System Failure

2007-05-09 04:31 AM | 2 comments

imagine you’re me, and you want to purchase a brick. one red brick.

you roll to home depot(boyfriend in tow), park, walk in. farthest left: building materials.
farthest right: gardening.
he says gardening, i say building materials. we vote gardening first since it’s slightly closer and flowers make me happy.

i’s a cool may night, the plants have just been watered and are breathing sweetness onto our faces. we are looking for the beacon of hope known as the orange apron.

as we spot one such apron on the horizon, the air is cut in half by a nails-on-chalkboard sound: the attention-hungry screeching cackle of a lonely, rich, bored woman.
she has her boston terrier in a fucking stroller. the poor thing has an underbite and a bow on its head. this dog looks truly unhappy. the woman is cackling at the price the young man has given her on a plant she’s inquiring about, “thirrty buuucks!? that’s a LOT!!” under my breath i wonder how much her stupid dog stroller was.

she proceeded to order the young man around, picking out tropical plants (reminder: we live in vegas) and has his complete, if not involuntary, attention. by the way, talking incessantly doesn’t mean you really have anything to say. this lady is going on and on and onnnn about fuck-all. we spot bricks… success! kind of…

we grab three bricks after checking the texture and such. we walk towards the rest of the store, whence i remember i need a shelf for the patio, and since we’re here… decide to find/ask a different employee where metal plant shelves might be.

this orange apron, slightly less hopeful than the first, looks tired and bored. also helping someone. does she acknowledge our existence? no.
we move forward.

here’s a cluster of orange aprons, dim in the way of existence, standing around and listening to … yes! the crazy dog lady!! awesome. so i wait… and wait… and finally, i politely say “i have a question.” the rest of the group is talking over and around and across me. of the three aprons present, one answers. of course, she has no intention of moving toward me or helping me. her arms stay crossed and out of her lips a very flat and obligatory “what’s your question?” i ask her where i might find metal plant shelves. she says “um. i don’t know.” she looks to the others in the group, who shrug and return their attention to the dog lady who’s upset now because apparently no one alerted her we live in hell and no tropical plants survive this heat unless they are in sigfried and roy’s backyard (lucky!)
so she has to put them back. even though she already has plants from 3 weeks ago and “they’re fiiiiine” DUMBASS! it’s may! next month we’re all going to die. and the last thing you’ll be concerned with is your fucking tropical plants survival. you’ll be posted up on your couch with prince valium and a cold drink, telling your filthy cock-eyed dog how pretty she is.

anyway, we finally just say “forget it” and walk towards the registers…
SURPRISE! 4 self-checkout stands and a single, overwhelmed cashier. we’d use the self-checkout, but guess what doesn’t have a barcode? yes, bricks.

over to the single cashier we go. so she has to pull out a manual with sku codes in it. is it color and descriptive of each product individually? no. its a terrible quality black and white, where the $7 brick looks a lot like the $0.39 brick.

amazing.

so… what did we learn?

1. home depot has failed to motivate it’s employees to do an outstanding job
2. home depot has set its employees up for failure by not providing them with the tools they need in order to succeed
3. by under staffing the registers, they must suffer an incredible loss each fiscal year
4. under staffing the registers puts you one cashier under a great amount of undue stress
5. no dogs allowed, unless they’re in their stroller

home depot fails as a company to meet my expectations of a hardware store.
their slogan : “you can do it, we can help”

i think they should just change it to “you can do it.”