Perhaps They Literally Mean "Do It Yourself"
Coincidentally, this also means I spend a fair amount of my free time choking down blistering rage.
I hate Home Depot. I hate it with the same fiery hostility I would feel if Satan himself were to spring forth from the gates of Hell and open a chain of big-box retail outlets stocked with shelf after shelf of human misery. I hate the Home Depot’s cluttered, overwhelming aisles. I hate its apparent rejection of easily identifiable categorization and easy-to-decipher organization. Because of Home Depot, I now hate the color orange.
But mostly, I hate the Home Depot’s television commercials, which — even by low standards of the advertising industry — are peppered with lies and false promises.
The typical Home Depot ad features unenlightened-yet-hopeful do-it-yourselfers not unlike you and me wandering into a clean, well-lighted store. They cannot take four steps into the Home Depot without being flanked by a cadre of store employees ready to answer their questions about tiling and roto-tilling or to helpfully point out which aisle contains the grout. “You can do it,” the announcer says confidently. “We can help.”
I would like to know where this Home Depot staffed with helpful worker bees actually is located — my guess is Mars or perhaps in one of Arthur Blank’s fever dreams. All I know is that it certainly doesn’t seem to be reachable from any part of the physical Earth that I’ve ever been to.
This past weekend, I gritted my teeth and girded my loins and headed down to the local Home Depot to buy myself a drainspout extender. The drainspout from my gutter empties directly into the base of my house, which even a dullard like me knows is less than optimal without any feedback from the theoretically helpful employees of Home Depot’s television ads. What I did need from them, however, was directions to where the drainspout extenders were actually located — 20 minutes of wandering from aisle to aisle like the itinerant handyman of legend had yet to reveal where Home Depot’s helpful staff had helpfully hidden the equipment I needed to get the job done.
I finally managed to flag down an employee to ask her where, in the Home Depot’s vast acreage, I might find a downspout extender. I guess I must speak with some sort of speech impediment, though, because, judging by her reaction, what I actually asked was something along the lines, “Excuse me, but where can I find the weapons-grade plutonium? Oh, I know what you’re thinking… plutonium… terror. But let me just assure you, it’s not for mayhem, but rather for some experiments I’m conducting with time travel… Well, it would take a scientist to explain. Anyhow… how’s about pointing me to that plutonium, chop-chop?”
She stared at me blankly for a solid 30 seconds before working her shoulders into what I could only assume was a shrug. Then she was off, no doubt to carry out her charge to help other Home Depot customers fulfill their home renovation dreams by not actually answering any of their questions.
“Excuse me,” another customer said, as I stood there among the roofing nails trying to piece together what just happened. “Did you say you were looking for a drainspout extender?”
I nodded.
“Aisle three. It’s in Building Materials.”
Well… it’s a material. And it’s attached to a building. So I guess that makes sense. Still, it’s not like this guy was responsible for stocking the shelves — I thanked him for his contribution, walked over to aisle three and grabbed me the drainspout extender that I came in for half-an-hour ago.
I should mention that this particular Home Depot takes the the usual light rock of the ’80s muzak that blares over the store’s loudspeaker system and intersperses it with audio-only versions of the Home Depot advertisements. As a result, my entire visit to the Home Depot, up to and including my interaction with the least helpful employee in Christendom as well as when my problem was eventually solved by a fellow customer, was punctuated with frequent replays of the Home Depot’s slogan — “You can do it. We can help.”
Well, repeat something enough times, and eventually people will believe you, I guess.