Here and there, random thoughts on food, photos, marketing, & customer service

I had a chance to stop into Home Depot this weekend. It had been awhile as the last time I was there, the store was dimly lit, there was nobody around to help me, and worse of all I could not find a thing I was looking for. All the while I was there it was non stop page after page over the public address system. Help here, help there, solve this problem, so forth and so on. I think I actually left the store empty handed. I don’t recall that ever happening before. This was in the Glen Burnie Home Depot near Price Club.

So I’ve been avoiding Home Depot, and going to Lowe’s for the last couple of years. We’re having some work done at home, and our contractor likes Home Depot, so we needed to pick out some ceramic tile for something he is working on. I wanted to go to Lowe’s but Home Depot it was. 

We went to the Home Depot in Pasadena, Maryland right next door to the defunct Circuit City. Where do they find the guys to wave the going out of business signs on the side of the road anyways? Circuit City = sad, but that’s another story.

First thing that stuck me was the fact that the store seemed pretty busy. I kind of thought that with the slow down in housing and the economy overall, the store would be slower, and we could park up in the front row. No, that was not the case toady. We had to park at the end of the row.

The next thing that caught my eye, was the fact that they had a cheerful greeter at the door. As we entered the store and started walking around, no less then 6 or 7 Home Depot guys and gals with the orange aprons said hello or asked if they could help. What is going on? They had a virtual army of people working the store. How on earth can they pay all of these people? This is baffling! One guy said hello once (he was pretty gritty looking, with a beat up baseball cap) and then asked if he could help later. I’m not sure if he remembered me or not, but I was wearing one of red and black MacMedics jackets.

Another item that I noticed was the store was lit up like day no matter where you were in the store. I looked up and in addition to the normal florescent lights you would expect, they also had what appears to be directional lights to illuminate the sales floor. 

I was also surprised to see a pretty clean store.

We did find some tile we like, but there was only one example of it, and there way no way to ID it. We had a guy help us figure out what it was, but after talking to someone else and looking everything over a second time, we found out he had incorrectly identified it. That could have been a disaster, but we got it figured it out.

So what’s going on? I suspect that Home Depot took a long hard look at what was going on and acted on it. I have to say I was surprised. I would see the Home Depot commercials on TV (especially during NASCAR) and it just felt wrong, since what they showed on TV in no way matched my in-store experiences.

I think I still prefer the new Lowes on Quarterfield Road in Severn, MD, but it’s nice to have a fall back.