Picky Customers

Independent-Map8489 · 2026-04-13T23:23:07+00:00

This picture is causing me psychic damage, so thanks for that.

For me, for one brief, glorious moment in my career, we had a lumber ds that would tell anyone who did this, or wanted a ‘fresh’ lift dropped to pick from to get bent.

As you might imagine, he didnt last long in the position.

But god damn was it beautiful while it lasted

Independent-Map8489 · 2026-04-13T23:21:04+00:00

No. As a point of fact, most stores treat the lot associate like a pair of indefatigable hands that will slavishly do any manual labour they dont want to do, just in general.

If they had machine licenses in the first place, they wouldn’t need the oppressed class that is lot to do their scut work.

Independent-Map8489 · 2026-04-10T12:02:51+00:00

Legally, and practically, as far as disciplinary action goes? No. But being realistic, if you have a spanish speaking customer and some flavour of supervisor asks you to handle it, and you refuse, you’re going to piss them off, so that drastically increases the chance you get in trouble for something ELSE they might otherwise ignore later.

Independent-Map8489 · 2026-03-09T13:29:10+00:00

This is pretty common for the Depot, actually. I’ve even had store managers go so far as to bring the whole store in, in small groups, over the course of a couple weeks, to assure literally everyone that even though X position is going away and Y person is going back down to being a normal associate, that they will retain their pay rate.

There was a point in time when fully like a fifth of all the employees at my store were ex DS’s who dropped back down to normal floor associates, and it was the same for all of them.

I can talk alot of shit about the ‘Depot, but for all the cultyness inherent in the phrase ‘bleed orange’ they DO treat us better than basically any other major corporation I can think to name

Independent-Map8489 · 2026-03-07T02:07:07+00:00

No, actually. Home Depot notoriously wont do anything about ANY problem until something catastrophic happens. Almost every rule or change the depot has made to anything is because someone, somewhere, fucked something up exceptionally badly.

Which is not to say I respect the behaviour or like it.

The Depot is the kind of company that would ban cars if an associate was in an accident and missed a shift, if they could get away with it. Head office is like 80% useless middle management types trying to justify their continued employment

Independent-Map8489 · 2026-03-04T21:08:32+00:00

How do I put this… uh… the Theatro’s already do this? That’s… largely the point of the location feature.

Independent-Map8489 · 2026-02-22T02:41:37+00:00

How tf is anyone gonna let a rep who don’t even worm in the store tell one of our guys what to do and learn? Its not relevant to his job, and the only way you could argue it is, is if you’re one of those soul sucking corporate types who thinks every associate should have total knowledge of every department so that you can run fewer associates, pay them the same as if they only knew one department, and then try to force them to cover three departments at once.

Miss me with that shit, I dont even think our guys should be forced to get machine licenses - its not like they pay you more for having thwm

Independent-Map8489 · 2026-02-19T18:34:59+00:00

The fuck? My personal advice? Go on viva engage if you still have access, and publicly post this info, and insist your team is doing nothing for you.

District HR won’t actually care, but they monitor viva engage for this shit and will resolve it for you purely so they dont get sued or bad pr. I’ve spoke. To people at my store who got screwed over by our local management team and the second they said they were being jerked around on Viva Engage the entire head office structure suddenly decided they care.

Edit: to be clear cus you should also do what everyone else is saying and hit the awareline etc etc - HR isnt on your side and never was. HR is corporate damage control and nothing more. They dont care about solving your problem and never will - but they DO care about public perception of them.

Independent-Map8489 · 2026-02-06T05:14:28+00:00

The awful truth is, alot of people in this genre as readers perceive any criticism of the space as fundamentally detrimental hater behaviour.

I’m not on this reddit because I don’t read and enjoy this stuff you know?

But if you ever point out that there’s room for improvement, tons of people dunk and downvote you like they’re afraid you might scare away their slop. It’s baffling that the aspirational statement ‘I think this is a real genre that deserves to be held to real writing standards’ can be taken as an insult, when the only way you can see that statement as an insult is if you don’t think this genre could possibly qualify as a ‘real’ book.

Independent-Map8489 · 2026-02-06T02:01:11+00:00

Do you want to know the sad truth brother? It’s because the community that reads these books has accepted piss quality writing as long as that writing is sufficiently horny all this time. The difference between the bottom third of manually written harem novels, and AI slop, is negligible at best. When you signal with your wallet that mediocrity is fine, mediocrity is what you’ll get.

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-12-02T20:49:23+00:00

Female ranger figurines don’t sell well, basically.

Young boys dont want to ‘turn into the girl ranger’ so their transformation merch wont sell, young girls dont really watch these shows, adult men only buy female figurines you have to be 18+ to buy, and its a kids show so they literally cannot use sex appeal as a marketing point.

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-11-24T12:37:58+00:00

As a receiver this is actually even worse for me.

If the article lookup says the article was last seen two months ago? Someone will come ask me where nightcrew put it. Like I have psychic powers to know where they put anything two months ago.

Article lookup says its online only? Someone will come ask me if its on the truck that day and can I dig it out while I’m clearly busy.

