What do you hate about Lowes or HD?? - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

Michaeljp86 · 01-31-2008, 11:28 PM

Time to vent your anger, what do you hate about bLowes or Home blanco? At bLowes I hate how every mother

er parks under the contractor pickup even when they arent a contractor and they arent picking anything up.

Then you have some bozo who will get something like windows and instead of ordering them all they will load up 10 carts taking every damn window they have. Then you come along and need one or 2 and there is none.

I hate at Home cheapo how there is 2 customers in the store and at least 200 employees. Then every 2 seconds someone walks up to you and says can I help you and they follow you around like a bunch of beggers. And they treat you like a freaken criminal. If you try to return something you think they are going to call they cops on you. If you touch something and dont take it they run over there and inspect it. Then over the PA every 10 seconds they announce they are looking for more employees. I think on the application they ask if your the worlds biggest

hole and if you put yes you get the job.

A W Smith · 01-31-2008, 11:36 PM

I like how they close two aisles for some moron to use a personel lift to access stock BY HAND up on the pallet rack. And yesterday I just noticed that Home Despot is starting thebi-lingual signage thing just like Loathes has been doing. Makes me so sick I want to go to their "banos" and throw up. I hope they step on some "clavos"

NorthstarNC · 01-31-2008, 11:50 PM

I hate the jackleg handyman who stands behind you and stares at you (probably wondering what the hell you are doing) as you sight studs, I guess because you are in his way, and he has some big job to get to in his handyman mobile to be handy at.

Celtic · 01-31-2008, 11:58 PM

Maybe this will help:

Home Depot Will Lay Off 500 Workers

Maybe not?

kevjob · 02-01-2008, 12:00 AM

how about picking thru 3,000 studs to find ten! then load stand in line for 20 mins then load into truck then unload again

Chris Johnson · 02-01-2008, 12:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Celtic

Maybe this will help:

Home Depot Will Lay Off 500 Workers

Maybe not?

Is that a polite way to say DEPORT

Mike Finley · 02-01-2008, 12:32 AM

For me it's freak'n like going to the zoo and poking the monkey through the bars when nobody is looking.

I love bringing up a flat cart with 3 sheets of drywall under 2 sheets of 3/4 plywood, with 20 sheets of hardi under 10 sheets of denshield, then some random stuff piled on, making sure that all the UPC codes are underneath everything, then you wheel it up to the register and the 19 year old gen Y chick with a piercing and the strong fingers from the 5 hours of text messaging she does a day, starts looking for the UPC codes that are buried and rolling her eyes and thinking how she hates her f##king job, she looks at you playing the waiting game of silence looking at you with the "aren't you going to lift this up to help me find the UPC code?" look...

that's when I usually take my cell phone out and start acting like I am going to make a phone call and turn my back on her.

My other favorite one is when you pick out 30 studs or 26 pieces of something and they ask you how many do you have? My answer is always the same "Don't know, I just grabbed a bunch"

That crap doesn't play with me, I already busted my ass loading that crap on to the cart, dealing with all the culled sh*t that they keep piled on top, which of course I joyously take off the pile and toss onto another different set of stuff so some pimply faced kid has to sigh for an hour as he struggles to put all the culled sh*t back on the pile later.

Nope, I did my job by getting it to the register, if they can't work a freaken price gun and stand there chewing gum and sighing all day, tough crap, I got no sympathy.

Like I said, consider it messing with them payback for the boobs they hire to work there.

Michaeljp86 · 02-01-2008, 12:38 AM

Mike, thats is hilarious

, Im not sure I could be that rough. I usualy do whatever gets me out teh fastest.

A W Smith · 02-01-2008, 12:46 AM

Hahah mike you are so cruel.

they are just kids after all. It only takes a moment to load it with the upc where they can access it, Plus you are wasting not only their time but your own valuable time and those who may be contractors behind you.

Mike Finley · 02-01-2008, 12:51 AM

I used to be that way too, but they broke me a while back. The time I was redoing a kitchen in my rental condo and I picked out 3 flat carts worth of crap cabinets. I had a 20% coupon and rolled those 3 carts up to this 16 year old, she sighed and moaned for 10 minutes trying to scan each box, as I diligently would grab one and smile and move it around for her to get her gun on the UPC, when she was done, she looked over at her register and I guess she never keyed something correctly so the whole time she was shooting blanks and he gun was never reading or recording a God damn thing!

We then had to start all over again, the whole time she is sighing and moaning and bitching about her job and how she wasn't even supposed to still be there, seems she hadn't gotten her break yet and she was about to pass out from working 3 hours straight.

Long story short we go through the whole process again and at the end I flip her the coupon and she can't get it to work. After about another 10 minutes of shooting it with her gun and punching buttons and calling managers who never show up and eyes rolling and more sighing... her manager shows up who is a 17 year old and tells her that she has to scan the coupon BEFORE she scans any cabinets!

We start over for the 3rd time!

They broke me that day, I've never been the same, they wore me smooth out, totally emasculated and castrated my will to live. So now I devote my life to tormenting them one at a time.

A W Smith · 02-01-2008, 01:00 AM

OMG thats even funnier. 12 years ago when I was taking cortico steroids for my sinus polyps and sinusitis i woulda snapped and started throwing things. ( i threw a cup of coffee at a car during road rage back then)

I have since divorced and remarried going from a wiccan wife to a born again wife. I'm a lot mellower since I was baptized.

I dont have one of them fishes on my truck though.

