Caesar Romano wrote:
I live in a rural area and the nearest "shopping" town is 20 miles
away. The town has a Lowes and a Home Depot. The Lowes was there
first, so I got into the habit of shopping there and continued to do
so after the HD opened about 5 years ago.

Last week, on a whim, I decided to try the HD when I needed some
lumber for a barn repair I was working on. HD had two grades (higher
and lower) of the lumber I needed. Since this was a barn repair, the
lesser grade would work well, but there wasn't enough of it. I asked
the department manager if they had any more in stock. He checked and
said no, but they would have a delivery in two days and suggested I
come back then.

I told him that I was in the middle of a project and that it was a 40
mile round trip. He said "no problem", just take the higher grade
lumber and he would charge me the lower-grade price.

I was impressed with that. At Lowes, I wouldn't have been able to
even find a manager. I'm a HD fan now.

Lowes and HD may not be perfect, but they are way better than the "mom
and pop" rip-off store that they thankfully put out of business.

It's the luck of the draw whenever you shop. The lumber is graded but
varies a lot, the employees, it's variable as to who shows up for work
on what day and what they had for breakfast and if their football team
won or lost the big game. And finally there is always the latest
company idea how best to serve their customers, whatever best might be.
It is what it is, nothing more. You don't get much in the way of
help when paying minimum wages with few benefits.
I don't know if they are still doing it but at Lowe's once the checker
had 5 or 6 people stacked up, and was looking through a catalog for some
kind of knobs or something, they had implemented a policy of the
checkers ordering special items or something like that, so the customers
wouldn't have to go to the service desk. Whatever.... it's the
system.