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Like most guys, I am a sucker for a hardware store. Especially ones with the size and selection of a Home Depot. Just like their ads that were running prior to Father’s Day, at times I feel like a kid as I wander around checking out all of the tools and gadgets.
A few years back when Home Depot opened a store within a couple of miles of my house I was elated. I was drooling at the possibility of having easy access to one of these Disneyland’s for Dads a stone throw away. When it opened I was absolutely giddy at the thought of the many hours I would be spending there figuring out the lay of the land.
I even wrote an article chronicling the days after it opened, waxing poetic about those magical first days of our relationship. And it was just that, magical. All was good for many moons as we worked together hand in hand. As Forrest Gump put it “We went together just like peas and carrots”.
Unfortunately, as with many relationships, we began to have some problems as the years ticked by. Maybe it was because we were spending too much time together. Or maybe one of us started to take the other for granted. Who knows why relationships go bad, but sometimes they do.
I began spotting problems a few months ago when my wife, Stacey, was in the midst of one of her “Trading Spaces” modes. We had some issues with the people in the paint department who had tried to read my wife’s mind as far as paint colors go.
The guy in the paint department was successful in talking her out of her original choice, which was a mistake on his part, because it would never stick. She came home so upset that I had to go back and set things straight with this amateur psychic. I explained to him that I had spent the last 20 years trying to read my wife’s mind and it couldn’t be done.
In the months that followed, I started noticing little things that were leading me to believe that something was amiss. Nothing concrete, but enough for me to become suspicious that the attention of my beloved Depot was not fully on me.
The Home Depot has always touted the fact that their employees were some of the most knowledgeable in the industry. This appeared to be true for quite some time when I needed help pertaining to areas where I lacked any expertise. Which to be honest, in the hardware world, is quite a few. Turn me loose in the gardening department and I can dance with the best of them.
Either they have had some serious cutbacks in recent months in their training programs or their trainers are not getting their message through. Every time I have gone into any Home Depot over the last couple of months and have been forced to ask for help it has been an absolute joke. I may not know anything about what I am trying to find, but I do know when what is being told to me is wrong.
When I am asking somebody in the tool department about a ¼” drill bit that I can use on a cinder block or concrete wall I am assuming that he will know which one I will need. When the guy marches over to the selection of drill bits displayed and with confidence pulls down the size I was asking for you would think it would be the right type of drill bit, right? Well silly me, so did I.
He must have misunderstood when I used the terms cinder block or concrete wall because he gave me a drill bit that was to be used on wood. Wood, cinder block, what’s the difference, same thing right? No dumbass they’re not, and there is a lot of difference. At least this time I didn’t discover the error after I got home, I noticed it after I was halfway through checking out. When I went back to find the guy, I was told he was on a break. I guess he was tired from lifting that heavy drill bit.
The same sort of thing keeps happening even in a simple request like the one that we all ask, “Where can I find it?” I have been sent on some wild goose chases in my life but none like the ones I have been on in the Depot recently. Memo to the management of Home Depot: if you can’t train your employees about the products you have, at least train them as to where they are. It would be very helpful to us poor saps that are looking to buy something.
If you can’t teach them where things are, at least teach them to say one of these two things, “I don’t know” or “I don’t know, let me find somebody for you that does”. That would be far more useful then “It’s on aisle five” and when you arrive there you’re surrounded by toilet seats instead of the power tools that you were looking for. Quit wasting our damn time!
Aside from these irritations, what is the most frustrating is when you are in the midst of a project, where you need them to come through for you, and they let you down. Which is what happened last weekend and when I knew that our relationship was in serious trouble. It was like finding lipstick on the collar of your significant other or having them call you by another man’s name.
Maybe it was because there was a full moon or maybe the planets were not in alignment, but it was one of those days where nothing was going right. The little project that I was doing required the simplest of tasks in the Depot World, cutting a piece of plywood. This was something that I had them do numerous times in the past and damn me for assuming that this would be easy. Well you know the old adage about assuming. Aside from feeling pissed off, I did feel like an ass.
The breakdown began at my local Depot, when after not finding anyone competent to answer any of my questions in the lumber section, I made a decision on my own and picked a piece of plywood. Whether it was the right piece or not we will never know, but I schlepped the thing all the way back to the end of the store to discover that the saw was not working that day. Oh I forgot to mention that this was happening on a day where the temperature was over 100 degrees in a store without air conditioning. Oh yeah, I was pleased as punch.
So now I had to make my way to the next closest Depot, well the next closest as opposed to Alhambra or Pico Rivera, both of which I would rather drink sulfuric acid than drive through. So Monrovia it was and off I went hoping that the saw malfunction was not chain wide.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the saw was working in Monrovia. Sadly the person managing that department was perhaps the most incompetent employee that could have been in that department. I may have my standards way too high, but if you are going to be cutting any type of wood I think the first thing that you would need to master is how to use a tape measure.
If ever there was an example of the flawed training program in the Home Depot, Chris was it. He couldn’t measure a piece of wood accurately if it was marked on the wood itself.
As I watched him cut some two by fours for the people ahead of me I was leery of his prowess, or lack of it, with a measuring device. When my time rolled around I was nervous, but given the time and the distance I had traveled, I was willing to roll the dice. Big mistake, given that my piece of plywood needed to be cut to two precise dimensions instead of just one.
After giving him the dimensions that I needed the look in his eyes was as though I was speaking Lebanese. I smelt fear and saw it in his face. As he fumbled for his tape measure I knew that this wasn’t going to turn out well. When he attempted to mark the measurements with a barely working Bic pen I knew I was in big trouble.
He gave it a shot and blew it, what a shock. So back I went to retrieve another piece of plywood and drag it to the back of the store. I did mention that it was over 100 degrees didn’t I? This time I measured it myself and hoped that his limited ability was restricted to the tape measure and didn’t extend to the saw. Sadly, that was not the case. I, being the trusting soul that I am, only checked the measurement of two sides of each piece of plywood. If there were four sides that were consistent I couldn’t find them and this was, of course, after I got home.
Before leaving Chris I did notice he had cut through the bar code on the plywood and I asked him if I would need it in order to check out. He said that if there was a problem to tell the checker to page Chris in lumber and he would supply the needed information.
As I had thought, when I attempted to check out, it was an exercise in futility. Chris’ reputation had preceded him. When I attempted to pass along the valuable information he had given me the checker just laughed and said, “Yeah, like I am going to call Chris”. After all of her attempts to find the bar code and price failed, what did she do? Well, page Chris of course.
After 5 pages for Chris to call her, a member of the lumber department walked up, instead of calling, and told her Chris was on a break. Well the one thing that became apparent was that when you work at Home Depot there is no lack of breaks. Now dripping with sweat, and spending over 30 minutes trying to check out, one thing was crystal clear. The honeymoon was over.
I wonder how far it is to the nearest OSH?
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