home depot

[Percival P. Cassidy]

On 12/10/05 06:30 pm HeyBub tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

Yes, they did say that the working week would be reduced.

There's another of those dangerous averages: Perhaps only 5% of Americans are unemployed, but each of the UNemployed (as distinct from the UNDERemployed, who I assume are not included in your 5% figure) is

100% unemployed -- no wage, perhaps no decent health care, and unemployment benefits (if any -- and for how long?) that leave people below the poverty line.

Perce

[clifto]

9 feet, 10-1/8 inches and the heck with it.

[mm]

I thought that stood for "jockey of disks".

They used to give LLB in the US too, and I know from what they told me when I sojourned in law school that they changed it to JD, maybe in the 60's**, so give it the sound of the same status as MD or PhD..

**I think JD may go back much longer in some schools, and LLB might have lasted longer in others. Not sure.

I didn't know that a British doctor was a MBBS.

My father was a DDS, a Doctor of Dental Surgery, I guess because he graduated from the Department of Dental Surgery of the University of Pittsburgh in 1915. I think it took him 3 years, which I believe was (much?) more training than many others got who practiced dentistry. (I still have his "Opium, Coca Leaves, Marihuana, etc." permit.)

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let me know if you have posted also.

[Dan_Musicant]

: :SeaKan wrote: :> i work at an hd. just an associate. what are your biggest pet peeves about :> hd? anything in particular? : :when I went there, the manager followed me out of the store, walked me :to the car and asked me was there anything else he could help me with. : :what can I say : :Lowes is alright, it all depends on which one you're at (mostly) : :I think Lowes has been beat down by the public. (sorta) : :numbnutz coming in asking where the hammers are. : :Do you folk have a store map, or does that defeat the compulsive :shopper.

Store map? Where do you get those? For HD? Lowes? I don't know of any stores that have store maps except maybe the large department stores like Sears.

I've never been in a Lowes. The closest one is around 15-20 miles from me.

If a manager followed me out of a store all the way to my car I'd be afraid he'd have me pegged for a shoplifter.

[Dan_Musicant]

: :They carry about 500,000 items but don't have what you need. I'm fortunate :to have a local hardware store that carries few items, but seems to always :have what I need for a repair. :

I don't always think of it, but it's true. The Truevalue hardware store around 1/2 mile from me often has the item and often it's priced very competitively. Also, it's not only way faster to get there, it's way faster to get in and out of the store. Also, the guys who work there are very quick to help you and they usually know their merchandise.

[Calvin Henry-Cotnam]

LOL!

I live in Canada -- also known as the world leader in half-assed switch to metric!

Our building codes are all metric now, but most trades work in imperial sizes (16" O/C, 4' width sheets, etc). Home Depot sells cut wire by the metre, but cut chain is by the foot. Plywood comes in 4'x8' sheets, but the thicknesses are in millimetres (though, they tend to label them in inches, but 3/4" is now 23/32" since that is closer to the 18 mm that it really is!).

Road signs are all metric, but the railroads use miles and miles-per-hour. Weather forcasts primarilly give Celcius temperatures, but often mention Farenheit. Baking instructions primarilly give Farenheit temperatures, but sometimes mention Celcuis.

[Calvin Henry-Cotnam]

I sort of agree with this - it looks bad for the company when an associate starts a sentence with "I think...".

I understand that every employee will not know where everything is in the store, especially if they are fairly new. A more positive and helpful reply would be, "I am not familiar with the department where that is, but let me take you to someone who is..." I know I will have a better chance at getting the information from the right person, and I just may see them sooner than if I sought them out myself and had to wait for others asking their questions.

I'm not so sure that being taken on a walk is such a bad thing. Granted I don't want the walk to start with "I think...", but the associate going with me is showing that he/she stands by the answer they are giving me. Meaning, they are not simply pointing me to another aisle in the hopes that I will leave them alone. If they go along and it ends up being a store tour because they are not so sure of where things are, they have to deal with me (and possibly my wrath!).

