Home Depot should hire the actors in their TV commercials to work in the store.

A friend of mine recently went into Home Depot, and upon becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of competent service, screamed out, "For crying out loud, your tagline is "You can do it. We can help!!"

Amen.

I wonder if they rotate groups of Home Depot employees who are told that items are located on different aisles, just to mess with you...or make you spend more time in the store in search of a toilet tank handle, hoping you'll buy duct tape and an extension cord.

I think they ought to replace names on the name tags with phrases like "I dunno" or "over there" or "we carry every single part except the part you're looking for"

I think instead of employee training, they should just make new hires (and current ones) watch their commercials over and over until it begins to sink in. "Oh, I'm supposed to actually be like that?"

They do have self-service checkout. Nice idea, but there's always a glitch, and some physical person has to come and fix it. And scan your items for you. And help you pay. So, it's like regular service, except you bag the items yourself.

I'd also like to know who's the cross-eyed guy in charge of stocking the shelves. Trying to find Items and corresponding price tags is like playing Concentration.

But I like the music.

Spammers are like terrorists...

At least in the buzzkill area.

So, if you look at my last post, Afroflyjetcito, you'll see a cute kid in his high chair. Upon posting that blog entry, I immediately received two comments. I was a bit excited, like, "Wow, people are just WAITING for me to post such interesting content. That's great!"

So, the first comment went like this:

"Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you! I have a atlanta adult services [name of incredibly innapproriate site/blog]. It pretty much covers atlanta adult services related stuff.Come and check it out if you get time :-)"

Apparently, someone took a look at my entry and said, "Hey, here's a guy with a cute kid. He must like porn. I'll send him a cool link." Talk about shoddy target marketing. Then again, I don't think a lot of porn guys actually went to business school, so you can't really blame them.

Then, I got another one from a self-proclaimed Hurricane Katrina prayer/healing minister. He must have thought, "Hey, here's a guy with a cute kid wearing a ski cap that's too big for him. I wonder if he's a refugee. I'll send him a link."

Now, I can understand that point of view a little better than the porn thing. But still...

So, now I've had to resort to a word verification step in order to have people post comments and avoid automatic spamming. It's a slight extra step, but I think your comment is worthy enough to go through the trouble.

Afroflyjetcito...

I may be biased, but this kid is pretty good-looking, and he's got street cred, to boot.

Terrorists are such buzzkills

A few weeks ago, I went on a bike ride with my brother-in-law, who had just purchased a shiny, new road bike. Shiny red, in fact. We started out at 104th and Broadway, then made our way north to 178th, then headed across the George Washington Bridge. Talk about a great view—Manhattan on one side, Palisade cliffs on the other. I thought, "Hey, this would be a great picture."

Then I saw a sign forbidding cameras on the bridge. Oh, come on!!

Patriot act, Schmatriot act, you can look at my library records all day long (I haven't checked anything out in years, but still...) or tap my phone or put a magnetic reader under the skin of my forearm, but let me take a silly picture!

Gracias, Mr. Terrorist, you ruined my Kodak moment.