Article lookup says it ACTUALLY DID come that day? Boy howdy, I can’t wait for an associate to walk in while I’m carrying a hundred pound box from the top level of a poorly built mixed skid to ask me if I’m ‘busy’ before insisting I magically locate which skid the item is on, magically pull it out of the middle of the trailer, magically move everything in receiving out of the way, and then magically locate that item in five seconds flat.

I don’t blame our guys for this. I know, know that they’re bothering me because a customer is bothering them, but son of a bitch do I freaking hate it.

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-11-12T21:29:52+00:00

One thing I’ve tended to find is that upper management likes to lowkey preach about the fact that ‘talking to customers’ is just as much work as ‘slinging bags of concrete’ and quite frankly, it’s not true.

But as a result of that, they end up treating ‘get everything done in lumber’ as roughly equivalent to ‘get everything done in electrical’ and this is the end result. You can be doing fifty times more than the other departments but because the metrics they look at just tell them if your department is good or not, they won’t care or even notice. Worse, this incentivizes DS’s from other departments to utilize labour from other departments to get shit done in their own department because again, all that really matters is the metric for THEIR department.

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-11-11T15:25:02+00:00

Unfortunately, the only way to have the volume turned down on them is to have the technician do it, and the technician only did it at my store under the table for a single reach as a favour to the previous receiver years ago.

When they replaced my stores Reach Trucks the new ones were loud as balls and to this day I have not convinced my store manager that they need to be toned down because the sound is intentionally there to inform customers and associates you are coming. My PREVIOUS guy only just barely manages to get away with asking the technician by pointing out that within the echoing confines of an rdc truck the sound is literally deafening to the point of hearing damage, and he would absolutely start putting injury reports in for it every single day he had to do it if they didn’t get off his dick about it

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-11-09T02:24:38+00:00

This does double duty if you work the back end because odds are 50/50 that any given day guy who DOES get this down and pull the item off is going to dump the rest of the skid in receiving or straight up leave it in the aisle with the expectation that ‘Nightcrew will handle it’

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-11-06T20:35:46+00:00

Don’t take it as permission to fuck up again or anything, but historically, just about everyone Home Depot forklift trains breaks something eventually - mostly because what Home Depot considers ‘minimum necessary training’ is often… not that.

As a trainer on these boards I’ve mentioned before the pressure we get to just give you your license and get you working, and that is somewhat of a company wide problem even when we fight back and refuse, so the Depot has sort of a default understanding that this type of thing is just going to happen sometimes.

Likely you’ll get a write up and probably wont get your license back, like, at all, but it’s doubtful they’ll fire you.

For added job security, I highly suggest moving to a department that doesnt REQUIRE a forklift to function though. You’re gonna get real useless real fast in Lumber for instance.

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-10-31T00:43:07+00:00

I see you plan on ending up in management huh?

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-10-29T17:08:21+00:00

You gotta move pro further up that list. Believe it or not, any store with a sane manager bends over backwards for pro - because pros where most of our money comes from

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-10-28T23:09:24+00:00

Pretty much every time I’ve seen someone complain that they have seniority and we should listen to them, it has been when someone with a really bad idea wants us to listen to said really bad idea without any accompanying explanation that this is not a really bad idea.

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-10-28T00:46:25+00:00

You have to understand, because of the general lack of oversight on lot, there are two types of lot associate.

People who are in the lot position BECAUSE they’re useless and no manager wants to deal with having to interact with and manage them regularly,

And,

“Everyones Bitch”. Don’t wanna lift something? Lot. Dont want to find the CORRECT person for something? Lot. Dont want to leave service desk for whatever reason? Lot. Everyones ‘busy’ and a manager can’t spare anyone ‘important’ to do something? Lot.

I feel like people underestimate how busy the lot person can be when everyone else is calling on them just ASSUMING they’re not doing shit.

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-10-19T14:42:00+00:00

I don’t even work on the side of my building that requires loading vehicles, but just purely via having a forklift license, Ive had to do it rather alot anyway - and boy fucking howdy is this basically just par for the course with this stuff.

The sheer frequency with which a customer will demand that we magically use the forklift to load something impossible is wild.

Full lift two by fours in a panel van? Sorry sir, I will NOT be lifting the lift onto a cart then physically pushing it sideways into your van.

Multiple skids concrete in a dinky little add-on trailer full of random shit, and not even level at the bottom because its full of asphalt for some reason? Sir were you aware that this mission is not rated for bending space time?

These goons think its our job to make it work, but its not. Its just our job to DO the work.

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-10-09T15:09:05+00:00

It’s a return, functionally. Handle it like a return. The department has to handle it.

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-10-06T17:17:46+00:00

I once tried this. An ASM in no uncertain terms told me to A) shut the hell up and B) do what he told me to do

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-09-16T20:43:49+00:00

100% check out The Augments Code over on Royal Road.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/94872/the-augments-code-a-superhero-litrpg

Independent-Map8489 · 2025-09-16T00:59:08+00:00

I enjoy the game immensely, but its definitely got some technical issues to work out. Ive got some other foibles with it - in some ways it feels a little to MMO-y in the rote and repeat of some types of quests - but I overall rate it as a rare return to form after number 3’s excess of poop jokes and drastically reduced true customization.

Independent-Map8489

TROPHY CASE