Home Depot vs. "Real <whatever> store"

[cm]

This is a little off topic. One time I was servicing the staple gun display at a Las Vegas HD and a customer walked up with a jammed staple gun. An employee walked up and listened to the customers problem and then took the gun and pointed it at his face while pulling the trigger to see why it was jammed. He did this several times against my pleas to stop. Dumb Ass

cm

re: I&#39;m not missing work time to get my weekend project materials.

But it&#39;s OK with you if mom and pop give up their evenings and weekends to stay open for you.

re: They are refusing to change with the times and are being left behind

There&#39;s a big difference between "refusing" to change and being able to afford staffing for evenings and weekends, along with the benefits and other costs of doing business.

re: I&#39;m tired of feeling stupid trying to explain what I want and being laughed at by contractors and yard help.

That sounds like a personal problem...or perhaps a problem with the places you shop.

Personally, I&#39;d rather deal with contractors who know their business than the staff at the borgs who were flipping hamburgers or let go from their accounting job yesterday. I spend more time explaining how things work to them so they can figure out if they carry what I need. Many times I find it on my own &#39;cuz they don&#39;t know what they carry or

- worse yet - don&#39;t know *why* they carry it.

It&#39;s at the "real" stores where I can toss out a general idea and get suggestions from them on how to get it done - and I don&#39;t feel stupid, just like I wouldn&#39;t expect them to feel stupid if they ask me for advice related to my line of work.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

But sometimes it&#39;s the same "China crap" (with a famous US brand name on it) as the "real store" across town is selling for twice the price.

Perce

[DerbyDad03]

I&#39;m not sure if I&#39;m following your logic correctly - not that I&#39;m disagreeing it - but I&#39;m not sure that it fits the borg situation.

Normal Use of Middleman Mechanism:

1 - ACME Roofing puts 500,000 bundles of shingles on pallets and ships them to MRW Inc. (MiddleMan Roofing Wholesalers) 2 - MRW ships 1000 bundles to each of 500 Home Depot locations

Alternative Use of Middleman Mechanism:

1 - ACME Roofing puts 500,000 bundles of shingles on pallets and ships them to MRW Inc. (MiddleMan Roofing Wholesalers) 2 - MRW ships an average of 50,000 bundles to each of 10 Home Depot Regional warehouses 3 - Each Home Depot warehouse ships an average of 1000 bundles to each of 50 Home Depot locations

Elimination of Middleman Mechanism:

1 - ACME Roofing puts 500,000 bundles of shingles on pallets and ships them to 1 national Home Depot warehouse 2 - That warehouse ships an average of 50,000 bundles to each of 10 Home Depot Regional warehouses 3 - Each Home Depot regional warehouse ships an average of 1000 bundles to each of 50 Home Depot locations

In other words, Home Depot is acting as it&#39;s own middleman. With economies of scale, this can be more cost effective than using MRW Inc. It even gives Home Depot the opportunity to be the middleman for other stores. I&#39;m not saying they are doing this, but the opportunity exists.

It&#39;s similiar to what my School District is planning to do with for transportation services next year. We currently contract with XYZ Transportation for bus services. We currently cover all costs of XZY to provide those services (gas, maintenance, storage, salaries, etc.) plus they make a profit. Starting next year, our school district will puchase our own busses, build our own depot and provide transportation services "in-house". We&#39;re paying XYZ for everything anyway, *plus* paying XYZ&#39;s profit, so by doing it ourselves, we save the cost of the profit. In addition, we have an agreement in principal with 2 smaller school districts in our area to provide transportation services for them - at cost plus a smaller profit than they are currently paying their provider. They save money, we offset some of our costs as well as control the use of the services without having to deal with XYZ every time a one-off transportation need arises.

Similiarly, Home Depot can switch suppliers or product lines without having to go through MRW. They can fire ACME or increase their shipments or whatever much more efficiently without MRW in the middle.

