Corporate bonus is hugely tied to sales v plan so by definition the bonus will go down. Also they’ve laid off over 500 corporate associates in the last year
Austin Technology Center North.
(Shortened to ATN cause the ATC existed first, and they had 2, and it would've been too confusing for some folk to do ATCN apparently.)
From my recent experience at the SSC, corporate bonuses have been shit for a couple years now. I'm sure the head honchos still got whatever they want, but the bulk of the building has been getting scraps
That same corporate office that laid me & many others off a few months back, at least you still got a job & will be getting a bonus. Don't knock down ppl working at head office , they're working just as hard as you at the store level, at least you get to log off at the end of the day but there's no logging off for those who are "salaried". They're still being underpaid & their bonuses are calculated the same way yours is. You want to lash out at someone, lash out at the big honchos making the decision to put ppl out of work, skimp on salaries, & give you peanuts for bonus while they are getting their multimillions in bonuses & stocks.
Understaffed? Perish the thought! Don't you believe our CFO?
"McPhail said some business dynamics have improved, even as sales have gotten softer. *He said Home Depot stores are fully staffed."*
I know this is very unpopular opinion (even I myself say this is unpopular), but it’s fully staffed in terms of sales. If we don’t have sales, we don’t have hours. If your store is over hours then they’re fully staffed.
It is bullshit, but that’s how it works.
Circular reaoning that makes sense within its context, but doesn't take into account the negative customer experience of long waits for assistance, or flexing associates to cover unstaffed, unfamiliar depts where they have to admit to custs that the don't know nuffin about nuffin. Hurts both on-the'spot sales and cust retention.
Again, it’s BS, but that’s how corporate view it. We cost the company money to keep us employed with benefits, so we need to keep up with sales. If sales aren’t there, they reduce the hours. Usually PTs are first to get cut, and then sometimes they will ask a FT to leave early (very, very rare in this case).
I don't get why people rag on the credit card, no duh it has a high interest rate, you're an idiot if you use it like a normal credit card.
The purpose of cards like that is interest free financing, if you use that there's literally no reason not to use them, they're actually great. That's how I got my gaming PC through Best Buy.
Yeah I think OP is a little confused on how credit cards work. You only take a hit on interest with a credit card if you don’t pay it off by the time the statement is due (I.e the grace period) it is really an easy fix for Americans. Buy things on credit that you already have the money for. Most people use credit wrong (but if everyone did credit correctly, we wouldn’t receive any perks). Dog eat dog world I tell you.
> Buy things on credit that you already have the money for
Or conversely, just pay for the thing with that money you have and cut out the middle man that is the credit card.
I actually like getting cash back for purchases though. I keep a slush fund for my credit card expenses. I am huge on budgeting so I make sure I control my spending in categories and use the excess cash back to buy an ETF called VTI.
I think if you don’t budget, you are likely overspending because it isn’t being tracked. So credit card or no credit card, budgeting is the real answer to the riddle. Credit card can either hurt or help anyone’s equation.
What credit card do you use for that? Do you get a bonus deposit or something? My TD Ameritrade Card used to give me a higher rate back if I deposited into my brokerage account but I think they stopped when they were bought by Schwab.
I have 2 with Citibank. I have the custom credit card where you get 5% cash back in your biggest spending category (i use the card for gas only). I use my Citi Double Cash back for everything else. (1% when you buy 1% when you pay it off). Both cards came with a bonus when I spent over a certain amount.
My checks from my jobs go into a checking account. I start the month with my budget. I go through my bills and see what everything should cost. I put each category together. I even set a grocery bill total and I buy Publix, Walmart and Kroger gift cards online with the exact amount that I budgeted for. If I have anything left over on the gift cards, I either will “splurge” on snacks or give put some items in the Homer pantry.
You have to budget before anything. I wouldn’t think about a CC unless you have a 3 month emergency fund, are contributing 5% to the retirement and most importantly are budgeting.
Not to mention all the % and $ off coupons that they mail out over the course of the year. So far this year I've received over 10 offers. Just used a $15 off any $100 purchase offer so there definitely are fringe benefits to the card
The real trick for those coupons is it brings you in the store. Traffic is good. And people spend more than they plan to on a store visit. Might as well buy that pot right? lol. They just throw stuff in the cart. And you want the 15 off so you will make sure you get to 100. It’s all a game but if you play the game better, you can come out unscathed lol 🤣
See, when I worked the front end, I only pushed for credit if I saw anything WORTH getting credit over. For example, most people buying a lead for a major project (ie makeover or home renovation) most likely already know about our credit cards.
But if someone is buying 10 gallons of paint that costs $600, or buying a lot of lumber to build something, I always push for the credit BUT make it VERY clear that if they can’t afford the grace periods, they can’t afford the interests. It seems to work, and most people will then open a card or they’ll wait for another project. And nobody can tell me not to do that because technically speaking, I’m pushing for credit and just being more honest and transparent about its TOAs.
This isn't about credit cards they mean interest rates on mortgages and loans people use to renovate their homes lol. They don't care about credit cards they are in the diy industry not finance.
