Frattalone’s Ace Hardware, I get my DIY jones taken care of efficiently and inexpensively.