[Calvin Henry-Cotnam]

Sometimes this "I couldn't care less" attitude works to the customer's benefit. I was once with someone who was purchasing about 50' of 10/3 cable for a clothes dryer. The person cutting it must have wrote the SKU code for 18/3 speaker wire or something that is about one-tenth the price.

When the cashier entered it and it came up for something like eight bucks, we questioned it and she replied, "Oh well, that's what it says".

[Calvin Henry-Cotnam]

Half way through reading these posts, I am struck by the thought that most are American. What is amazing about this is that Canadian retailers have Americans beat when it comes to lousy service.

Almost every time I have been in an American store (or restaurant, but let's not open that can of worms!) the people working in the store are very noticably better at making the effort to make sure you have the help you need. I'm not saying they are perfect, just that they are so much better at doing it that it is very noticable.

By all means, keep complaining when it is deserved - it is the only way good service can get better. But if you really want to see lousy service raised to an art form, come to Canada and visit just about any big box retailer.

[Calvin Henry-Cotnam]

I perfer the self-serve checkouts. It would piss me off, though, if they were the only thing available.

Some people are great at royally screwing up the flow and must have regular checkouts to go to so they can get out of my way!

[Calvin Henry-Cotnam]

The time I save is worth more than any discount that they can offer!

[CJT]

I was surprised to find out this a.m. that apparently neither HD nor Lowe's (at least the ones I visited) carry reamers. The closest they could come was a conical grinding head for a Dremel tool.

[louie]

Ditto those two, but add to that the problem of $!#$^!%!@#^!@#! morons pawing through the shelves like friggin monkeys and leaving parts in the wrong boxes, on the floor, empty boxes... Plumbing is one of the worst isles in almost every HD I've been in. It's not exactly the store's fault, but maybe a better staffed plumbing dept would help stupid people find things before they make a mess of things, and thus make it harder for the next person to find what they need.

Oh yeah, in regards to the "stuff" clogging the isles... does anyone really buy that crap that gets put on display or is is just put out there as a Darwin-ish test to allow the better cart-drivers to get to the checkout line more quickly?

[louie]

almost forgot: poor quality lumber. I ALWAYS have pick through the

2x4's to find decent ones, this is not the case with places like 84 Lumber.

[Mark Lloyd]

A Lowe's opened here this July. They were giving out store maps then.

I just went back to check if they still had any LED holiday lights. They still has some, especially the yellow ones (that don't look as bright as the other colors). The "security" device beeped and I ignored it.

[Chris Lewis]

According to Calvin Henry-Cotnam :

Every place has its exceptions... ;-)

The HD near us (Ottawa west) has _extremely_ good service. So good that I wonder whether the guys down there are shopping at a completely different chain ;-)

[Edwin Pawlowski]

If you save time. I tried them twice, two different stores because I thought I'd save time. In both cases, an item would not scan properly and I ended up having the clerk watching them fix things up. PITA. Our local K Mart took them out after 3 months.

[Doug Kanter]

Snap-On makes a nice one, in case you can't find one locally. I've had a couple of them for years. They seem to be indestructable.

[CJT]

Thanks, but I already found one at Sears.

[Calvin Henry-Cotnam]

My peeve with the self serve checkouts are the people who think there is one line per station. Most stores that I have seen have them in pairs or sometimes fours and I will queue up for the group with the intent of using the next one available, and I let anyone coming after me that is my intent when it is clear they seem to be scoping out one in particular to wait for.

One thing that is a Home Depot peeve with these checkouts: never use them if you have any "bulk" items like screws/fasteners that you bag yourself and write down the sku number. These have to be entered by the clerk, and slows down the process making it slower than using a regular checkout.

Grocery stores I have seen with self-serve checkouts let you do this yourself, but as one HD associate put it, "they don't have contractors entering the code for galvanized when they are purchasing stainless".