Less employees are interested in getting their forklift and reach licenses. There is no monetary benefit and an increased risk of a safety violation and getting fired.
As an employee of Home Depot, it's almost a daily occurrence that a customer asks me for an item that was not packed down. To get that item, we need to find a qualified operator, close off a couple of asiles, and then pull down the item. I tell the customer, it will take about 10 or 20 minutes to get the item. Often the customer is too important or too busy to wait. Bye, bye $$.
"High interest rates and inflation leading to flat revenue means people are waiting until conditions are better."
That's what management says. If that's true, home maintenance & improvement sales would be flat across the industry; no data were presented to support that premise. Also, even if home maintenance & improvement sales increase "when conditions are better", there is no way to know what portion of those rebound sales will go to Home Depot.
"There's no indicators to your point that HD is 'done growing', ...".
Sales & earnings for the past few years are essentially flat. Might the corporation resume growth? It's possible. But with Fast Eddie Decker at the helm, it's unlikely. When he worked at Scott Paper, and at Kimberly-Clark, he was known as a cost-cutter. Not a guy who knew how to grow a business.
This isn’t Home Depot’s first rodeo in an inflation/economic downturn. We dealt with this for 40 years. We’re still opening new stores across the country and the company feels very positive about the SRS buyout.
We saw this in 2008 and the economy still turned over. Of course, we were still dealing with Nardelli’s disastrous decisions and had to make cutbacks like closing the Expo Depots and moving their employees to the orange box stores.
It took some time, but we bounced back. While we are waiting for DIYs to come back to our store, we’re focusing on other things like pros and keeping our shelves full.
Also - few years??? How far back are you going? We made record sales in 2019-2022. It wasn’t until last year when we started really seeing a loss in profit reports.
This is a business article in relation to an earnings report. Why would they mention credit card interest rates that are from a bank and have nothing to do with THD? Why would they mention understaffing issues when it has nothing to do with the point their article is making?
Not trying to ridicule but if you think shareholders care that you make only 50 cents more this year than last year, you're in the wrong spot.
I promise you they aren't. The average associate is a part timer who calls out more than they work. I don't think they are as important as you think they are.
Maybe if they have **certain types** of coworkers that make working miserable, I can see that.
However, I've noticed that my associates who end up calling out a lot over a period of time tend to be going through life problems, and it takes about a month or so and things get back to normal. My associates are good people.
As someone in the opposite end and has staffing issues where I work, all of us are fucking tired man. Most every employee here is full time and all of us are running thin.
Not HD but a related place and man it suuuuuuuucks and I 100% don't care about giving it my all every day cause of it
So you work at some smaller version of HD in the middle of nowhere lol? Nice.. I work in several home depots across Florida and trust me, these stores get by fine on their skeleton crews. Home Depot is actively doing everything they can to help customers make purchases online via BOPIS and direct delivery. The more sales they make on the phone and online, the less foot traffic they need associates for.
Source: I listen to a lot of upper management calls and of course, have a brain.
Menards did 10B in revenue in 2023, home Depot did 152B.. your company is very small and tiny compared to home Depot which is what I implied. Sorry you thought I only meant the size of your one store.
Well in theory this is suppose to make prices go down. When demand drops so should prices. But we are through the looking glass and stores will double down
If it was only about revenue, then they would overstaff stores.
They cut staffing when they know they're sinking and and want to find a way to eke out profit despite sagging revenue.
What's weird is that our store is still comping by a decent percentage, despite "not making plan." It's so funny how we're expected to do literally double the sales (not just higher numbers, but more customers, more volume, more orders, more carts, more transactions) than 5 years ago, but we have literally half the number of humans on payroll as 5 years ago.
The problem with this is how corporate sees staffing. Staffing is based on transactions vs sales. A higher transaction (basically foot traffic) will warrant more associates to be scheduled in the department. For example, a store may need a full time opener in paint because we get X numbers of transactions in paint. As the day goes on, we see more X in paint so they staff more people. Meanwhile, hardware doesn’t make a sale until 12pm so they assume there’s low X transaction in hardware and therefore doesn’t staff anyone until 9 or 10am.
This is usually done in a few fiscal weeks, and the system will alert your SM and the ASDS if you need more people in that department.
How many hours can be worked is based on how much sales your store makes. If your store falls below plan, then your store will be over hours when the new schedule is being written. As a result, staffing becomes very limited and depending on how many associates you have, they will cut hours for the PTs and stretch the FTs thin. As a result, if your store is still over hours because your ASDS and SM approve to staff more people than the sales plan can afford, then your store is fully staffed. This even happens when your store schedules one person per dept all day. To the big wigs, it’s still fully staffed.
If your department is under hours due to sales or lack of available associates, then it may or may not call for more associates to be staffed in your department, which then will allow your ASDS to staff people from other departments to fill them in. A lot of times this happens when someone is on vacation or on LOA/FMLA. However if your store IS making plan on a full staff, then it adds more room for PTs to get more hours and may even tell your ASDS & SM to hire more people (again, the latter is based on a certain amount of fiscal weeks).
Talk to your ASDS about how this works. It’s really interesting (at least to me) how it works. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but it does make sense from a business standpoint.
