Guy works at Lowe’s and can’t read a tape measure? WTF?
 

I had to pick up some lumber at Lowe’s the other day for Mrs Rocket. Got the material and asked the young guy to cut it down to size for me.

Me: Cut it at 54-5/8”

Guy: It that close to 54-1/2”? Can you show me?

Me: Yes. Takes the tape and pencil to show him.

We are in trouble....

I picked up some trim, it was sold by the foot, I told the cashier I had fourteen 10 foot pieces, she had to find the calculator.
I said "You're kidding right?"

I won't order anything from Lowe's that takes any calculations on their part. Been that way for quite a while.

"It's 2 and a third millimeters past the 1/2"mark" would have been my answer.

Like when I warrantee returned a 60 month battery and the clerk pulled a 48 month pro-rata sheet out? I had to do the math.

Be scared.

Just cut it to 54-20/32 then.
No?
54-10/16?
No?
How about 54.625 inches?
No?
Tell you what, 1.387 meters and let's call it a day.

(I hope I got those right):D

edit- with my skills, I'd sit there and complain only to get home and realize I had mis- measured it originally and it really did need to be 54-1/2.

If they are hiring the handicapped I'll give them credit but.........

Not likely.

Probably got terminated from Home Depot.....couldn't find aisle 12 without taking a off a shoe ;).

I needed 15ft of heavy gauge battery cable and went to the local auto parts store.
I asked the clerk- young female- how they measured it. She pointed at the floor and said those are 1 foot square tiles and we just lay it out. I actually thought it was a good idea.
She proceeded to lay it out diagonally across the tiles and count. I tried to explain to her that the distance across a diagonal tile was different than across the straight edge. She insisted, so I left with about 21 feet of cable. I did take a piece of string and showed her how the straight edge and the diagonal was different. She stood there trying it again and again- like it was some type of magic trick.
We are doomed.
Gary

Gary the magnifico...can make basic math appear out of thin air ;)

But he can't speel...

We are domed....DOMED I tell ya :)!

It makes me appreciate that the cost of housing is low enough around here that people with real skills can afford to take jobs with hardware stores. Half the staffs at our local Menard's, Home Depot, Lowe's, and Ace are people that are semi-retired tradesmen. I think many of them just want to be in a place where their knowledge is appreciated and useful.

Back in the "good old days" before the big box stores, a local lumber yard and hardware store was my go to place. They had a group of old greys in the lounge area drinking free coffee and eating donuts that their wife's would never let them have. They were all retired tradesmen. Every skill was there. It was great to go advice for a young first home owner like I was. The big box stores soon put that place out of business after 60 years right on Rt66.

Similar issues around here. Whats gets me is I know people that listen to the flakes at Lowes/HD. The ms says, but the guy at HD said.... Sure, sometimes they are right but sadly its not very frequently. Its just a retail job for most now, last week could be a mall store, next week a clothing store.

It is the same at Best Buy or office supply places that sell computers. I was in a big box office supply place to buy a ream of quality laser printer paper and being a geek I wanted to see the prices on hard drives. As I was looking I heard a salesman spouting techno babble, just pure BS.

You don't have to be right to fool most folks, you just have to present your BS confidently. Then most folks will believe you.

Domed. All of us.

so true

I'm the family/friends IT guy ( http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/wat5.gif ) and got a great call the other day. A friend bought a new monitor from best buy. The guy also sold him an external video card/usb adapter for ~$75. Why not just use the vga cable? Simple salesmanship. Ask a few questions, solve the customers needs.

Sometimes you come across full grown adults who can't deal with fractions. We should've adopted the metric system long ago.. like in '75, but that is beside the point.
I hired a college student who couldn't read a tape measure. I gave him a three minute lesson. Obviously he was the product of a sub-par education, but I didn't hire someone who needs be trained at stuff like that, well in this case I did, honestly, I felt bad for him.
It just makes sense that kids would be taught basic math skills and have writing / spelling capabilities. This country just doesn't value education enough.

I think I could pull off working at lowes.
I really think I could.
At the end of the first day, my supervisor would say "That guy- he's got potential. He's going to climb high on the Lowes ladder of success!!!"

God knows I shop there enough and have travelled down every isle 1000 times. My only complaint are how some big box stores will flip their layout so building supplies are on the left vs. the right side of the store. That gets me all dyslexic.

I've also learned that when a salesperson tells you they are out of a certain nut or bolt, to ignore them and root around in the bins close by and on the floor. So often something is not restocked right by a customer or dropped.

