"Upscale" wrote:


"Lobby Dosser" wrote in message

We had a Lowes open a couple years ago and they are pretty much the
same
as
HD. In either place I find myself giving lessons in whatever I'm
looking for, if it is more technical than a bag of dirt.

But that's the way it is (mostly) with the drive for profits that many
retail companies use. They hire employees for as low a wage as
possible, but with a modicum level of knowledge. Naturally, those low
wage employees are going to know only so much.

I remember once going into a low end graphics store to have a map
scanned. Even though I didn't own a scanner and had never used their
model of scanner before, I was the one that had to show the employee
how to use the scanner. Didn't stop them though from charge me $6 for
using it.

My last lesson was knife hinges. I didn't really expect to find them in
HD, but I was there for some PVC pipe and thought I'd save myself a trip
somewhere else. Instead I spent 10 minutes explaining and drawing knife
hinges for three of them and still had to make the trip somewhere else.
Now I just ask if they know where I can find something. If they say they
know, I look there first. If it's not there or they say they don't know,
I wander around until I run out of patience or convince myself that they
don't have what I'm looking for.

That said, one of the local HDs had a guy in a wheel chair who could tell
you to within a foot where to find anything in the store and where to buy
it if they didn't carry it. I always hunted him out, but they seem to
have disappeared him.

The place I try to shop at most often is an Ace Hardware where Every
employee seems to know what everything is and where they keep it. I don't
know how they manage it, but you can walk in there and ask a fresh faced,
new HS grad if they've got a 7mm Ratrafratz Bolt and get told to go to
aisle 4, 2nd cabinet on the left, 3rd row, 2nd drawer from the left - and
*find* it right where they told you to look! Also the kind of place where
you can walk in with a problem you don't know how to solve and walk out
with a solution and the materials to do the job.