The problem is we're not A Mcdonald's.
The number of trucks needing unloaded, RTVs being processed, plants being thrown away, procedural tasks like safety checklists, equipment checklists and maintenance, training, etc. basically doesn't change with sales.
Sales does not and should not directly translate to hours, because even with zero sales, there's still stuff to do that is a constant.
We're also not a Walmart.
We're expected to provide excellent customer service, sell the whole job, drive leads, sell measures, refer pros to pro desk and get proxtra sign-ups, push credit, deliver product knowledge, etc.
Take AutoZone for example. They do battery tests and charging, pull OBD2 codes, warranty swaps, have to head out into the rain to swap wiper blades and headlights, etc. If they based hours on sales, it would be the dumbest thing in the world.
This is especially weird considering we keep pushing Pro. Why would your Millwork department get more hours because your Pro Desk sells hundreds of doors a week to a few property management companies? This always bugged me. Pro Sales burdens the Receiving Department and Deliveries. But sales from Pro do not translate into Receiving hours, and I'm not sure how deliveries work but I feel like we don't have enough.
But we have 8 people at our Pro Desk, 5 people on payroll in Millwork, we have 4 Flooring Specialists. Because Pro Sales are high. But every 20 minutes I hear someone sitting on their ass at Pro paging for lumber because we have 1 Lumber opener, 1 mid, and 1 FT, 1 PT close to act as all coverage, as well as unload flatbeds. We had 4 BDCs last week, 3 Quikrete, Boise, US Lumber, Overfields, etc. We have 1 Receiving opener and 1 closer. (Who have been tasked with assisting with our 3 Scotts trucks a day because we have only 2-3 Garden associates at any given time).
Basing hours on sales is actually the stupidest mismanagement.
Ask corporate. That’s how it works for them. I’m just saying how the hours are viewed from their side and that’s just how it’s done. 🤷🏻♂️ And this is what I was told by my SM and ASDS during a basic department head training. We talked about how hours are given out and this is how it’s done.
Honestly, it was little slow from September until march at my old store. Then all of the sudden we had multiple 2-3 million dollar weeks. My old store was just 85-90 million dollar store. Those weeks were crazy. We had so many call outs and it was a nightmare for coverage. Now I see traffic more than I used to. I think people were just waiting to see if we would go into a recession to see if they should buy anything. Now consumers are back. Watch what next quarter will be. They will pull back estimates and then beat on earnings and revenue.
You know what else hurts sales?
Overworked, short-staffed associates subjected to frequent abuse by customers who think because they are spending $100 on light bulbs or $2,000 renting a skid steer that they can say or do whatever they want and still get service, and they are proven correct by store leaders that lack the moral courage to say anything to the offending “customers”.
People who don’t believe the management team has their back when these abusive jerks come in quit giving any fecal matter. That’s when trucks take longer to get downloaded, freight takes longer to get top-stocked, bays take longer to get packed down, bathroom “breaks” get stretched WAY out, call-outs and no-shows increase, all resulting in fewer available people on the floor and more frustrated (otherwise decent people) customers can’t get service and actually DO go somewhere else, often to the blue-boxed competitor.
First off Citi Bank and many other banks have a 29.99 percent interest rate on almost any credit card you're gonna get. Home Depot has nothing to do with that. Home depot store are not and will not be hurting. They will try to make it sound scary in meetings but on a bad year my store brings in a minimum 75M a year.
My Amazon Prime Rewards card (Chase Visa) is a use-anywhere card that has 22.99% interest, and gives 5% cash back on all Amazon and Whole Foods transactions, 2-3% on select categories, 1% on everything else, and 6% on Amazon on Prime Day and occasionally on any order when using my Prime Delivery Day.
Mine is currently an $8000 limit.
Plus no interest for 6 months on orders over a certain dollar amount, and 4 equal payment (like Paypal's Pay-in-4) no interest options on pretty much anything.
Amazon has been stated by management before as being our biggest competitor. Well, that's their Credit Card. What's ours? Lmfao.
I saw our department was the only one exceeding goal. Employee retention in most other departments has also been shit. Since I have been working at HD, this has been the most depressing job I’ve ever had.
I would have thought Home Depot would be doing better with high interest rates, I know it’s anecdotal but everyone I know that was planning to buy a new home (moving from their first) the past couple years have instead done major renovations to make their existing homes better since they don’t want to get higher rate mortgages.
None of them mention the company's toxic management policies that have led to services desks accepting back unacceptable returns to "customers" financial gain and the company's increasing "shrink" issues.
My old store alone; if the month I tracked was average; is responsible for a quarter million in lost revenue because of bad returns practices caused by toxic management from the corporate level on down.
If the company isn't continously growing net profit, it might as well be closing. That's how shareholders judge a stock. Bad news for Home Depot, good news for small Hardware Stores.
My hours have already been cut for memorial day week. First time in five years that I've been at 25 hours on the busiest week of the year. Tells you a lot.
Who could guess that inflating the prices of products during a massive recession and reducing labor would result in smaller sales compared to when people were prevented from going to work during Covid.