Electrical advice is also something I generally don't ask for help on when shopping there.

The "assistance needed in plumbing... assistance needed in plumbing...plumbing..." call outs would get me though. I would go bonkers.

I still miss this hardware store having moved away 15 year ago. Owned a '20's house and they had stuff in the basement that had been there for years (with help that knew what was there and how to find it) that fit my house perfectly.

hardware store, Cherrydale Hardware ARLINGTON, VA Home

i had to measure a lane width. i let a brand new engineer grab the end of the tape measure and go out..i held the box. when he got there, i asked, "Well, what do you have?"

i chit you not, he stared and stared, completely dumbfounded on how to decipher the zero reading he was getting. it was pretty funny. smart kid with new job nerves.. teachable moment for sure.

As a kid, I once amazed my recently-moved-to-Oregon-from-Kentucky Texaco station boss with my math prowess. After checking the oil in a customer's car (remember those days?) I found they were two quarts low. Since the car was a "leaker" the customer said to put two in the engine and to give them two them for later, which I did - providing him with four overpriced (.$99 per quart) cans of Texaco 30w.

I ran (remember those days?) in and told Marvin I'd just sold four quarts and he started writing: 99, over 99, over 99 ... He shushed me away when I interrupted his adding and told him "Marv, it's $3.96. He finished adding, then went about checking his work, this time by setting up a 99 x 4 equation. Within a minute or so he confirmed his answer: $3.96.

If you'd known Marv you'd also remember his voice which, to a high school kid in Oregon was the very epitome of a hard-accented, gravelly-voiced Kentuckian. It was in that voice that Marv exclaimed, "You were right! Those nines!! How do you do that with all those nines!!!"

Moral of the story? This isn't a knew phenomenon and it ain't just young people.

_

Heard a young guy at HD in the electric dept telling an elderly woman how to wire and install a ceiling fan.....wrong. She would have probably electrocuted herself. I saw her later in another aisle and told her not to do what he had told her and please call an electrician or a good handyman to do the job. She thanked me.

Just a few weeks ago I was with the wife in a BB&B store and bought three small items. The young (cute) girl at the register scanned the items and told me $16.50. I gave her a twenty and she typed it in. I guess the computer part of the register glitched and did not read out how much change to give me. She just stood there looking completely lost. I asked if there was a prob and she was frozen with fear. She couldn't do the change in her head and when I told her she needed to give me $3.50 she just looked at me like I was joking. She was close to panicking as a supervisor approached and looked at the situation for about 2 seconds and told her to give me $3.50. Blank stare!

Yes....Domed!

i have a tape measure that stumps seasoned carpenters.

i had it thrown at me. in frustration. it reads in inches. so instead of 1' 6" you get there on my tape it will tell you 18"..six inches later, it tells you 24" and next to it would be a "2" in red.

i agree with Norm..it isnt just the newbs. i had to get a new tape..mine now does it both ways on either side.

That reminds me, I have a tape that reads in tenths of inches on the top half, and is traditionally marked on the bottom half. Quality-wise it's a very good tape but seeing both types of measurements at the same time does something that my simple brain doesn't like so it goes largely unused.

_

My dad worked in a machine shop. There was a guy there that could look at a part and tell you the dimensions accurately to the thousands of an inch, That's .001.

The founder of that company lobbied against USA going to the metric system due to the huge cost of switching. Not just the devices to measure (which most were machinists own tools), but also drawings, specs, and tolerances. Not to mention the entire industry that the devices went in having to do the same. And to be able to keep legacy equipment you would have to support both size specs.

We had a large hardware store like that. Our house was built in the 20’s with reclaimed wood and hardware.
I had a worn out bronze interior door latch. No big box store had anything close. Got talking to another customer who suggested “Smith’s” Hardware “ bin there 100 years. It was the first time I heard about this store.

When I walked in all I could were isles of shelves packed with tons of stuff.
The folks that ran it were a 3rd? generation older couple.
After wandering around exploring for awhile I went to the lady at the front counter and showed my worn out lockset and asked if she might have something I could use to save it.
She said we have a couple of those in the back stockroom. My feet hurt so I’m not going back there you will have to go.
Go through the employee only door, turn left, down 3 isles, turn right and about 1/2 way down in the middle of the 4th shelf there are a couple of those in green boxes.
To top it off after I blew the dust off the box you could see $4.50 written on it. And that is what she charged me.

