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January 04, 2007
In honor of the $210-million retirement package awarded to Home Depot's failed CEO, I bring you an entirely true account of a recent visit to one of the company's stores
“Can you point me to the spring clamps?”
“Clamps?” the Home Depot employee says. This is one of my least-favorite verbal tics, that of repeating the last word that the other person said as if it were a question. And, really, this shouldn’t need any more clarification: I’m in a large hardware store; when I say "spring clamps" it should be obvious what I mean.
I say: “Right. Clamps -- spring clamps, vice clamps. The kind you use to hold wood.”
“Ask that guy down there,” he says, pointing to another orange-aproned guy. The guy is about ten aisles away. He is little more than a dot on the horizon. I am sure that, by the time I make it down to where he is, he will be off, gone to wherever it is orange-aproned guys run off to, probably some backroom where they sit around laughing at how unhelpful they are and how it drives customers insane.
Sure enough, he is gone. But I manage to flag down another orange-aproned guy who tells me that clamps are in the tool corral. So I go to the tool corral. I don’t see them immediately and so I ask another orange-aproned guy where exactly they are.
“Clamps?” he says.
I sigh. “Yes, clamps. Like for holding wood.”
“I don’t think we have those.”
“Sure you do.”
“Try plumbing.”
“What? No, for holding wood. Spring clamps.”
“The only clamps I know of are in plumbing.”
“But that just can’t be true.”
“Wood?” he says.
It was further back in the conversation that I mentioned wood, but perhaps the word has just now worked its way through his whiskey and pot-addled synapses.
“Try lumber,” he says.
“No, I’m not looking for wood. I’m looking for clamps to hold wood.”
“Yeah, those are in lumber.” At this point he walks away.
For the record, spring clamps are on the back wall of the tool corral. Also for the record, Home Depot sucks.
Posted by teb at January 4, 2007 10:06 AM