Home Depot: Where politicaly sanctioned murder is just the beginning

[bluevoter4life]

Source: FireDog Lake

This is what Home Depot's founder Bernie Marcus said on a conference call yesterday:

"If a retailer has not gotten involved with this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to Norm Coleman and these other guys," Mr. Marcus said, apparently referring to Republican senators facing tough re-election fights, then those retailers "should be shot; should be thrown out of their goddamn jobs."

It's nice to know Home Depot supports the death penalty for not contributing to their favored political causes.

The coming EFCA fight is going to be bloody.


Read more: http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/1872

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Advocating violence at a Palin rally: Check. Another right wing nutjob sanctioning physical harm if you don't agree with his politics: Check. And they wonder why Lowe's is kicking their ass.

[jobycom]

1. Kill them, then fire them! Mel Brooks lives!!

[Idealism]

2. Home Depot is set to open a few dozen new stores over the next few years

Lowes is set to close some, citing a 24% drop in profits in the past quarter alone. How are they 'kicking ass?'

[madmom]

7. Home Depot opened a new store south of here and in less than 5 years closed the doors!

[BREMPRO]

9. a former Home Depot store manager told me the incentive for opening new stores

They get all their initial inventory from their suppliers FOR FREE. This is true for Lowes too from my understanding. So they don't even need to do research to see if a new store will be profitable because they will just simply close it after they've reaped the rewards of the free inventory. They are more likely to open a new store and close an under-performing store even in the same area a few years later because of this.

[KurtNYC]

12. free inventory...

seems very doubtful. More likely they get a 5 year tax break from the local community.

[BREMPRO]

14. i'm sure they get both the free inventory AND tax breaks

[OKNancy]

3. this isn't LBN..

It's a blog post for pete's sake.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x87249

[unpossibles]

4. this is why I almost never shop there

When I have to go to a big box store, I go to Lowe's

[LeftyMom]

5. I don't shop there because their service is somewhere between bad and non-existent.

Lowes is somewhat better (and their stores tend to be newer and nicer) but we still have local hardware stores, and whenever possible I buy from them.

[unpossibles]

10. I do too

but I am also doing a fairly major remodel on my house, and sometimes I have to go there. But I go to local hardware and lumber, etc. whenever I can too,

[Quantess]

17. That's because the "associates" are spread thin, and turnover is high.

When you can find an employee in the store who isn't busy helping another customer, very often the worker is new and doesn't know where anything is!

I worked at HD for a few months, and very often I was the only person in my department (Inside and Outside Garden), which was ridiculous, because there was so much work to do. Customers were angry because they expect good customer service, but we were usually too short staffed to meet the customers needs. I ran my ass off trying to get everyone taken care of, and it still wasn't enough sometimes.

You see workers standing around talking, and to the outsider, it looks like they are just chatting, but in reality, they are trying to figure out: who gets to use the forklift next; who is hiding the forklift?; where the order-picker is; customer wants to know why his bricks aren't in the loading zone yet; where did Manager Joe go, have you seen him?; can someone bring down a pallet of blocks for me?, etc...

And they have those in-store-phones that are just a ball-and-chain, because customers call from home and ask you questions (sometimes really dumb questions). Some customers see workers talking on phones and assume they are goofing off and ignoring them, which is completely untrue.

Lowes: for some reason, Lowes seems to have the same number of employees as HD, yet their methods apparently work a lot better, because Lowes doesn't have the chaos that is the Home Depot signature.

[Quantess]

18. Oh, and, the only Free Republic bumper sticker I have ever seen was on an SUV in the HD parking lot.

I saw it as I was coming in to work.

I did not know the Home Depot was republican before I started working there, but it didn't take me long to figure it out. The first clue: they lied about everything at orientation!

[Metta]

6. thugs. not caring how the karma plays out.

Oh, well. They've long since seen the last of our business.

[MineralMan]

8. Instead of using a blog as a link, why not link

to the Wall Street Journal article reference in the blog?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122705706314639537.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

It's right in there, and packs a little more credibility. I never rely on any blog for information...too many of them fudge a bit with their postings. If there's a link from a legitimate source, why not use that?

It might also keep your thread from being moved. I'm just sayin...

Edit: to correct spelling of "legitimate."

[Left coast liberal]

11. I sent a comment via the Home Depot website

Here is the link:

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContentView?pn=Contact_Us&langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

This kind of over the top partisan shit pisses me off.

I won't shop there again until an apology is made. And, we contractors!

[jmowreader]

13. Bernie Marcus is retired from The Home Depot

[dysfunctional press]

15. maybe rahm emmanual could take the reigns...they seem to think alike.

nt

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

19. Yes. Anyway, there's no need to punish HD for an attitude held by many retailers

The place to put our energy and resources is support of card-check. As Thomas Frank points out, it's going to be a bitter fight.

[XOKCowboy]

16. I go to the Home Depot for the bratwurst stand out front..

I grab me a couple of dawgs and drive across the street to Lowes for my hardware.