If you were to ask anyone who knows me on any type of a personal level, it's a safe bet they'd all tell you that I have a very low tolerance threshold for people who suffer from exorbitant amounts of stupidity. Some folks are even very close to the astronomical level. As it turns out, such was today again like so many others before it.

I went to the local Menard's store to buy two 5-gallon buckets of roof cement (a.k.a. tar). Keep in mind that I've done construction for the past 26 years, so I have a fairly good idea of what I need when I have to buy materials. So, the stuff I am looking for used to come in a plastic 5-gallon bucket. As I'm looking around for the same type of stuff I've used a thousand times before, I notice it's no longer in the place it should be, but rather something else is in its place, this time in a metal bucket with an entirely different look and label. Unsure as to whether the geniuses in the marketing department of this particular company have pulled the ol' switcheroo on us unsuspecting folks, I decide to ask one of the highly educated employees my query.

"Can I help you?", he asks. Fair enough.

"Yes," I reply. "Is this the same stuff that used to come in a plastic pail? Everything is different about it now."

He asks, "What are you going to use it for?"

"Oh," I replied, not missing a beat, "I figured I'd paint my car with it. What the f*** did you THINK I was gonna do with it, dumbass?"

He says, "This cement is for roofing." Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Okay, fine. I told him to skip it. Then I asked him where the trowels were. With this being the department where the tar was, common sense would dictate that this is where the trowels would be as well. Wrong.

"Oh, those are in Hardware." Mmm-kay.

So I go over to the Hardware department. Looking high and low, I am stuill unable to locate the trowels. Odd, because they don't really look like anything else but a trowel, so they pretty much stand out as to what they are. Finally, I just whistled to another of the Mensa employees and asked if they had any trowels.

"Sure! They're right over here!", she says, and proceeds to take me down the aisle to stop in front of the drywall knives. "This isn't what I'm after," I say. "I'm sorry, that's all we have," she replies. Swell.

I go back to the department where I got the tar and ask yet another person where the trowels are. "Oh, they're in the Paint department."



One can only speculate why trowels would be in the Paint department, but whatever. So I head on over to the Paint department, which is in the completely opposite corner of the very large store from the place I am now standing. The two braniacs behind the counter were carrying on amongst themselves, totally oblivious to my presence, despite the fact that both had seen me. After waiting patiently for several minutes, I surmised that their conversation was much more important than me, the customer, so I set off in search of the trowels again by myself. No dice. Finally, one more young man came out from an aisle and asked if he could help me. I doubted it, but I told him what I was looking for. He asked me to follow him to the Hardware department (!!!). Sure.

By God, if he didn't know exactly what I was looking for and exactly where to go to them! I thanked him and picked out two to put into my cart.

I finally get to the checkout, and the first words out of the girl's mouth are....

"Did you find everything okay today?"

I give up.

...inner peace and serenity...

welcome to america

idiots

yikes

i kno ryte! that IS a long first post!

Don't shop there.

I have a choice of either there, or Home Depot. You choose.

did you get the roof cement to even use the trowels?

Idiots or Home Depot?

More like Idiots or Idiots Plus.

You get what you pay for.....

...cheap labour...

sometimes equals cheap service.

So you're complaining about the already obvious? If I knew either way there were going to be idiots working, I don't think I would enter with a high expectation of service...

True, but with only the two stores to choose from, and the items I'm looking for not being in the place they should be, one has little alternative.

I don't think Home Depot is any better myself, and I will try the smaller hardware stores first. They are more expensive, and the selection is less but the staff is more knowlegable and service is excellent.

You could sent a letter, not an email and explain your experience to them. Not saying it would help but you never know.

even rk is turned on by them

I have no patience for anything when i am in a shop trying to buy something. If i cant find what i want immediately, and then go pay for it immediately without queuing, i generally walk out. Otherwise i might end up actually killing someone.

<----banned from wooddale menards after standing in cashier line for 1 hour and 7 minutes behind (count them 45 people) and grabbing the intercom microphone and singing the dumbass menards jingle that plays every 45 seconds over the loudspeaker system only with the words slightly changed for the circumstances....YOU'LL STAND IN LONG LINES- YOU'LL STAND IN LONG LINES- WHEN YOU SHOP MENARDS!!! Should have seen the sea of menards blue blazers come flying after that. Touch me I sue you f*cking bastards! Call the cops! The menards al queida got me! The frustrated shoppers gave me a standing ovation as I was escorted out.

Oh agreed. To hire truely knowlegable staff cost more than idiots.
But many ignore the cost of stupidity.

You get what you pay for. $8.00 an hour will get you a bunch of dumb ass employees who don’t give a rat’s rear end about you the customer.

The Airline industry has the same problem with contract workers doing its baggage handling. Say these contract companies get $25.00 an hour for each of their sub contracted employees working for an airline. The contract company in turn only pays it’s baggage employees $8.75 out of that $25.00 an hour to load and unload planes and handle bags in the baggage system.

These contractors burn up and break airline equipment and abuse luggage all the time. They don’t care because they have no investment in the company that they have been contracted to work for. So customers get crappy service.

It's simple to understand really.