[benick]

Yes I do expect mom and pop to HIRE help and be open more than 7 to 5 M-F and 8-12 on Sat. if they want my money. I like to work 7-3:30 M-F but some drywall jobs require that I work late and some weekends. Should I require my customer to accomodate my personal life? Perhaps my customer should just close down his business so I can work when I want instead of doing it and making the mess the evening or on the weekend and having it cleaned up and ready for him to open in the AM ? I wouldn&#39;t be in business long if I did that and if mom and pop don&#39;t change they won&#39;t be either...The mom and pops hire the same minimum wage idiots to staff their stores around here , not contractors as you implied...

[mkirsch1]

Bull$hit. There are plenty of us who will drive the extra mile, except when we get there, they&#39;re only open from 8AM to 5PM Monday through Friday. I happen to work Monday through Friday from 7AM to around 6PM or so... Now I have to take a vacation day just to go to the mom & pop hardware for a 2x4 or a piece of wire?

Oh they&#39;re open on Saturdays too... from 9AM til noon. Except when I get there I get snarled at by the angry old man that runs the place, or I stand at an empty service counter for an hour and a half while the old lady, in plain sight, does her crossword puzzle, or I get told how stupid I am, or I buck the crowd of people who also work on weekdays.

Home Depot and Lowes are open from 7AM until 9PM EVERY DAY. I can get in, get what I need, and get out without being snarled at, berated, trampled, or ignored.

[salty]

There are several HD&#39;s within 30 minutes of where I live. I find they are all quite different. They all seem to have different product mixes. They stores are all organized differently and the quality of help differs as well.

I think HD must give the local store managers quite a bit of lattitude. My only complaint is that The stores all have somewhat individual layouts, so I have trouble locating what I want in different stores. It would be a big help if they standardized that a little more. There is enough walking involved in a trip to HD without having to do a lot of reconnaissance just to figure out where they stashed some item. An example would be one store keeps 1/4 inch supply lines in the section with the faucets they would be used with, and another puts them halfway across the store in the general plumbing section. Neither is wrong, but they should all pick one "filing system" and stick with it.

[mkirsch1]

If they want to be a profitable business, they need to do what it takes. By only being open during "business hours" they are FORCING a lot of people to shop elsewhere even if they don&#39;t want to.

There&#39;s a difference in cost between being open 8AM to 5PM vs. being open from 10AM to 7PM?

What staffing is there to afford? Mom and Pop work for free.

The condescending attitude of the employees at mom & pop stores is pretty widespread. Of course you know the lingo, can talk shop with the good ol&#39; boys, and spend lots and lots of money at your favorite mom & pop, so you&#39;ve never experienced it. You don&#39;t get treated the same when you come in for a faucet washer or a can of spray paint as you do if you come in for a truckload of lumber. I&#39;m not asking for a foot massage, just a little civility. I don&#39;t care if you think I&#39;m a waste of your time, but keep it to yourself. Smile, ring me up, and say "thank you." Keep the sneering and grumbling to yourself.

Me too, but I&#39;m not a contractor or a good ol&#39; boy, so the mom & pop shops give me little or no consideration. At least the people at HD and Lowes TRY to help.

I don&#39;t feel stupid. I&#39;m MADE to feel stupid when I&#39;m told that what I want to do is stupid. I&#39;m MADE to feel stupid when I get the dirty looks and aggrivated sneers.

[willshak]

Really? Do they get their living expenses and profit from welfare or something? No wonder they are going out of business.

[DerbyDad03]

.

you

re: "The mom and pops hire the same minimum wage idiots to staff their stores around here, not contractors as you implied"

Hey, don&#39;t throw that back at me. It was you who said "I&#39;m tired of feeling stupid trying to explain what I want and being laughed at by contractors and yard help"

The contractors I referred to are those that also *shop* at the "real" stores and who often offer advice when they overhear a question - or who I might ask directly. If they&#39;re laughing at me, they&#39;re doing behind my back, but I don&#39;t care &#39;cuz I already have my answer.

You&#39;re also tired of being laughed at by the "yard help". I guess they would be "the same minimum wage idiots" that the borgs hire. So I guess that means they the borg staff is laughing at you also.

