Does anyone here know anything about Lowe's the hardware store?

[King Coal]

Do they treat their employees well? Benefits? Pay?

[notadmblnd]

1. my neice worked for them part time for a minute

in the garden section. Started her out at 10.00 an hour. The stores are cleaner and better organized that Home Depot. Prices are about the same. That's about all I know about them

[King Coal]

2. Thanks for the reply.

[Bitwit1234]

11. I beg to differ about the prices.

I know some people who work for them and like the store and their treatment. But Home Depot is cheaper. In fact the local L and M Home Fleet Store has a lot of stuff cheaper.

I think you would call Lowes the upgraded hardware store. Kind of like Target is the upgraded discount store.

[MistressOverdone]

18. I have found HD cheaper

don't know about labor practices.

[notadmblnd]

27. in my area Lowes is abouot 1/4 mile from HD

so maybe that is why, I found the prices comparable?

[TygrBright]

3. Do they HAVE employees?

....'cause I went in last night to get a light fixture and a dowel, which two items required me to travel the not-inconsiderable length of the store. Not a single employee did I see, from end to end.

Got up to the front, no one at the service desks, no one at the cash registers, just the "self-checkout" registers turned on.

Coulda backed a truck up and loaded it fulla one of everything to rip off if we'd wanted to.

befuddledly,
Bright

[Beaverhausen]

5. I hear ya

I had to go there last sunday, and while I did see a few employees, there were none in the section where I needed them.

That store also has just so much stuff it makes me feel guilty.

[aquart]

4. They were listed as a blue store.

[Greyhound]

6. Far superior to Home Depot, but still pretty crappy. If you can't afford to support local

businesses, they are the best alternative.

[ThomWV]

7. My Wife worked AT their stores, but not for them

She worked for a company that set up displays for a number of vendors to Lowe's. She had a couple of stores on her circuit and she kept each of them up. So she saw the company in action at more than one store. Generally she didn't have anything bad to say about them. In fact when she quit the company she was working for she was offered jobs by the managers of two of the stores she serviced. She was seriously considering working for them. That was after seeing how they treated their people first hand for a couple of years. So I'd say they are probably not bad. My wife isn't one to take a lot of shit from anyone, I doubt that she would have even considered it if she had seen anything that bothered her. Oh, and she is much concerned about workers rights in the workplace - its not something she ignores.

[King Coal]

30. Thanks ThomWV

I appreciate all the replies.

[quinnox]

8. Seems good

I bought a refridgerator and it was defective and they took it back and gave me my money back and were polite about it. I would shop there again.

[Ilsa]

9. Our Lowes store has been around here longer than the HD.

A HD person I talked to last year say the pay sucks. She used to be a banker.

I went into Lowes yesterday and couldn't find anyone to help me, either. (I was looking for a clear plastic drawer liner to use in my new freezer which has a pullout bottom drawer with wire baskets. The cold air empties from the freezer and spills over the floor. Feels good to my feet, but it is inefficient, so I was looking for a thin liner for the drawer.)

[alfredo]

19. They used to be awful. You would have to find what you wanted,

pay for it, then go around back and wait for an employee to bring it to you. Everything on the floor was display. Glad they changed.

[Rosemary2205]

10. I have a cousin that works at Lowes

He has been with them about 6 years and works in the kitchen design dept. He is one of the few full timers in the store, says his salary is decent (I don't know what it is). He gets matching funds in his 401K and some paid vacation. He does get health insurance through lowes but I don't know how good it is. He has very few complaints and tells me Lowe's is a "green" company that spends a lot of effort finding and promoting earth friendly sustainable building products. He is so happy there he'll likely stay as long as they'll have him.

[AlCzervik]

12. i think they do, i worked for HD and The expo for 7 years and many people

left to go work for Lowes because it paid better and quite frankly HD started to suck when Bob Nardelli came in an ruined it.

[Donnachaidh]

13. Was in there this morning.

While I didn't seem to warrant attention from the tiny group of employees at the front of the store (had to ask 3 different times where I would find stuff to strip paint from an antique piece), once I got to the paint department an employee there took the time to answer all of my dummy questions. He made up for the intentional ignoring up front.

[supernova]

14. Lowe's is local to NC

They are our hometown hardware chain, HD were the interlopers. So I prefer to shop at Lowe's whenever possible.

I've never worked for them, but I've always found the store to be better designed, more home decorator type items. Brighter, HD buildings look dingy by comparison. Whoevery said Lowe's is like the Target of home improvement is not far wrong. :thumbsup: :-)

And I've always enjoyed dealing with them. I've bought a dishwasher, washer/dryer, and refrigerator through them and have been satisfied with the price and the delivery.

It's nice to read that they seem to be decent to work for.

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. I'll say this for them -

They're not Home Depot.

[woodsprite]

16. We go there frequently. Just bought our garage door from them

They were $250 less than Home Depot, and they said that was not a sale price we were given. I haven't heard anything bad about working for them.

[Oilwellian]

17. I've been shopping at Lowes for 18 years

Boycott Home Depot...they're HUGE repug contributors.

