Home Depot: Ask 3 People, Get 3 Different Answers

[hrhofmann]

Except for the one in a thousand who show up smelling of alcohol and who are grounded by other flight crew members.

[gpsman]

Exactly. Clerks are clerks. What do you expect for 8 bucks per hour?

If you're asking "construction" questions of a clerk (or "associate"), you probably shouldn't be doing your own work. -----

- gpsman

[George]

Some folks actually believe all of the marketing propaganda and expect the big box to be a place where the staff is happy and smiling and oh so knowledgable. Sad part is it works and thats why stores spend millions to tell everyone how good they are.

[DerbyDad03]

Except that nothing is absolute.

I (and others, e.g. benick) occasionally do find an big box employee that knows what he is talking about.

I spoke to a HD flooring guy who came up with the perfect solution for a transition issue I had a few years ago. Turns out he retired from a local flooring store after many years and was now working "just for spending cash".

I spoke to a grizzly old guy in plumbing who spoke Shark Bite and PEX fluently. He saved me half the cost of a (small) project by pointing out the hidden gems on the bottom shelf that he says "no one ever notices."

I had a friend that was a licensed contractor who took a PT job at HD on winter weekends just for the extra, basically stress-free cash. He was a licensed plumber and worked the plumbing aisle. Lucky was the customer who asked him a question because they were going to get the right answer.

In the case that started this thread the very first person I asked my insulation question of gave me the correct answer for the correct reasons, as verified at the manufacturer's site.

The only reason the "3 different answers" issue even came up is because I did a little test. When the "senior" guy in the insulation aisle asked me if I needed help I decided to see what he would say if asked the same question. I'm not so naive to think that they only give orange (or red) vests to highly skilled craftsmen. I also have enough knowledge and experience to be able to judge whether an answer makes sense or not. So I told the guy what I was doing, got the opposite answer than from the first guy, told him so, and left without making a purchase.

In a perfect world the second guy would now go off and find out who was right and either learn something in the process or go teach the other guy so that they would both be able to answer the question correctly next time. Do I expect that to happen? Who knows? Maybe I was forceful enough in my response and maybe the guy has enough pride (or arrogance) to either (1) want to know the correct answer or (2) want to prove to the first guy that he was right.

[larry moe 'n curly]

The rule with Home Depot is, the less the person smiles mindlessly, the more he or she knows.

I used to live near a Lowe's and a Home Depot, and the people at the HD were a lot better and didn't give out gross misinformation, like saying type N mortar was stronger than type M or S. OTOH when I went to Ace Hardware for some mortar, they not only knew the types but also the actual PSI ratings.

[George]

Sure, accidents happen.