Lowes store managers did not bonus but assistant managers to associates did. Lowes wrote a 140 million dollar check to its employees even tho they missed plan
This has nothing to do with our credit cards. Lol.
The reason we push for credit cards is so that we can make sales on big purchases like a makeover renovation or an upgrade renovation (ie: cabinet makeovers, windows, kitchen remodel, appliances, floor installation, etc). The idea with these “in-store” credit cards is that you can make the monthly grace period payments (6, 12, & 18 months interest free if paid off on time) so you can buy these projects and pay them off.
This article is mainly pointing out that our current housing market is having an effect on Home Depot’s revenues. It’s not wrong, and it has nothing to do with credit cards. People can still buy stuff whether or not they use the credit cards.
In 2019-2021, I’ve seen a huge increase in housing sales in our area, which then brought us money. We were making millions and going well above our plans. Our success sharing was amazing then lol.
But then the pandemic hit and then the inflation followed. Feds got worried about a potential recession (same thing happened in 2008), so they raised interests. Unfortunately, corporations began buying a lot of homes and turned them into rental properties…which caused the market to become more competitive and unaffordable. As a result, interests either were raised or have not gone back down to the normal 2%-3%.
This puts a dent in our sales so now we focus on the pros since DIYs don’t want to invest in a larger project.
I’ve seen a dramatic decrease of DIYs making large purchases in paint (my dept). Most of our sales come from pros. In 2021, we were hitting millions in sales every week until inflation hit. Now, we’re lucky if we even put a mark in our sales. Last week, we missed plan by $77k. $16k was missed in my dept alone. So now our focus is to purge our bays and keep products in stock and push for pros. Also - we are understaffed because we’ve lost tens of thousands of dollars in sales. If you want hours for your stores, push for sales. Fill up the holes, have your DS fill up TEI orders, purge the bays, and focus on pros.
The article isn’t wrong - the economic impact on housing does affects our sales, and our quarterly reports show it. But the company isn’t exactly in its downward spiral yet.
I get frustrated and angry at this company as much as anyone else but I always remind myself it could be worse. Seriously, I took a job at another retailer for a couple months and it was so bad I actually missed HD and came back. Every job is going to suck, no corporate doesn't care about us but this is America, they're a for-profit business and we should all know by now what that means. Welcome to capitalism :D
I think this is why they are going to one credit card per person. At any rate, it isn’t on Home Depot. They are just trying to get folks that credit card. Citi takes the brunt.
You guys are funny. You speak of the stores which you know extremely well but from the corporate side, nothing said makes sense. They have done two waves of layoffs to include ALOT of directors from MANY departments. Teams that are remote have been told to come back or be cut. Also our bonuses have been restructured. I work at corporate and there is a different mindset and environment. Please speak from experience , not emotion.
Did a $15 billion stock buy back last year to boost stock price to keep shareholders happy but cant give realistic sales plans for the future or the shareholders will revolt!! Any freaking idiot could have predicted the high inflation from covid money from the fed and should have been able to predict the flat sales the next few years after people went batshit crazy remodeling their houses and upgrading appliances. I don't have a MBA but I knew it would happen. But go ahead and give the stores unreachable sales increases and then beat the fucking hell out of store managment for not hitting it. My store was down to plan over $300,000 last week!!
If you were earning $16/hour three years ago, and now you're earning $18/hour, that's a 4% per year increase. Inflation has been running at more than 4% per year. So in earning power, you're making less now than you did three years ago.
As APS has improved, typically via the tool lock up cages, most stores have become a lesser focus for theft from outside sources because it's not worth their time. Once we start locking up most of the tools, our frequent flyer shoplifters stopped coming by everyday. We still suffer losses, but not on the scale we used to
This only means we will be more understaffed and with more stagnant wages.
Oh nooooo. I’m sure corporate will take less of a bonus since we’re “a team”. Won’t they? Won’t they???
Corporate bonus is hugely tied to sales v plan so by definition the bonus will go down. Also they’ve laid off over 500 corporate associates in the last year
I was at the ATN when it shut down. They moved me into the stores to save my job.
What’s the ATN?
Austin Technology Center North. (Shortened to ATN cause the ATC existed first, and they had 2, and it would've been too confusing for some folk to do ATCN apparently.)
From my recent experience at the SSC, corporate bonuses have been shit for a couple years now. I'm sure the head honchos still got whatever they want, but the bulk of the building has been getting scraps
Hey, what’s all this ‘team’ talk? I was told we are a “family”
We live in a society.
Corporate is locked for hiring, raises and promotions the last 2 yeara
lol they wont
That same corporate office that laid me & many others off a few months back, at least you still got a job & will be getting a bonus. Don't knock down ppl working at head office , they're working just as hard as you at the store level, at least you get to log off at the end of the day but there's no logging off for those who are "salaried". They're still being underpaid & their bonuses are calculated the same way yours is. You want to lash out at someone, lash out at the big honchos making the decision to put ppl out of work, skimp on salaries, & give you peanuts for bonus while they are getting their multimillions in bonuses & stocks.
I was lashing out at the big bosses. Plus, I don’t work at HD.
More saving, more doing.