For the next 20 years or so I went to that store first for anything remotely related to hardware, until it sold out, the kids did not want to run it. It was turned into a patio furniture/appliance store. Then the building was razed and now there is a strip mall there.
I was sorry to see that store go. It was a throw back to an earlier time when General stores had everything from horseshoes to tools to dress cloth.

I really don’t have room to complain in the 40 years Since we moved into this house we have expanded/remodeled and changed out all of the old hardware and doors.

We would rather call for politicians to spend more money on education than evaluate what is being learned with that money.

Plenty of spending going on.

Until we are willing to kick out those in charge by cutting spending and extra crap we'll be mid pack at best.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1520870883.jpg

There is a difference though. The older folks that may have a problem with doing math etc quickly in their head may have left school very early in life to "work on the farm".
Today's young people have had an education. Well, maybe not!

First of all, there is a first time for anyone to learn everything, some can learn on their own, some need a teacher.

It is the inability to learn when it is pointed out that is a serious problem; rather than ignorance.

I'm the one guy designing in metric in my company. I just translate when talking to others as needed.

I build optical systems, and the French designed very important mathematical functions that relate to it. As a consequence metric is the way to go.

It is a little interesting as there are still Newtonian physics in place where I'm not using metric units.

Here in Canada it's metric, which is a better system, but fraction math skills have suffered. This is a real issue when it comes to construction (etc), because being right beside the USA means all materials are still standard measurement.
Now in a carpenter apprenticeship you have to take "construction math" course to learn the standard measurement system, because you weren't taught it in school.

This is what sometimes happens when increasing shareholder value and CEO compensation become all important:

Home Depot's original concept was to stock a large variety of merchandise at low prices and to employee people experienced in the trades who could actually help customers and this concept worked quite well until 2000 or so when Nardelli became CEO. To his credit he implemented a lot of changes which were needed but he really concentrated on cost cutting.
AND one of the main cost cutting measures was to replace the knowledgeable, well paid experienced tradesman who worked the floor with part-time low wage employees who couldn't find aisle 12....
I remember that long ago time when you could go into a HD and actually get knowledgeable help...

I also was in a Lowes recently and asked a young guy where to find the "nail sets" and he didn't have a clue as to what I was asking for ...

My local mom&pop hardware store has a greeter who knows where everything is and knows alot about it.

Real quick in and out. Pretty nice when you're in a hurry.

me too!! his name is RAY.

i got him to start fist-bumping..cool older dude.

when I taught shop class, I made sure all the kids learn how to read a tape measure. It took a lot of work, but eventually most kids will get it. Some will not, and that's just they way it goes. Out of those classes, they learn how to read up to thousands of an inch, difference between standard vs metric, read simple mechanical and architectural drawings from those respective classes and think in 3D. Simple stuff. Where are we headed now? Sad

Back in my single days I owned an old house built in the early 1950s. It had been upgraded over the years by a string of handy man owners. Some was done right, some was a horrible bodge.

The dishwasher was old, real old but it still worked. Then one day the mechanical timer mechanism for the cycles gave up. I took the entire mechanism out to see the problem of a burned up motor. I figure I had nothing to lose so I went to the old appliance store that had been around for many years. I showed the part to a counter employee and he scratched his need and did not even know what it was.

Just them the "old grey" walked by and said "wow an old model ACBSD12345 I have not seen one of those in years." The kid typed it into the new computer system and it showed the part but it said no longer available. The old man muttered something like dang stupid dang computer, and reached back to a shelf and grabbed the exact part I needed brand new in the box. It had a ton of dust on it and was not in inventory.
We opened the box and it still had a mail in warranty card. He said the company that made it went out of business long ago so the warranty is no good. It was an exact match for what I needed. The old man said "gimme 10 bucks and it's yours"
I paid him, put it in the dishwasher and it was working fine 8 years later when I sold the house.

You prolly mean 'aisles'... no water... :)

I always wonder what happens to the stock they had... where are those $4.50 latches now? Landfill?

Back when HD first opened, the only hired people that worked in a trade to work in that particular dept. Now, they pick anyone they can off the street.

Im in a HD or Lowes almost everyday. Thank god I very rarely ever have to ask for something.



.

I find with chain stores, the surrounding neighborhood has a big effect on how good the service is.

I can visit the different ones in town and notice they trend different.

Eventually I pick my favorite.

My local hard ware store the owner retired, and no one in the family wanted to take it up. Building demolished, gone.

We were supposed to switch in the late 70's/early 80s.

We should have.

It never gets cheaper.