Michaeljp86 · 02-01-2008, 01:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Finley

We start over for the 3rd time!

That is funny, im sure there was a way to just take off the 20% but they were to stupid.

tool junkie · 02-01-2008, 01:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kevjob

how about picking thru 3,000 studs to find ten! then load stand in line for 20 mins then load into truck then unload again

Um hell yeah!!! but here's the worst of it... ever notice how the junk lumber that nobody wants keeps ending up at the top of the stack as if some moron is going to come along and buy it? Like they expect you to pay for garbage thats been tossed asside a hundred times already. You have to toss it asside yet again to get to the good stuff

They should create another stack and put a sign on it thats says... "will pay to have you take it"

tool junkie · 02-01-2008, 01:32 AM

Im about ready to go off on the Hilti rep if he calls me "boss" one more time. I aint your boss I aint your friend I dont even like you much less buy your tools!!!

Mike Finley · 02-01-2008, 01:40 AM

Okay here is the best one about Home Depot -

You may or may not have this in your area, but they used to have culled sheet rock for sale, it would be sheets cut in half or 1/3, just junk that they would cut down from the sheets that were broken or damaged. They'd sell them for $1 each. Worked out really good if you just needed a piece of drywall for a patch or something, you'd go, oh yeah, I need a patch piece and grab one on your way out for a buck.

About a year ago there must have been some corporate meeting at some multi-million dollar retreat in the Alps where they spent the weekend brainstorming new ideas to increase profits and some little corporate weasel came up with the idea of finding a vendor to sell them "patching" drywall.

Now they have 2'x2' pieces of perfectly cut and packaged sheet rock in a beautiful display and it's like $4.00 each!

I'm sure they get another million a year if you add up all the weekend warriors who buy those 2 X 2 sheets of drywall for 4 bucks apiece nationwide. Personally, I'd rather buy a full sheet for $6.00 and cut my patch piece out of it and leave the rest laying in their parking lot, like a poached elephant that has been killed just for it's tusks and left to rot.

They make an extra mil a year nationwide, we lost an easy and convenient source of patches and Home Depot takes another step away from being of any service to professionals.

But we keep going back

RockRanger · 02-01-2008, 01:58 AM

The mile long receipts with the $5000 giveaway crap on everyone of them.
The lack of restocking of items. I will buy the last box of something and a week and a half later, they haven't restocked that item.
When trying to find one small baggy in the electrical isle everything is so mixed up you can never find what you need. Same way with plumbing section.
The people that go through the self checkout with sheets of plywood or bolts.
Laying out every store different.
All of the moving targets in the parking lot trying to get hit as you pull in and out.
The "Contractor checkout" that has everyone but contractors in it.
When you have 30 nuts or bolts and they ask you how many you have but still count them anyway.
I don't come in to chat with a cashier about life. Shut up and ring the order up. The faster I am out the happier I am.
When you have 6 people in the returns line send a second cashier down to do returns.

My favorite was when I asked an employee if they had any steel studs. With a strait face said "They no longer meet code and you use wood ones instead." Another time I asked an employee if they had any ceiling tiles. All I got back was a blank look.

AbeBarker · 02-01-2008, 02:35 AM

I love it when you arrive to a home depot in the morning and you see one of their dumpsters for rent full of someone else's debris.

ChainsawCharlie · 02-01-2008, 03:49 AM

We don't have a Lowes here, and the Home Depot service is terrible. Nearly impossible to find an employee, too many out-of-stocks, limited selection. NEVER more than one cashier, forcing you to use the auto-checkouts.
And the garden dept. couldn't possibly be any further from the main checkouts unles they detached it from the building and hauled it away. Now that wouldn't really be a problem if the entrance was open for the store full hours, but they don't open it till 8am and then lock them at 5pm. I'm a landscaper, so I like to get an early start, or hit the place on the way home. Those carts and dollies are a pain it the ass to push across a half mile of pavement.

cleveman · 02-01-2008, 05:42 AM

Mike Finley,

This is what I did once, you might try it. It wasn't a home depot, but maybe it will work. They were having some promo where you could get 15% off if the item would fit into a sack. I needed about 15 sacks of thinset. The cashier told me I could do it, but I needed a separate receipt for each sack. So I load up a cart with 15 50 lbs. sacks and come to her.

In the meantime, her supervisor had given her a hard time, I guess. So she tells me she has to take each sack off the cart, put it on the counter, and scan it, have me sign for it, then give me the receipt. Then she puts it back on the cart and takes the next one.

So I stand at the signature thing and sign 15 times as she lugs one sack after the other onto the counter and back onto the cart.

Then I requested customer service to have them load the sacks on my truck.

Another good one was the time I got to the end of the lumberyard and asked them where the twine was. They had moved it back in the lumberyard, so I lost my place in line and had to go back and tie up. Their little saw blade to cut the twine was finished, so I just tied off on my truck and proceeded to the guard tower, with the twine unwinding all the way there. The guy was so pissed off, I thought he was going to have me arrested for unspooling 200 yards of twine! I said something about it being a bad idea to change the location of the twine, and he cut it and I took off.

roofwiz74 · 02-01-2008, 06:02 AM

I hate it when you send someone else to get something.or the know it all contractor won't quit flirting and pay for his crap so I can go about my day.I also hate how people just start asking for your advice "are these good shingles?"
or the guy who drives up to the contractor entrance with his 4 door extended cab dually with a 20ft trailer and takes up 10 parking spots.