[HeyBub]

Sounds good, but you&#39;re doomed.

In almost every case where a government service has been contracted to private enterprise, the service improves or the cost goes down or both. In almost every case where a private service has been assumed by a governmental agency, the cost goes up or the service deteriorates or both.

Have you considered:

1. The illegal immigrant bus drivers of the private company work cheaply. Your bus drivers will be eligible for membership in the Teamsters and, if you don&#39;t pay them CEO wages, they can shut down your school system.

1. Remember the picture of the 500 school busses under water in New Orleans? You didn&#39;t see any Greyhound busses in a similar predicament. It&#39;s the tragedy of the commons writ large.

2. Some driver gets pissed at the unruly kids and goes all stabby on the rowdies. The parents can&#39;t recover damages from the school district - heck, the school district probably doesn&#39;t even have liability insurance!

There will be unanticipated expenses. For example, no one in your school system has any experience rebuilding carburetors, mapping routes, negotiating fuel contracts, training drivers, or even washing the vehicles, let alone maintaining the equipment, securing permits, publishing guidelines, establishing maintenance rituals, recruiting the skills, etc., necessary to do all these things.

In MBA class 101, the first thing one learns is to trade a variable expense for a fixed one - even if the fixed expense is seemingly somewhat higher. Management strives for this because the fixed expense is a known expense. What you&#39;re about is the reverse: trading a fixed expense, that is, a single check taking ten minutes of an accounts payables clerk&#39;s time, for a multitude of imponderable, unknown, and potentially ruinous costs.

I hope it turns out differently for you, but I predict disaster. If I were the superintendent, I&#39;d have an iron-clad contract, written on a page from the Bible -- because of the old refrain:

I don&#39;t own this railroad, I don&#39;t ring the bell, But let the train jump the tracks, And see who catches hell!

[mkirsch1]

:

Mom and Pop own the Mom and Pop business, Einstein. They don&#39;t draw a salary or pay themselves hourly wages. Profit from the store pays their living expenses.

Because they don&#39;t draw a salary or pay themselves hourly wages, it doesn&#39;t cost them a bit more to "staff" the store until 7PM as it does to "staff" it only until 5PM.

The local Mom & Pop appliance store doesn&#39;t seem to have a problem being open until 8:30PM on weeknights or until 6PM on Saturdays... I needed a new clothes dryer because the 25-year-old one in my house blew up Sunday night. It was great walking in there at 8PM, picking out a dryer, and supporting a local business. The sales staff is a little "old school" and dry on personality, but they didn&#39;t look down their noses at me or give me crap for showing up so close to closing time or call me stupid for choosing the wrong dryer. It&#39;s a rare case of a local business doing the right things to stay competitive, and it&#39;s working for them.

[George]

And hopefully by the time the person gets their MBA and gets a real job they will realize there are lots of profitable companies that know when it makes sense to not do that.

[DerbyDad03]

Wow! Based on this post and your earlier one, you must have some pretty crappy "mom and pop" stores in your area. I wouldn&#39;t shop there either if they treated me like you make it sound.

Lucky for me, and many others in my area, we get treated with respect and we get help from knowledgeable staff. That must be why these stores are still in business, even with their limited hours. That must be why the same store names keep coming up when people ask "Where do you get your plumbing/electrical/whatever supplies?"

Here&#39;s a perfect example: I just ordered a part from a local appliance parts store for my washer. I&#39;ll keep going back to them every time because of the way I, a DIY homeowner, not an appliance repair business, get treated. A few weeks ago I troubleshot my dryer and stopped in to order the part I thought I needed. The woman behind the counter asked me (nicely) why I thought it was that part. When I described the symptoms, she suggested a different - and cheaper - part which was more likely the cause. Turns out she was right. I guess in your part of town I would have been laughed at, sneered at, and probably sold the wrong part so I would have to go back and buy more. Of course, I had to pick the part up before 5 on a weekday.

