Home Depot Is Hiring: What's It Really Like To Work There?

Looks like I'm a little late, and its doubtful many people will read this. Like any store, it's only as powerful as its leadership team. You will end up with poor stores, with miserable employees sitting in a rut. On the other hand you will also find great stores to work at. Complete your tasks, ask for more, be respectful and committed. You can easily rise in the company. I've risen, I've also interviewed and hired many. Most of the time you will not get something for nothing. Nothing is overnight. You will need to put the time in, sacrifice and enjoy. This is a huge retail machine. Jump on or move out of the way.

The company is evolving at a fast pace. New competition in Amazon and other online retailers is forcing Home Depot to change, and adapt.

I have worked for bad managers and great ones. Some people can inspire and others can be quite upsetting. The important thing related to this article to none is, the company puts forth the tools for success. Yes some stores have terrible leadership making these tools all but useless. However, you can always take control of your own path. Granted it will be tougher in a poor managed store. But you can do it, and no it's not always enjoyable. It's not a glamorous fulfilling job for the most part. It's big retail.

The majority of upset former/current employees seem to have a common theme. It seems forgotten that you set your availability, you agreed to a wage, you also agreed to a changing schedule. It's quite simple, dress like you want to be an adult, not just rolled out of bed, have some passion for your work whatever it is, set goals for yourself. Do not wait around for anyone to help you advance! You must seek this out yourself. If you're receiving low review scores, blame yourself, no one else. And move on, adapt. It's easy to blame, procrastinate and hide. It takes courage to accept your faults, put yourself on a stage, and follow through.

You can easily find success at HD. There's no promise you'll find your dream job. Not me, I will never stop advancing but I'm still in school too because I have other passions. But no one will ever say I do poor work or give poor customer service. I set my sights on the next level everyday. You can do it too.

Home Depot does not believe in a work life balance, Period! They really need to reevaluate how employees at corporate and in-store are treated. They also need to change the extremely high health insurance premiums. $95 per pay check for an individual and you have to purchase a separate prescription package. Family premiums are upwards of $175 per paycheck.

This article also fails to mention that what the home depot gives you every six months shouldnt be classified as a raise. Its really quite insulting actually. An average annual raise will range between $ .25 and $ .30. And on top of that the manager will look you in the eye and smile as they give you this "raise" Also you'd be hard pressed to be considered for a promotion (in the nyc stores atleast) if you're not from caribean or west indian background. The managers rarely want to be bothered with customer issues. We even have one manager in my current store who has no type of people skills. They promote mostly unqualified supervisors. What person would want to work for a company that allows its supervisors to disappear from their department to go to a back room and sleep for half their shift and spend the other half sitting on their phone. Management being fully aware of the situation and still fails to take action. Incompetency should be the motto for the home depot

all home depots should go union i worked there part time what a nightmare

Maybe their benefits wil soon disappear, because Obama is back as president.

I worked in the corporate office in the Technology area for over 6 years. It was not uncommon to work 60-70 hours a week for months at a time. For the last 2 years I was there, I worked 60-70 hours for 6 months straight, then had a 2 month break of working only 50-60 hours a week. Then the cycle would repeat with working the 60-70 hoursagsain for another 6 months, etc. I am glad I left as it was a true sweat shop. Not only that, but there were never office supplies like notepad and pens available - operately cheaply and work the crap out of your exempt employees seemed to be the motto. and this is from a company with $4 billion in the bank.

The worst job I've ever had was at Home Depot. I started shortly after the founders had retired, when the hideous Robert Nardelli was in charge. I was skilled and educated in my area, but was started at 50 cents over the minimum wage, 4 dollars an hour less than new employees were starting at 4 months before I was hired, and HALF the starting wage a year earlier. We had an orientation for 6 hours, but absolutely no training.
The higher paid employees from the founders' days thought, rightly, that we were being hired to replace them, so they did whatever they could to mess up our work. That means they gave us the wrong codes, wrong prices and the wrong way to order. We got called in front of all the other workers by the managers and humiliated for doing things incorrectly, but it was the customers who really suffered. One man had his order driven back and forth to the warehouse for 6 weeks because it wasn't entered into the computer correctly, and that was far from the worst experience.
Before I quit (after 6 miserable months), they transfered most of the long-time employees out of their departments of expertise and into departments about which they knew nothing. An older gentleman who was a licensed electrician was transfered into plumbing, and a millwork expert was sent into electrical, etc.
There are great benefits, but it would have taken my entire (full-time) paycheck to afford them. I still had nightmares about that place 4 years after I left.

Feels like this piece was written by Frank himself. I'm on my third yearly raise and I'm living it up at 8.81 an hour.
Working at the Home Depot is a soul ******* experiance, unless you are a college student looking for a temp job. Don't fall for the advancement troll, it's not about how hard you work, it's about how much Chapstick you want to use. It's almost like you are in a high school play, everyone is over acting on how much they care about the customers and the employees. That being said, this experiance has had a positive side effect. Showing me the importance of an education, I'm back in school and thanks to the stingy hours and wages provided by the HD. I qualified for the Pell grant and time to focus on my studies.

The major problem with them is the corperate philosophy. When it was privately controlled by the founders, each store was pushed to be an anchor in its community. They wanted the best electricians, builders, lanscapers, hardware experts, etc to work for them. They wanted everyone to know that as a homeowner, you could go to home depot and learn how to do anything yourself. Their motto was "you can do it, we can help" each store was seprate on its own and in its community able to be managed locally to accomplish that end. With Bernie and Arthur retired it became a function of wall street. No longer was an expert wanted in each department. No longer was the philosopy "you can do it, we can help" The verbage went from DIY'ers (do it yourselfers) to pushing the DIFM'ers (do it for me) no focus on customers for life, as in the past. Now it is read their cart and figure out something to sell them base on their current choices. Dont forget to push every custore to have a Home Depot credit card. Dont mention the 25% interest acruing. Scheduliong is now done by a computer in Atlanta. In their efforet to eliminate the possibility of catastrophic failure on the part of local management, the have all but written off the possibility of singular runaway sucess by local managers.

I would not be shocked if Huff-Post/AOL was given some form of "consideration: for publishing this public relations piece about the HD chain.

We have three Home Center chains around these parts: HD, Lowe's and Menard's. Personally I prefer Menard's followed by Lowe's. I seldom, if ever shop at a HD. Other than an expanded tool department, I do not find them all that appealing.