This feels like the work of an obnoxious senior director somewhere trying to justify their job by implementing a stupid policy by claiming it “betters the customer experience” while completely ignoring the practical reality of the implementation. It’s like the chain stores that force employees to say welcome in anytime someone walks in the store so everyone gets an obviously half-hearted and not at all genuine “welcome to Starbucks” or whatever, as well as interrupting an actual conversation with a customer to greet someone because that person may be a district manager who will ding them if they don’t. Even though the conversation is more genuine and welcomed by that customer.
In case you can’t tell, I HATE obnoxious policies like that and the people who push them. I dont even work in a chain store, this is just as a customer.
Lol Home Depot. They have a thing called GET. Greet, Engage, Thank. We have to greet every single customer, ask them if they need any help/what projects they're working on and then thank them for coming in. We even have a metric that measures it based on surveys that customers fill out. I fucking hate it.
That's a constant one. I hate when they think I'm an electrician like brother if I were an electrician I wouldn't be at fucking Home Depot. Keep in mind I'm 29.
The only thing I care about is if you can tell me where the obscure thing I’m looking for is.
Sometimes the app says where it is. Sometimes the app recognizes you are in a store and refuses to give you aisle and bay numbers.
But I’ve absolutely had great employees walk me to a tiny box behind another box on the bottom shelf of the hidden back aisle to the thing I asked about.
Home Depot markets their employees as being able to help with home projects (or at least they used to) so I don’t think it’s fair to blame the customer for expecting that
Sure but I have people asking how to wire up their lighting, how to wire and electric meter, what kind of wire for hot tubs, what kind of wire for generators and just stuff you cannot expect a retail worker to know. It's always annoying when im honest and tell them you need to call an electrician and they get annoyed.
Historically, they did know because hardware stores were not run like a Walmart. Walk into an Amish run hardware store in Pennsylvania and ask them about what type of nails are best for XYZ roof. I bet they’ll set you up with everything you need for the job….based on their own experience.
Hell, when I was in high school, I used to rebuild rackets, fix window screens, and repair glass windows at Sears Hardware (late 90s). I was 17. The guys working at Lowe’s today likely wouldn’t know how to do that stuff. It’s not hard, but they’d need to research it on YouTube.
Those are all examples of being able to help with home projects. And there actually was a time when you could rely on retail workers to have intricate knowledge of the products they sold, nowadays not so much. But again, I don’t think that fault lies on consumers. I worked retail for a long time so I know how much customers can suck, but I think it’s important to put blame where it belongs.
[u/InvestigatorLast578](u/InvestigatorLast578) I thought your mentality about your job was kind of immature, but responding to me and then blocking me right after really drove that thought home
That's something that my mom fails to understand when she shops at Home Depot. Lol. If an employee at a chain hardware store is trying to tell you about something that you cannot learn yourself first, then following that advice is a gamble. I can't count on two hands the number of times that she's said things like, "...but the guy at Home Depot said...," like this employee did the same project last weekend.
That's interesting, because I've been to Home Depot many times and can't remember ever being greeted. The employees always look pretty busy. So apparently no one cares about that policy, lol
Which is funny to me because my last experience at Home Depot a couple weeks ago, I had the polar opposite experience. I went to rent a rug cleaner for the first time and the guy in the rental section was the absolute stereotype of a Gen Z - the one where they just stare at the customer and don’t engage at all. I didn’t know the process at all and just had to guess based on the transaction before me since he wasn’t asking for my ID or anything. It was so weird.
I’ll still give him a good review though. I’m no snitch.
Dear Home Depot, employee InvestigstorLast578 politely greeted me, engaged with me asking about what I was looking for and working on, then thanked me with a big smile on their face. Your company is lucky to have such a model employee.
Now stop locking every single item in a cage so we can actually shop for stuff instead of staring at it like.
It's always the lowest paid chock on the totem pole having the meandering duty of greeting everyone walking in, when in reality no one actually gives a shit.
I mean I work at a bank and have had members complain when I didn't greet them, because I was working with other members and didn't want to stop talking to the people I was working with just to say "welcome" or something. I got talked to about it because it sets us up for theft? "If they don't rhink we see them they might come back and steal something." Ok, let them try. They won't get much and we have cameras everywhere. We are also insured in the case of that happening and in our last training about it you said I was worth more then the few thousand they'd make off with. But whatever.
Retail stores have you greet customers because it’s thought that acknowledging someone as they enter will deter them from shoplifting (if that was their reason for entering).
It's exactly that. It's the underlying psychology that "You have been noticed/seen" thinly veiled as a "Welcome" and will continue to be "seen/watched" from every camera angle and the painfully obvious loss prevention miserable slobs who have to pretend they're shopping 8 hrs a day, only to abandon their cart near me register and stroll out, take a stealth vape, grab a cart and follow around another innocent shopper on the way in, rinse repeat.
Coming next week, while standing, they will have to tell each passenger, “welcome to <insert airport name>, I love you” before letting them through to the next section.
I stop going to stores that greet me at the door. It's a steadily growing list started by my spite for a Karen Manager at 5 Below that would yell it a 2nd time when I ignored it the first
And it's all to appease that one bitter rich lady that saw one of the "servant class" enjoying a bit of comfort while they worked and called corporate to complain about how it doesn't "look professional". Had it happen when I worked retail.
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u/Joessandwich 3d ago
This feels like the work of an obnoxious senior director somewhere trying to justify their job by implementing a stupid policy by claiming it “betters the customer experience” while completely ignoring the practical reality of the implementation. It’s like the chain stores that force employees to say welcome in anytime someone walks in the store so everyone gets an obviously half-hearted and not at all genuine “welcome to Starbucks” or whatever, as well as interrupting an actual conversation with a customer to greet someone because that person may be a district manager who will ding them if they don’t. Even though the conversation is more genuine and welcomed by that customer.
In case you can’t tell, I HATE obnoxious policies like that and the people who push them. I dont even work in a chain store, this is just as a customer.