BTW =96 this is the same store that suggested I buy a sheet of Microwave waveguide cover material instead of the single piece cover sold by part number for my specific oven. That has saved me both time and money.

When I went to real window store to buy windows, the installation process was explained to me in detail, with no laughter or sneers. The guy even suggested that I install the first window during his work hours so I could call him if I had any questions. "Once you do one, you&#39;ll sail through the rest." Guess who I&#39;m going back to when I replace my front door in the spring?

Consider this: Maybe what you want to do *is* stupid, or maybe you&#39;re just too sensitive. Why would anyone give you dirty looks and aggravated sneers when you are in their place of business to spend money? Where I live, they offer suggestions meant to help so that you&#39;ll come back and spend more money with them. I don=92t live my life thinking that I know all the answers and I don=92t mind asking for help when I need it.

Regardless of whether it&#39;s you or your location that causes you to get the laughs and sneers, if you&#39;re ever up in my neck of the woods I&#39;ll take you to some locally owned businesses where they treat their customers with respect and are willing to help you complete your projects - because they truly care if you come back, not like the borgs where volume is all that matters.

Gotta go now - I need to call the parts counter at a mom and pop lighting store to see if they carry a twin-breaker to fit my panel. I seriously doubt that they&#39;ll laugh at me.

[KLS]

You must not live in the city of Rochester (based on your email addy), where this is not the norm in my experience. The hardware stores I frequent have full Saturday hours, and several are open Sundays from

9-3. Many of the serious contractor places are open at 7 am weekdays, so if you delayed the start of your work day by an hour, you could get a lot accomplished in terms of shopping for your project needs.

[willshak]

Well, Hawkins, is that working for free?

[DerbyDad03]

I&#39;m glad you said in *almost* every case. Read on....

We&#39;re way off topic here, but the current drivers are not illegal immigrants - most are already teamsters and the salaries were figured into the cost projections.

We don&#39;t get floods up in western NY

You can&#39;t count on the "private enterprise drivers" to be any better.

Earlier this year, on the very first day of school, a bus broke down. The driver pulled over onto the shoulder of busy highway - the area between the entrance ramp and the right lane - and called his dispatcher. The company sent a replacement bus who pulled up behind the other bus on the shoulder of the highway, and with 2 drivers and 1 other adult, began walking the 50 or so 1st and 2nd graders from bus to bus. Cars were going by on both sides of the buses as the line of kids walked down the shoulder. The school was never notified and they had no police supervision. No one knew about it until some kids mentioned "walking on the highway" to their parents that night.

I wonder what goes on in the district&#39;s maintenance building next to where the district&#39;s trucks and grounds maintenance equipment is stored. That heavy-duty tow truck and hydraulic lift in the big garage must be for something other than our snow plows, tractors, graders and other heavy equipment. Besides, why do you assume these items are examples of "unanticipated expenses"? Do you think that these items were simply ignored during the planning process? Do you really expect that the district is going to buy a fleet of buses and then say "Oh sh*t! They need gas? How come nobody mentioned that before? Here, use my Mobil SpeedPass, but just this once. Please give them some credit.

No argument, but the plan is modeled after another school district who did the same thing a while back. (I heard a rep from that school district give a presentation about the sucess of the program at a planning meeting . I don&#39;t recall the out-of-state district&#39;s name, but I could get it if a citation is needed).

The main problem here is that the district is currently paying a higher and higher "fixed cost" for lower and lower service. There have been other safety related issues than the example I gave above as well as breakdowns, delays and personnel issues.

I hope you&#39;re wrong, but I respect your point of view. I&#39;ll let you know in a few years.

[DerbyDad03]

Please, if you are going to take part in a discussion, at least use some reasonable examples.

"I stand at an empty service counter for an hour and a half while the old lady, in plain sight, does her crossword puzzle"

"I get told how stupid I am"

I get "...snarled at, berated, trampled, or ignored."

First off, I don&#39;t know you, but I doubt you ever stood at an empty counter for an hour and a half while some old lady did a crossword puzzle.

