Fun at Home Depot

home depotLindsey and I went to Home Depot today to buy everything we would need for the patio we are planning to build. We went to Home Depot hoping to speak with someone who could look over my figures and just confirm that my math was correct (I am 99% sure it is, but I just would like someone to look it over).

First thing though, we had to order a storm door. It took the guy about thirty minutes to order the door. It was just a slow process. I am always surprised when I meet a person under 40 who types using the hunt-n-peck method. The guy was nice though and I asked him who I should see about ordering the patio stuff. He told me to go to the special order desk and speak with either XXX or YYY (I cannot remember the guy’s names).

We walked over to the outdoor stuff and picked up a few of the things we could actually buy on our own. Lindsey was looking at some other things, so I went over to the special order desk to speak with XXX or YYY.

I get there and see that there are two ladies working the desk. Each one is helping someone, so I get in line. After a few minutes, more and more people are coming to the desk. No one is actually in a line though, they are just standing there. The first lady finishes up and she starts just point to people to come up next. I stood there for about twenty minutes when Lindsey came up to me. I told her what was going on and after another ten minutes, we went back to the outdoor center. Figured maybe we could find someone for help.

We wait at the register for a few minutes while some old lady tries to check out and has to read out the credit card machine instructions. At this point in the day, my patience level is about zero. The one lady from the special order desk comes over and she starts talking to the cashier. She is complaining about how there were two call-offs today and she keeps apologizing to the cashier that she might not be able to give her a break.

Okay, as someone in management, the first thing I would be doing would be trying to help the customers. I would never complain about call-offs or figure out breaks and the such in front of the customers. She sees us standing there, turns around and leaves. The cashier, who finishes ringing out the old lady, leaves her area and starts to head off for that break or something. She sees us and says “did yinz need something?”

WHAT? No, we just have this cart full of stuff for fun. It is like a trial run for when we do want to spend tons of money at Home Depot. We explained to her what we needed and she is like “oh, you will have to go over to the special orders desk for that kinda thing.” At this point another employee comes over and he says “oh, if you are ordering this stuff, there is a kiosk at that desk that allows you to do it yourself. You can just order the stuff you need that way.” I said that I wanted to make sure my numbers were correct and he was like “oh yeah, the computer will figure all of that for ya.”

We get back over there and find the “kiosk”; which is just a computer on a folding table. And the fancy program that will figure out how much sand and paver base we will need? The website. Yep, they wanted me to order all of this stuff via the website that I could used at home. I was definitely annoyed. And to make it better, the internet connection was super-slow.

The other lady from the special order desk sees us struggling and offers to help. I told her what I wanted and she goes to order it. First problem: the paver stones we want are apparently not available in-store. This makes no sense since the pavers are back on the shelf in the garden section. I even show her a picture of them and where they are located! After a few minutes of struggling with the computer, she asks one of the guys to go check the SKU number. He comes back with it and we are good to go. Hahahahahahaha…we are just getting started.Not our patioI had to tell her three times that we wanted them delivered to our house since we are getting 1900 bricks. It would be like 3 pallet loads. She is like “well there will be a $66 delivery fee. Are you sure you want to do that?” I said multiple times that we did not have a vehicle to haul them to our house. She just could not believe we would waste that $66.

I then order sand and base. The sand was pretty easy. She just did not know what kind I meant, so I had to come back behind the desk and show her on the computer which ones. Then came the base. If I ordered it by the bag, it would take 222 bags and cost us $800. I found on the website that you could get 6 tons delivered for $200. Umm, yeah, that seems like a much better deal.

For the next 45 minutes she tried to order it. It kept telling that it could not be delivered to our house. At first I thought maybe it was just because of the whole address change thing, so we gave her the original address. It did not work either. She then called someone to see if they could do something and she had to give him all of the information again. The guess was that there must be some local street ordinance that does not allow that kind of truck on our street. I decided to just get the other stuff and I will call around and try to find base elsewhere.

Needless to say, we were at Home Depot for 2.5 hours. I was not a happy camper. At least three different times I considered just ditching our cart and going to Lowe’s. Unfortunately we had a 10% coupon, which was good on all bricks and sand. We saved over $100, so I guess it was worth it.

Author: Ngewo

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