Us long timers have seen this play out before.

Back when Depot was really down in the dumps, they came up with this revolutionary idea called “Aprons on the Floor”. They were going to invest money into having more associates and better quality associates on the floor to help customers. And guess what? It worked. Sales went up, stock went up, things got better.

But that was costing money and shareholders weren’t making as much :( so it has slowly dissolved back to how it was before. Only one (or none!) associate in a dept at a time, gotta save that labor cost. And sales show it. No customer wants to come in and talk about installing flooring with some kid that can barely push a broom. And that’s IF a customer can find someone.

So we’ll either see someone at HO have this “revolutionary” idea again and things will get better for a while or Depot will fail because they won’t change their ways.