[lpbk2713]

20. I prefer Lowe's over Home Despot

Both have had stores in my town for several years and I will usually drive past a H/D to go to a Lowe's. However, just recently I bought a room air conditioner. I wanted to 'buy American'. Had to settle for a Samsung at Lowe's. The Frigidaire model I wanted had been discontinued.

[soothsayer]

21. I think Lowes is blue, and Home Despot is red.

[onenote]

25. Do you have a link for that?

According to opensecrets.org, the Home Depot PAC split its donations around 30/70 with repubs getting the 70. Lowe's has a tiny PAC that appears to have given 100 percent to repubs.

[DemGa]

22. I worked there

I'm terrible at retail, but the only real problem I had was the hours: The constantly changing schedule I was on played havoc on my sleep pattern. Often I would close, be out at 11 pm, and have to return at 6 am. No set days off.

But some areas of the stores have more set hours and days off. Not to sound whiney, but that was my experience.

[sinkingfeeling]

23. Well, I think I own about 1/3 of the Lowe's here. I've spent well over $100,000

with them on renovation supplies in the last 10 years. I've spent about $30 at the Home Depot.

[Tracer]

24. I was at Lowes this morning.

This is a new Lowes store, and is about 12 miles from my house.

Being a cold, dank weekday, I expected it to be empty -- and it was.

I needed a lawn mower and there was no one to be seen in that department. However --- they've got a system that I'd never seen before. A Call Button! Press that and an announcement went out for an employee to get over to the lawn mower department.

Sure enough, a pleasant guy showed up, answered all my questions and got another employee to load the mower into my car.

The only downside? There's a Home Depot only 4 miles away.

[FatDave]

26. I have heard that they pay quite well but are more expensive than competitors

I remember a new Lowe's opening in my area (the Chicago side of Indiana) about 5 years ago and word was they were hiring cashiers at $10/hr when the going rate was about $7. Home Depot and Menards are cheaper, but it may be worth an extra 5 bucks to feel like you're helping people get a fair wage.

[jmowreader]

28. The differences between Lowe's and Home Depot

First things first: they're both red companies.

Personnel matters: Both companies treat you like shit, but (at least in the Fayetteville, NC, area) Home Depot seems to treat you like refined, deodorized shit whereas Lowe's treats you as fresh shit. My store is full of people who quit Lowe's; the few former HD employees at Lowe's were fired from HD.

Merchandise and merchandising: Lowe's has more product CATEGORIES than Home Depot does, but HD has a wider selection within the categories they sell and more product on the floor. They have furniture, but to fit it in they have this little bitty 30-foot shelf of pine moulding; I don't have the cheap-ass furniture they've got, but I have a 120-foot aisle with moulding on both sides. They have more in-stock appliances, but to make room for them in the overhead they have fewer in-stock cabinets. And their carpet! I did a comparison piece between Lowe's installed carpet and ours; we were running a sale at the same time we were, but ours covered more things so we were cheaper overall. I figured I'd show the difference between our best carpet and their best carpet...and couldn't do it that way because our best carpet was a far better product. So I compared our midgrade carpet to their very best, and still came out ahead at my store. (Lowe's can special order any carpet you like, just as we can, but the stuff in the building at Home Depot is better than the stuff in the building at Lowe's.)

Getting help: Both chains are blowing it out their asses on this one. Experience tells me, though, that if you can actually find an associate, the ones at HD are better trained (which doesn't take much) than the ones at Lowe's. Lowe's has the Call Boxes, but they don't do much good when there's no help in the store. Oh, and the Lowe's people have Call Box Response Time as a line item on their evaluations. Check it out: I had a customer come in last weekend trying to buy insulation. They bought a lot from me, but needed more than I had. I called Lowe's and asked to speak to a building materials person to try to find out how many square feet of insulation was in their packs of it...the poor fucker on the other end could not figure this out. How you tell this, if you need insulation, is to put the package in front of you and read the square footage that's printed right on the label. So I'm sitting there talking this guy (who had worked for Lowe's as a building materials salesman for six months and had never been asked that) through reading an insulation bag..."oh, it says 75 square feet, is that what you're looking for?"

Cleanliness and safety: There is no question Lowe's runs cleaner stores. Walk both with an eye to safety and Home Depot reigns supreme. Example: Last time I was at Lowe's looking for something, I went to their insulation corner. All their insulation was sitting in the overhead unbanded and unwrapped--if you did that at Home Depot you'd be unemployed, because if a 150-pound overwrap of insulation were to fall out of the overhead and smack you in the head, it would cancel Christmas.

[lies and propaganda]

29. They are certainly blue to HD's red

and I have always heard an interent rumor that HD's wife divorced him and started Lowes with his money and made it Super Blue cause shes one of us. Dont know it its true, but it always makes me laugh@

[JitterbugPerfume]

31. My son works at Lowes

and he likes it there .

[tabasco]

32. Here's some info on their contributions.

I haven't figured out all of this info like who is repub and democrat but they gave $500 to Diane Feinstein (DINO but a D).


http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_supopp/C00251751/