1) I used to rent a Rug Doctor regularly at the local (Illinois) HD and
they would consistently charge sales tax when there should have been no
tax at all. I had a debate with a headquarters person on this. IMHO it
should be simple enough to program the systems to not invoke sales tax on
certain SKU's and not require the "associate" to hit an extra key. HQ
person insisted it was purely unintentional as any money collected would
just get shipped off to the state. I said I agreed it wasn't deliberate
but she was wrong when she said they didn't profit by it because of the
way the Illinois tax form works (At least when I was familiar with
Illinois' form one did not report tax collected; one reported gross sales
then backed out non-taxable amounts. So excess tax they collected was
indeed theirs to keep.)

2) As others have said "associate" is a stupid term. Nothing wrong with
being called an employee.

3) I vaguely remember some issue I had with drywall screw packaging. I
think it was that they boxes weren't clearly marked what type of drive
and length and I wasted lots of time judging them through the windows or
looking at boxes others had opened. Menards (the nearest competitive big
box home center) has them much more clearly marked and even color coded.
Something they need (needed) to work out with their vendor.

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Here's a question that could warrant a new thread:

For all the complaints about HD...what large national chain store whether
in the home center field or other area like electronics or office
supplies etc. do you have the least complaints about / like the best?
What store really has its act together in terms of selection, pricing,
staffing, policies or are they all bad?