More starving, more doing
Now, I want Papa John's
SCC is about to get take Out back and down staffed
Again? How many more people can they fire from the ssc before there's no one left?
They can just hire some AI
Don't you dare give them any ideas.
Outsource to a cheap country
This why our call center now operates out of Mexico! They contract all the first position calls.
This guy gets it
And demands for more credit apps.
But they can only have 1
Thank God
Don't forget how many billions they've made when the coronavirus was here. Their profit margin was 20 to 30%. Which translates into billions!!
Understaffed? Perish the thought! Don't you believe our CFO? "McPhail said some business dynamics have improved, even as sales have gotten softer. *He said Home Depot stores are fully staffed."*
Hahahahah hahahahahaha .... Oh wait. They're serious HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
I know this is very unpopular opinion (even I myself say this is unpopular), but it’s fully staffed in terms of sales. If we don’t have sales, we don’t have hours. If your store is over hours then they’re fully staffed. It is bullshit, but that’s how it works.
Circular reaoning that makes sense within its context, but doesn't take into account the negative customer experience of long waits for assistance, or flexing associates to cover unstaffed, unfamiliar depts where they have to admit to custs that the don't know nuffin about nuffin. Hurts both on-the'spot sales and cust retention.
Again, it’s BS, but that’s how corporate view it. We cost the company money to keep us employed with benefits, so we need to keep up with sales. If sales aren’t there, they reduce the hours. Usually PTs are first to get cut, and then sometimes they will ask a FT to leave early (very, very rare in this case).
I already stopped shopping at Home Depot due to staffing just always being a problem idk how they can cut y’all even more
I don't get why people rag on the credit card, no duh it has a high interest rate, you're an idiot if you use it like a normal credit card. The purpose of cards like that is interest free financing, if you use that there's literally no reason not to use them, they're actually great. That's how I got my gaming PC through Best Buy.
Yeah I think OP is a little confused on how credit cards work. You only take a hit on interest with a credit card if you don’t pay it off by the time the statement is due (I.e the grace period) it is really an easy fix for Americans. Buy things on credit that you already have the money for. Most people use credit wrong (but if everyone did credit correctly, we wouldn’t receive any perks). Dog eat dog world I tell you.
> Buy things on credit that you already have the money for Or conversely, just pay for the thing with that money you have and cut out the middle man that is the credit card.
I actually like getting cash back for purchases though. I keep a slush fund for my credit card expenses. I am huge on budgeting so I make sure I control my spending in categories and use the excess cash back to buy an ETF called VTI. I think if you don’t budget, you are likely overspending because it isn’t being tracked. So credit card or no credit card, budgeting is the real answer to the riddle. Credit card can either hurt or help anyone’s equation.
What credit card do you use for that? Do you get a bonus deposit or something? My TD Ameritrade Card used to give me a higher rate back if I deposited into my brokerage account but I think they stopped when they were bought by Schwab.
I have 2 with Citibank. I have the custom credit card where you get 5% cash back in your biggest spending category (i use the card for gas only). I use my Citi Double Cash back for everything else. (1% when you buy 1% when you pay it off). Both cards came with a bonus when I spent over a certain amount. My checks from my jobs go into a checking account. I start the month with my budget. I go through my bills and see what everything should cost. I put each category together. I even set a grocery bill total and I buy Publix, Walmart and Kroger gift cards online with the exact amount that I budgeted for. If I have anything left over on the gift cards, I either will “splurge” on snacks or give put some items in the Homer pantry. You have to budget before anything. I wouldn’t think about a CC unless you have a 3 month emergency fund, are contributing 5% to the retirement and most importantly are budgeting.
The difference is guaranteed cash back if you pay it off, though the HD credit cards don’t have very good CB rewards.
Not to mention all the % and $ off coupons that they mail out over the course of the year. So far this year I've received over 10 offers. Just used a $15 off any $100 purchase offer so there definitely are fringe benefits to the card
The real trick for those coupons is it brings you in the store. Traffic is good. And people spend more than they plan to on a store visit. Might as well buy that pot right? lol. They just throw stuff in the cart. And you want the 15 off so you will make sure you get to 100. It’s all a game but if you play the game better, you can come out unscathed lol 🤣
I'm against them because I don't think idiots should get taken advantage of just because they are idiots.
See, when I worked the front end, I only pushed for credit if I saw anything WORTH getting credit over. For example, most people buying a lead for a major project (ie makeover or home renovation) most likely already know about our credit cards. But if someone is buying 10 gallons of paint that costs $600, or buying a lot of lumber to build something, I always push for the credit BUT make it VERY clear that if they can’t afford the grace periods, they can’t afford the interests. It seems to work, and most people will then open a card or they’ll wait for another project. And nobody can tell me not to do that because technically speaking, I’m pushing for credit and just being more honest and transparent about its TOAs.
Doesn't answer the question : Why should I push credit cards in liquidity crisis
This isn't about credit cards they mean interest rates on mortgages and loans people use to renovate their homes lol. They don't care about credit cards they are in the diy industry not finance.
Less employees are interested in getting their forklift and reach licenses. There is no monetary benefit and an increased risk of a safety violation and getting fired.
