Soap Box – Page 35 – The Wacky World of Chris Knight

2005/12/242007/03/25

Home Depot Apologizes to Pencil ‘Thief’

Home Depot Apologizes to Pencil Thief: Home Depot Inc. apologized to a carpenter who was banned by the chain worldwide after he absent-mindedly pocketed a pencil he had used up to do some quick math.

From reading the article it appears that Home Depot is apologizing for overreacting to an actual case of theft. An accidental theft of a $.20 item that many of us remember as being given away for free by our local lumber yards until Home Depot ran them all out of business. Was a Home Depot employee out of line when they handed him a pre-printed form letter banning him from all Home Depot stores? The fact that the employee had at his ready disposal a form letter for this very purpose indicates to me that he was just following an already in place store procedure. I’d even bet that Home Depot had, at least at the time, a zero tolerance policy for theft and that they only reason they apologized was the bad press.

What I would like to see is Home Depot apologizing for treating all customers like thieves. I’m sure you know what I mean: the demeaning walk through the exit where the security guard asks to see your receipt so he/she can mark it with a pink or yellow marker. It it is illegal in most states to require a customer at a non-membership store to show a receipt, but it isn’t illegal to ask. Home Depot has been, in my experience, the most aggressive when it comes to asking to see my receipts. I have personally chosen to never shop at Home Depot again because of these two incidents:

As I was exiting a Home Depot and the guard asked to see my receipt. As is my usual, I said “Have a nice day.” and kept walking. The guard said something to me that was semi-polite, but then turned to the other guard on duty and called me an asshole. This is unacceptable behavior given my having politely refused to submit to their demeaning receipt check.
I was leaving the Davis Street Home Depot in San Leandro California. As I walked by the overall wearing employee, not a guard, at the door he asked to see my receipt. I said “No thank you, but have a nice day.” He started to follow me into the parking lot, and asked to see my receipt again. I repeated “Have a nice day.” At this point he started to yell at me that I had to show him my receipt. People started staring. I turned to him and explained that under California law I was not required to show him my receipt. He said “OK, but I can ask you to never return to this store.” I replied “Fair enough” and I walked away.

The way I figure it though, since Home Depot as a corporation allows this kind of behavior in their stores, the entire chain is guilty of treating their customers like thieves. Why should I limit my Home Depot restriction to one store? I have chosen to take that one employee’s request that I not return to that Home Depot and apply it in a more global context: I won’t shop at any Home Depot again.

There are other alternatives. They may not be as convenient now that Home Depot has run most mom and pop hardware stores out of existence. I’ll happily buy my dignity with a little inconvenience, and I hope Home Depot suffers from their ‘everyone is a thief’ mentality.

Home Depot apologized to one man after he did (accidentally) steal a pencil. The least they can do is apologize to every honest customer who submitted to their demeaning receipt check because they didn’t know they had the option to just keep walking.

I won’t shop in another Home Depot until they apologize to the customers who actually deserve it.

2005/12/24

The Wrong Elves

There are lots of elves that work through the winter holidays. After Santa went bust with his pets.com investment during the dot-com boom/bust many if his elves went to work for Amazon and UPS; after all, that’s where all the toys come from now.

A few though were bitter about their losses. With their pensions invested in a failed sock puppet, and Santa delving into horror since he can’t afford to run a toy factory anymore, some have turned to crime. These bitter elves have taken jobs at UPS; not so they can delivery toys, but rather so they can steal them.

Today I came home to find two boxes waiting for me on the porch. UPS had left them while I was at work, no signature required, so I was not able to inspect them prior to accepting them. The smaller of the two boxes looked odd, like it had not been properly folded closed at shipping. The merchant sticker was intact across the seam though, so I was blissfully ignorant until I got the box open.

Eagerly I did open it, as this was the RMA memory from Other World Computing (aka macsales.com) which would finaly put my G5 saga to a temporary rest. In an earlier post I mentioned that I had 4G of memory to install in my new box. Well, it turned out that one of the modules, if not the whole pair, was defective and caused random machine crashes. OWC was very responsive when I called for an RMA, and they cross-shipped my replacement memory. Except, well, the box was empty. OK, not entirely empty; the rat bastard evil elf who stole my memory left me the RMA paperwork. Fat lot of good that does me.

I called Other World computing, and spoke to Mike in customer service. He said that he would file a lost/stolen item claim with UPS, and that I would hear from them within the half hour. UPS never called. I’m guessing they have a lot of evil elves, and I’m probably down the list of call-backs by a fair number.

I figure the theft had to have happened at OWC or at UPS, and if it happened at OWC mine was a pretty small order to take such a risk. I can’t imagine why a thief on my doorstep would have taken the time to pry open the box and then put it mostly back together. It would have been easier to just pick up the paperback sized box and walk away. That leaves UPS. I wonder if the theft has anything to do with my package not being trackable in the UPS system for several days of its journey?

This holiday the wrong elves were working at UPS. The bastards!

2005/12/122005/12/12

Boss Ranch Hunts – THE place for sick motherfuckers

My life is blessed with knowing a fair number of exceptional individuals. For that reason I tend to ‘far see’ into the future and imagine the amazing things life will have to offer just around the corner. One in a while though, I am reminded just how low and pathetic the human race can be as a species. I share 99.99% of the genetic material of some pretty disgusting monkeys, and it sickens me.

I was using Feedster to find recent blog entries on prairie dogs, and I encountered a blog at perlgurl.org about the Plight of the Prairie Dog. The entry itself was fine, but the google ads displayed on the page were something altogether different.One of the google ads read like this:

Trophy Prairie Dog Hunts
Hundreds of Acres of Prairie Dog Towns for Hunting in West Texas!
www.bossranch.com

These people have a page on their website specifically about shooting prairie dogs. These sick bastards actually say “This hunt is available anytime of the year, although the summer months are the best time. The prairie dog pups are still young and untrained to the effects of hollow points.” Exactly how inbred does a person have to be in order for this to seem like fun? One of their photos shows a dead prairie dog hanging just below a sign proclaiming membership in the “Texas Wildlife Association”. Texas must be the land of double-speak if an organization named “Texas Wildlife Association” condones the use of hollow points on prairie dog pups and allows their signs to be used in this type of photo.

If there is one thing that did come of this sickening encounter it is that I have taken the time to learn how to block ads in Adsense from ever showing up on my site. I may have cost these bastards a few bucks as well, with all my click-throughs to make sure I had all their URLs for the various ads that came up on the perlgurl site. 🙂

For the record, I don’t have a problem with hunting for food. I have a problem with senseless violence for sport.

Please, let me know if any twisted ads show up in the ads below so that I can block them:
[I have temporarily removed the ads from this entry, as Google Adsense does not yet seem to be honoring my exclusion list. I may need to give it time to process.]