I just returned from the local home center. Those who hve been following me know that I recently uprooted from Reon, and moved near my folks in St. Louis. Well, as any good parent would do, my folks immediately set upon finding little projects for me at their home ... which led to this AM's visit to the local home center.

I was looking at pricing informations, for various ways to add a switch to some 3-way circuits. I noticed a 'special order' tag by the "14-2-2" bin, and I asked about it. This led to my getting bounced around a few folks, until I wound up at the 'customer services' desk, with their 'electrical' department manager and their 'service desk' manager. At one point, the 'electrical' manager asked me how 14-2-2 was different from 14-2. Harump!

Now, I figured this was a good time to remind them of the chains' announced goal to have licensed trades professionals in their departments, and that I was available I also gently explained what the wire numbers meant ... as the 'service' manager was at that point asking me if #6-4 SOOW would work

My point to this is: All of us are facing tight times. All of us have cringed at the home centers and their uneducated staffs. Maybe this is the opportunity we have been waiting for, to step up to the plate and maybe make a difference.
The worst that can happen is for store management to say "no" - in which case we'll KNOW where the blame lies.

The people at the Home Depot know me and will call me over when I am around if a customer asks a question they can't answer.
That is the same place where a guy said "This is a do it yourself store, if you want to find something do it yourself".
I was sitting on the floor picking through missorted boxes looking for the last MC connector I needed.
I knew better than to ask because they might try to send me home with romex connectors or something.

my Local Home depot is a complete Joke. Things are never organized. No one of the staff has a clue when I ask them where to find something. Complete cluster flop. John I think would make a great electrical department manager. It would be nice for the other contractors. To be able to get quick answers for some one in the store instead of running around form one desk to the other

Yeah,
It must be pretty much the same, the world over.
About this time last year, I went to buy some paint, to coat the walls in this workshop.

The young man there insisted that I should buy a tonne of cans of spray paint and paint the walls that way.

Now, I wouldn't make a painters helper, but I have heard of such things as a tin of paint, a tray and a roller.

I went to the store on the other side of town and got what I needed there.
Oddly enough, the guy that was selling the paint in that big-box store used to own his own paint and decorating store for 30 years, but was put out of business because he couldn't compete with the paint prices of the bulk-buying bigger stores.

Makes you wonder doesn't it?.

At my local Home Depot they have "Trade Experts" or something to that effect. The girl in the electrical department is a trade expert and pulls down over $65,000 a year. I know this because I dated her for a while. She's also an electrical contractor. I feel sorry for her, you should hear the stories she tells, every day dozens of DIY types are asking her about their crackpot ideas.

When she tells them their idea is a hazard or a code violation, they couldn't care less, they dismiss her and buy all the wrong stuff for their half baked electrical job.

Awww,
You feel sorry for "her".
So why didn't you take her on?
With that sort of turn-over, surely she'd be worth something to your business.

RH1;

Welcome to ECN!

Where in California are you located???

I am in So. Cal; close to Mickey Mouse's House...

The reason I ask is that the Person you are describing sounds familiar to me.

Scott

Mike (Trumpy);

Your new Avatar is GREAT!!!

Scott

Our new member RH1 has the topic pegged; it is those "trade expert' jobs I'm referring to.

Otherwise, I sympathize with the lady's experiences. I was once in a 'home center,' and a customer was dead set on using garden hose as his 'conduit' outside, and there was no telling him different. All-plastic sealtite was not acceptable to him. His plan had a few other quirks to it as well, and to this day I have no idea just what he was trying to accomplish.

At the Homer by my house you rarely see the "trade experts" working on the floor in their departments. They can usually be found drinking coffee at the pro desk where the trades pick up their will call orders. And I don't think they work evenings when the DIY's would come in after work.

When I picked up some furnace filters on Saturday the person I saw on the floor in plumbing/heating had a "I work in all departments" button pinned on their apron.

I guess that means on Tuesday I could find her selling dishwashers in major appliances.

The HD I'm talking about is in Santa Clarita.

They really are the same all around the world... I have to go to no less than three big box stores to get everything I need for a proper job sometimes!
Store A sells pre-cut Moeller bus bar and connector clips for the phases but not the neutrals (Moeller DIN-rail breakers with switched neutrals can either be wired using wire links on the line side or their bus bar, flat pieces of metal about 1x10mm with tabs that clip onto the bars for each terminal). Store #2 sells the all the clips (even a lot cheaper than store #1) but they don't have as much as a single stick of bus bar.