Second, I doubt anyone told you how "stupid" you were, berated you or trampled you. Getting snarled at or ignored may have happened, but that can certainly happened at the borgs also - especially the ignored part.

But wait - If you really did stand at an empty counter for and hour and half while some old lady did a crossword puzzle, then perhaps you deserved whatever you got. I don&#39;t know, I wasn&#39;t there, I&#39;m just saying...

[Percival P. Cassidy]

For decades most state governments in Australia -- no matter what their political "complexion" -- ran enterprises that competed with private enterprises: e.g., banks and insurance companies. The govt. enterprises, not needing to make a profit, kept the private enterprises from being too greedy; the private enterprises, possibly having a less burdensome administrative structure, kept the govt. enterprises from being too inefficient.

In one particular area, motor vehicle insurance in Queensland, the private companies gave up writing policies for the mandatory death or bodily injury insurance because they could not compete with the State Government Insurance Office&#39;s rates.

Again, when it came to construction projects, govt. departments figured out what it would cost them to employ people directly to do the job, then called for bids with the provision that no bid might be accepted at all, if they figured that they could do it for less themselves than the lowest-bidding private contractor.

So you would be in favor of buying extended warranties/service contracts/"performance guarantees" for cars and household appliances?

Perce

[benick]

Wow! Based on this post and your earlier one, you must have some pretty crappy "mom and pop" stores in your area. I wouldn&#39;t shop there either if they treated me like you make it sound.

Lucky for me, and many others in my area, we get treated with respect and we get help from knowledgeable staff. That must be why these stores are still in business, even with their limited hours. That must be why the same store names keep coming up when people ask "Where do you get your plumbing/electrical/whatever supplies?"

Here&#39;s a perfect example: I just ordered a part from a local appliance parts store for my washer. I&#39;ll keep going back to them every time because of the way I, a DIY homeowner, not an appliance repair business, get treated. A few weeks ago I troubleshot my dryer and stopped in to order the part I thought I needed. The woman behind the counter asked me (nicely) why I thought it was that part. When I described the symptoms, she suggested a different - and cheaper - part which was more likely the cause. Turns out she was right. I guess in your part of town I would have been laughed at, sneered at, and probably sold the wrong part so I would have to go back and buy more. Of course, I had to pick the part up before 5 on a weekday.

BTW ? this is the same store that suggested I buy a sheet of Microwave waveguide cover material instead of the single piece cover sold by part number for my specific oven. That has saved me both time and money.

When I went to real window store to buy windows, the installation process was explained to me in detail, with no laughter or sneers. The guy even suggested that I install the first window during his work hours so I could call him if I had any questions. "Once you do one, you&#39;ll sail through the rest." Guess who I&#39;m going back to when I replace my front door in the spring?

Consider this: Maybe what you want to do *is* stupid, or maybe you&#39;re just too sensitive. Why would anyone give you dirty looks and aggravated sneers when you are in their place of business to spend money? Where I live, they offer suggestions meant to help so that you&#39;ll come back and spend more money with them. I don?t live my life thinking that I know all the answers and I don?t mind asking for help when I need it.

Regardless of whether it&#39;s you or your location that causes you to get the laughs and sneers, if you&#39;re ever up in my neck of the woods I&#39;ll take you to some locally owned businesses where they treat their customers with respect and are willing to help you complete your projects - because they truly care if you come back, not like the borgs where volume is all that matters.

Gotta go now - I need to call the parts counter at a mom and pop lighting store to see if they carry a twin-breaker to fit my panel. I seriously doubt that they&#39;ll laugh at me.

Regardless of all the bullshit spread here if they ain&#39;t open they ain&#39;t gonna sell anything....It really is as simple as that....

[HeyBub]

Do you have insurance on your home? If so, you&#39;re trading a fixed cost for an unknown, variable cost.

I once bought a mouse pad at Circuit City for ninety-nine cents. The clerk asked me if I wanted an extended warranty. I said: "Let me think about it. You do the same." We stared at each other for about ten seconds and, without another word being spoken, he completed the sale.