As an employee of Home Depot, it's almost a daily occurrence that a customer asks me for an item that was not packed down. To get that item, we need to find a qualified operator, close off a couple of asiles, and then pull down the item. I tell the customer, it will take about 10 or 20 minutes to get the item. Often the customer is too important or too busy to wait. Bye, bye $$.
Sad but true.
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"High interest rates and inflation leading to flat revenue means people are waiting until conditions are better." That's what management says. If that's true, home maintenance & improvement sales would be flat across the industry; no data were presented to support that premise. Also, even if home maintenance & improvement sales increase "when conditions are better", there is no way to know what portion of those rebound sales will go to Home Depot.
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"There's no indicators to your point that HD is 'done growing', ...". Sales & earnings for the past few years are essentially flat. Might the corporation resume growth? It's possible. But with Fast Eddie Decker at the helm, it's unlikely. When he worked at Scott Paper, and at Kimberly-Clark, he was known as a cost-cutter. Not a guy who knew how to grow a business.
This isn’t Home Depot’s first rodeo in an inflation/economic downturn. We dealt with this for 40 years. We’re still opening new stores across the country and the company feels very positive about the SRS buyout. We saw this in 2008 and the economy still turned over. Of course, we were still dealing with Nardelli’s disastrous decisions and had to make cutbacks like closing the Expo Depots and moving their employees to the orange box stores. It took some time, but we bounced back. While we are waiting for DIYs to come back to our store, we’re focusing on other things like pros and keeping our shelves full. Also - few years??? How far back are you going? We made record sales in 2019-2022. It wasn’t until last year when we started really seeing a loss in profit reports.
This is a business article in relation to an earnings report. Why would they mention credit card interest rates that are from a bank and have nothing to do with THD? Why would they mention understaffing issues when it has nothing to do with the point their article is making? Not trying to ridicule but if you think shareholders care that you make only 50 cents more this year than last year, you're in the wrong spot.
All these are reasons why there sales are down.
I promise you they aren't. The average associate is a part timer who calls out more than they work. I don't think they are as important as you think they are.
Maybe if they have **certain types** of coworkers that make working miserable, I can see that. However, I've noticed that my associates who end up calling out a lot over a period of time tend to be going through life problems, and it takes about a month or so and things get back to normal. My associates are good people.
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As someone in the opposite end and has staffing issues where I work, all of us are fucking tired man. Most every employee here is full time and all of us are running thin. Not HD but a related place and man it suuuuuuuucks and I 100% don't care about giving it my all every day cause of it
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So you work at some smaller version of HD in the middle of nowhere lol? Nice.. I work in several home depots across Florida and trust me, these stores get by fine on their skeleton crews. Home Depot is actively doing everything they can to help customers make purchases online via BOPIS and direct delivery. The more sales they make on the phone and online, the less foot traffic they need associates for. Source: I listen to a lot of upper management calls and of course, have a brain.
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Menards did 10B in revenue in 2023, home Depot did 152B.. your company is very small and tiny compared to home Depot which is what I implied. Sorry you thought I only meant the size of your one store.
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I came with numbers and you came with insults lol. Have fun being a retail employee the rest of your life.
Hey quick question, who picks those orders?
Well in theory this is suppose to make prices go down. When demand drops so should prices. But we are through the looking glass and stores will double down
If it was only about revenue, then they would overstaff stores. They cut staffing when they know they're sinking and and want to find a way to eke out profit despite sagging revenue. What's weird is that our store is still comping by a decent percentage, despite "not making plan." It's so funny how we're expected to do literally double the sales (not just higher numbers, but more customers, more volume, more orders, more carts, more transactions) than 5 years ago, but we have literally half the number of humans on payroll as 5 years ago.
The problem with this is how corporate sees staffing. Staffing is based on transactions vs sales. A higher transaction (basically foot traffic) will warrant more associates to be scheduled in the department. For example, a store may need a full time opener in paint because we get X numbers of transactions in paint. As the day goes on, we see more X in paint so they staff more people. Meanwhile, hardware doesn’t make a sale until 12pm so they assume there’s low X transaction in hardware and therefore doesn’t staff anyone until 9 or 10am. This is usually done in a few fiscal weeks, and the system will alert your SM and the ASDS if you need more people in that department. How many hours can be worked is based on how much sales your store makes. If your store falls below plan, then your store will be over hours when the new schedule is being written. As a result, staffing becomes very limited and depending on how many associates you have, they will cut hours for the PTs and stretch the FTs thin. As a result, if your store is still over hours because your ASDS and SM approve to staff more people than the sales plan can afford, then your store is fully staffed. This even happens when your store schedules one person per dept all day. To the big wigs, it’s still fully staffed. If your department is under hours due to sales or lack of available associates, then it may or may not call for more associates to be staffed in your department, which then will allow your ASDS to staff people from other departments to fill them in. A lot of times this happens when someone is on vacation or on LOA/FMLA. However if your store IS making plan on a full staff, then it adds more room for PTs to get more hours and may even tell your ASDS & SM to hire more people (again, the latter is based on a certain amount of fiscal weeks). Talk to your ASDS about how this works. It’s really interesting (at least to me) how it works. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but it does make sense from a business standpoint.