Neither of these two stores sells flush-mount junction boxes IP44 or higher (outdoor use). Store #3 does, but they don't sell any of the aforementioned stuff because they seem to be part of a German chain and only sell the German Moeller range, where the switched neutral breakers are 2 modules wide instead of 1 1/2, which means the cheap pre-cut bus bar commonly used for single pole breakers works, but they don't have the neutral bar to go with it (Store #1 occasionally sells it, but no more than that).

RH1,



Not the same Person!!!

Thanks for the reply, too!

Scott

Just to follow up ...
I've been able to learn that there's quite a bit of shuffling and other nonsense going on at the higher levels - store manager and beyond. The store staffs are pretty much at loose ends, just doing as best they can, without the direction or guidance they need.

In short, the 'poor help' issus lays squarely in the lap of management - which has absolutely no interest in addressing the matter. Indeed, 'corporate' has the time to inspect parking lots for wind-blown debris, but not to address their advertised goal of having 'trade pros' in the departments.

Our largest UK boxstore is 'B&Q', which with it's mail order wing 'Screwfix' has a lion's share of the market. Some years ago their policy was to only recruit young people, until it was pointed out that most of senior management and the board qualified for free Senior Citizen bus passes! Permission was grudgingly given for 2 stores to employ some old fogeys on the shop floor. Amazingly, those stores immediately went to the top of the sales charts! Those old timers had the one thing an energetic but acned youth ain't got - experience. Customers with questions instinctively homed in on Grandpa, for after all, what would someone younger than your son know about hanging wallpaper or what size wire to get? So, you got good advice on a product, the ancient one would tell you how to, sell you the right amount of the right stuff and then point you to the tools rack, the consumables, the ladders - you get the drift. And of course they came back for other stuff as their confidence improved. QED. Having skilled 'managers' is useless unless there is a source of experience and common sense on the shop floor for them to manage.

Now chaps, don't knock the US of A too hard! My friend Robert just got back from visiting his aging folks in Detroit, [he never went home after USAF service], raving about the vast range and real low prices at the box stores. Had me drooling I can tell you, after the miserable experiences shopping for tools and matl.s we get here. Surly un-cooperative unsackable staff, little stock, wait weeks for delivery of basic items, vastly inflated prices [ EXAMPLE: a basic Legrand din-rail 3ma differential main breaker I saw just today, 231 EUROS = US$320!! ], get turfed out of stores at midday for their 2+ hour dinner break, "..never heard of it".. "no demand for it".. "we don't carry that! ..."
I can get stuff delivered from New York via t'internet faster than from 3km up the road, at half the price inc. US Mail, with the added pleasure of a follow up email telling me to "have a nice day"! Cliché it may be, but I usually do when I get me a parcel!

I've probably told this big box story here before, but here goes again while we are on the subject. I asked for a piece of 4/0 SEU cable to be cut, about 20 feet if I recall. They were a bit short-staffed, so the smock-boy advised me to finish my shopping and he'd have it ready for me in a few minutes.

When I came back, it still wasn't ready. The nice guy wrote up a slip for me to take to the cashier with the understanding that he'd bring it up to the front in a few minutes. Sure enough, just as I finished paying, another employee was there asking me if I needed any help with the cable. I thought this to be a bit strange since he still hadn't produced the piece of cable. When I asked, he told me it was waiting outside as he asked me what I was driving. As we exited the store, it all started to make sense.......

He had gotten a lift and brought around an entire 1,000 foot reel of this cable. Sure enough, the guy wrote up the cut slip with a part number for the entire reel quantity, not the per-foot number. I could have very easily had them load the reel into my truck and I could have driven away. I didn't do this, but if I did, I'm sure nobody would have had a clue what had happened.

I would imagine that this happens far more often than we even know. This also explains some of the ridiculous prices for certain items at these stores. They have to calculate an incompetence factor into everything they sell.

I've had similar experiences ordering solid bare copper wire at HD. It slips a lot through the counter without moving the measurement dial.


Bill

Ive gone to HD to buy some 2/0 wire, and the guy cutting it writes down the SKU for #2. Tried correcting him 3 times, but he insisted he was right.

I resisted the temptation to go back and buy the rest of the roll...

If it's 3mA I understand the price
30mA go around 50 Euros here (2 or 4 pole, 30mA, max. 40A). And I thought the electrician who wanted 140 was crazy... maybe attempting to sell an S or G type.