Quick diary to prevent knee-jerk reactions. Oxi, over at FireDogLake, noted this in the news:
If a retailer has not gotten involved with this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to Norm Coleman and these other guys," Mr. Marcus said, apparently referring to Republican senators facing tough re-election fights, then those retailers "should be shot; should be thrown out of their goddamn jobs.
It's stupid, yeah. But keep in mind that Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, the two guys who founded Home Depot, left the company completely over eight years ago- they don't own any stock anymore, don't sit on the board, have nothing to do with the company except they started it back in 1979. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
I was an assistant store manger with The Home Depot, I worked there for almost six years. There are almost 400,000 Home Depot associates across the country. So when I read people going "ZOMG I'm GOING TO LOWES!!!11", it really fucking hurts, okay?
Arthur and Bernie are great as examples of the "good old days", and a lot of old Home Depot hands speak of them fondly- kinda the way people look back at the 50's fondly. But there was plenty of problems, and there's a reason they got kindly shown the door.
I mean, the guy who founded Domnios Pizza is a wackjob fundamentalist Catholic, so I suppose you shouldn't tip the deliver guy, right? The housing market has been hurting Home Depot, and directly hurting the associates that work for it. They bear the brunt of lower sales in payroll immediately off the bottom line at the store level.
That's all I wanted to say. Please get the word out on this.