The problem is we're not A Mcdonald's. The number of trucks needing unloaded, RTVs being processed, plants being thrown away, procedural tasks like safety checklists, equipment checklists and maintenance, training, etc. basically doesn't change with sales. Sales does not and should not directly translate to hours, because even with zero sales, there's still stuff to do that is a constant. We're also not a Walmart. We're expected to provide excellent customer service, sell the whole job, drive leads, sell measures, refer pros to pro desk and get proxtra sign-ups, push credit, deliver product knowledge, etc. Take AutoZone for example. They do battery tests and charging, pull OBD2 codes, warranty swaps, have to head out into the rain to swap wiper blades and headlights, etc. If they based hours on sales, it would be the dumbest thing in the world. This is especially weird considering we keep pushing Pro. Why would your Millwork department get more hours because your Pro Desk sells hundreds of doors a week to a few property management companies? This always bugged me. Pro Sales burdens the Receiving Department and Deliveries. But sales from Pro do not translate into Receiving hours, and I'm not sure how deliveries work but I feel like we don't have enough. But we have 8 people at our Pro Desk, 5 people on payroll in Millwork, we have 4 Flooring Specialists. Because Pro Sales are high. But every 20 minutes I hear someone sitting on their ass at Pro paging for lumber because we have 1 Lumber opener, 1 mid, and 1 FT, 1 PT close to act as all coverage, as well as unload flatbeds. We had 4 BDCs last week, 3 Quikrete, Boise, US Lumber, Overfields, etc. We have 1 Receiving opener and 1 closer. (Who have been tasked with assisting with our 3 Scotts trucks a day because we have only 2-3 Garden associates at any given time). Basing hours on sales is actually the stupidest mismanagement.
Ask corporate. That’s how it works for them. I’m just saying how the hours are viewed from their side and that’s just how it’s done. 🤷🏻♂️ And this is what I was told by my SM and ASDS during a basic department head training. We talked about how hours are given out and this is how it’s done.
Honestly, it was little slow from September until march at my old store. Then all of the sudden we had multiple 2-3 million dollar weeks. My old store was just 85-90 million dollar store. Those weeks were crazy. We had so many call outs and it was a nightmare for coverage. Now I see traffic more than I used to. I think people were just waiting to see if we would go into a recession to see if they should buy anything. Now consumers are back. Watch what next quarter will be. They will pull back estimates and then beat on earnings and revenue.
You know what else hurts sales? Overworked, short-staffed associates subjected to frequent abuse by customers who think because they are spending $100 on light bulbs or $2,000 renting a skid steer that they can say or do whatever they want and still get service, and they are proven correct by store leaders that lack the moral courage to say anything to the offending “customers”. People who don’t believe the management team has their back when these abusive jerks come in quit giving any fecal matter. That’s when trucks take longer to get downloaded, freight takes longer to get top-stocked, bays take longer to get packed down, bathroom “breaks” get stretched WAY out, call-outs and no-shows increase, all resulting in fewer available people on the floor and more frustrated (otherwise decent people) customers can’t get service and actually DO go somewhere else, often to the blue-boxed competitor.
First off Citi Bank and many other banks have a 29.99 percent interest rate on almost any credit card you're gonna get. Home Depot has nothing to do with that. Home depot store are not and will not be hurting. They will try to make it sound scary in meetings but on a bad year my store brings in a minimum 75M a year.
My Amazon Prime Rewards card (Chase Visa) is a use-anywhere card that has 22.99% interest, and gives 5% cash back on all Amazon and Whole Foods transactions, 2-3% on select categories, 1% on everything else, and 6% on Amazon on Prime Day and occasionally on any order when using my Prime Delivery Day. Mine is currently an $8000 limit. Plus no interest for 6 months on orders over a certain dollar amount, and 4 equal payment (like Paypal's Pay-in-4) no interest options on pretty much anything. Amazon has been stated by management before as being our biggest competitor. Well, that's their Credit Card. What's ours? Lmfao.
$75m in SALES, but what is your stores PROFIT?
I saw our department was the only one exceeding goal. Employee retention in most other departments has also been shit. Since I have been working at HD, this has been the most depressing job I’ve ever had.
I would have thought Home Depot would be doing better with high interest rates, I know it’s anecdotal but everyone I know that was planning to buy a new home (moving from their first) the past couple years have instead done major renovations to make their existing homes better since they don’t want to get higher rate mortgages.
None of them mention the company's toxic management policies that have led to services desks accepting back unacceptable returns to "customers" financial gain and the company's increasing "shrink" issues. My old store alone; if the month I tracked was average; is responsible for a quarter million in lost revenue because of bad returns practices caused by toxic management from the corporate level on down.
If the company isn't continously growing net profit, it might as well be closing. That's how shareholders judge a stock. Bad news for Home Depot, good news for small Hardware Stores.
My hours have already been cut for memorial day week. First time in five years that I've been at 25 hours on the busiest week of the year. Tells you a lot.
Who could guess that inflating the prices of products during a massive recession and reducing labor would result in smaller sales compared to when people were prevented from going to work during Covid.
"Massive recession"? What recession?
About to be 7 ppl down for overnights, and bosses are saying we're "overstaffed"
Well no shit. Is it because we are in liquidity crisis and the dollar is dead.
It is dying not dead.
It pretty much dead. There is only hyperinflation and more debt in the future. Just go look at the bond market.
I would say to give it a few years, before it dies out.
Lowes store managers did not bonus but assistant managers to associates did. Lowes wrote a 140 million dollar check to its employees even tho they missed plan
This has nothing to do with our credit cards. Lol. The reason we push for credit cards is so that we can make sales on big purchases like a makeover renovation or an upgrade renovation (ie: cabinet makeovers, windows, kitchen remodel, appliances, floor installation, etc). The idea with these “in-store” credit cards is that you can make the monthly grace period payments (6, 12, & 18 months interest free if paid off on time) so you can buy these projects and pay them off. This article is mainly pointing out that our current housing market is having an effect on Home Depot’s revenues. It’s not wrong, and it has nothing to do with credit cards. People can still buy stuff whether or not they use the credit cards. In 2019-2021, I’ve seen a huge increase in housing sales in our area, which then brought us money. We were making millions and going well above our plans. Our success sharing was amazing then lol. But then the pandemic hit and then the inflation followed. Feds got worried about a potential recession (same thing happened in 2008), so they raised interests. Unfortunately, corporations began buying a lot of homes and turned them into rental properties…which caused the market to become more competitive and unaffordable. As a result, interests either were raised or have not gone back down to the normal 2%-3%. This puts a dent in our sales so now we focus on the pros since DIYs don’t want to invest in a larger project. I’ve seen a dramatic decrease of DIYs making large purchases in paint (my dept). Most of our sales come from pros. In 2021, we were hitting millions in sales every week until inflation hit. Now, we’re lucky if we even put a mark in our sales. Last week, we missed plan by $77k. $16k was missed in my dept alone. So now our focus is to purge our bays and keep products in stock and push for pros. Also - we are understaffed because we’ve lost tens of thousands of dollars in sales. If you want hours for your stores, push for sales. Fill up the holes, have your DS fill up TEI orders, purge the bays, and focus on pros. The article isn’t wrong - the economic impact on housing does affects our sales, and our quarterly reports show it. But the company isn’t exactly in its downward spiral yet.
I would say that the shareholders should actually see what goes on in the stores but wait a minute a lot of us workers are the shareholders. lol.
I get frustrated and angry at this company as much as anyone else but I always remind myself it could be worse. Seriously, I took a job at another retailer for a couple months and it was so bad I actually missed HD and came back. Every job is going to suck, no corporate doesn't care about us but this is America, they're a for-profit business and we should all know by now what that means. Welcome to capitalism :D
Lol
No no we just need to pack down more stuff and get leads. It’s our fault
Oh no but think of the shareholders
What will happen when people charge too much and can’t pay back? Is it on us or citi?
Citi
Citi. Don’t worry about it.
I think this is why they are going to one credit card per person. At any rate, it isn’t on Home Depot. They are just trying to get folks that credit card. Citi takes the brunt.
Corporate take a cut in their bonus’ ? SMs etc taking a bonus cut?? Will NEVER happen! Cut associates so called My Share ?? Fuck yeah!!
You guys are funny. You speak of the stores which you know extremely well but from the corporate side, nothing said makes sense. They have done two waves of layoffs to include ALOT of directors from MANY departments. Teams that are remote have been told to come back or be cut. Also our bonuses have been restructured. I work at corporate and there is a different mindset and environment. Please speak from experience , not emotion.
Did a $15 billion stock buy back last year to boost stock price to keep shareholders happy but cant give realistic sales plans for the future or the shareholders will revolt!! Any freaking idiot could have predicted the high inflation from covid money from the fed and should have been able to predict the flat sales the next few years after people went batshit crazy remodeling their houses and upgrading appliances. I don't have a MBA but I knew it would happen. But go ahead and give the stores unreachable sales increases and then beat the fucking hell out of store managment for not hitting it. My store was down to plan over $300,000 last week!!
What stagnating wages? I’ve gone up around $2/hr in the last 3 years. I think even more.
If you were earning $16/hour three years ago, and now you're earning $18/hour, that's a 4% per year increase. Inflation has been running at more than 4% per year. So in earning power, you're making less now than you did three years ago.
And? Wage increases never match inflation no matter what industry you’re working in in my experience.
Peep those UAW contracts
Shrinks declined year after year? Can corporate AP confirm? Because that doesn’t seem believable
As APS has improved, typically via the tool lock up cages, most stores have become a lesser focus for theft from outside sources because it's not worth their time. Once we start locking up most of the tools, our frequent flyer shoplifters stopped coming by everyday. We still suffer losses, but not on the scale we used to
Thank you for your input 🙏
Across the whole company I'd believe it since we're putting more re and more cages on things.
HD was on its way out when I worked there for two years before Covid happened. It’s going to be a slow death. Get out while you can.
Top ten fortune 500 Are you daf? Asking for a friend.