yeah, I am that guy.

you know what I do sometime, when the clerk walks up to me and ask me what I am looking for I look at the clerk and tell them I am looking for something that is sitting right behind them.

Clerk: 'can I help you find something?'
Me: 'I need some Kotex'
Me: 'OH LOOK AT THAT!'

Next time someone asks to help you find something,

Tell them “The meaning of life.”

WTF Home Depot. I ordered some lumber online Friday and as I was adding items the delivery kept showing Saturday. I placed the order and the delivery jumped to today. UGH. And the delivery window was 6 AM - 8 PM. A 12 hour "window." I was up at 5:45 on a day off. And obviously they didn't show up at 6 AM.

Stuff got delivered at noon. At least the guy bolted before I could tip him (I hadn't decided on this yet).

Not to be a nit but 6AM to 8PM is not a 12 hour window. It's a 14 hour window.

Home Depot is eh, but Lowes is awful at shipping. My experience list is long but most recently, I wound up with a free, supposedly lost, $600 electric mower, and mercifully refused the 2nd one Fed Ex tried to deliver.

This is despite me contacting Lowes to report that the mower showed up after they refunded me, both by phone AND email. The basic CS agent was useless and the supervisor clearly didn't want to figure it out, and online they "resolved" my issue after two emails I didn't fully understand. I don't know if 30 minutes of effort is enough to call it an honest effort or not but the lawn looks good.

nobody 'ace's Hardware' anymore?

have an aunt who has been boycotting HD for years bc she knows for a fact that they fly in natural Christmas trees from China every holiday season and she's not down with that.

well then, there's that.

I always go to Ace for small stuff because it's super close to our house and you're in and out in 5 minutes because of the super competent staff. Significantly higher prices than Home Depot though.

lol me. it was worse than i thought.

I go to Ace's whenever possible. It's very close to my house and I always get immediate assistance because there will be maybe a total of 5 customers in there. No idea how they stay open.

I would call it an honest effort, and at that point I would yield to their knowledge and expertise in their own business.

I gave up on Ace as there is no store convenient to me although there are a couple that are not terribly inconvenient. A couple of years ago I needed to replace a garbage disposal and Ace had a suitable replacement at a reasonable price while my HD and Lowe's did not.

I was pleasantly surprised when I visited Ace and now at least give them a look online to see if they can compete on whatever I'm looking for. So far I have not found another reason to make the extra effort to travel to their location.

I’ve got a True Value right down the road from me. They tend to be more expensive than HD or Lowe’s and they have a much smaller selection. But if there’s something generic I need, like a rake, shovel, or hammer, I’ll go there for convenience and because I know they’ll have it. But a lot of the more specific things I might need, they just don’t carry them.

Good for basics, bad for anything else.

I don't have Ace or True Value. But I've got Home Depot, Lowe's, Harbor Freight, and Walmart all close together. Haven't been to the Harbor Freight yet.

My local True Value (about 1/4 mile away) turned into another Ace (had one ~2 miles away), and I definitely try to go there first, though their prices are higher than HD or Lowe's. HD is ~4 miles, closest Lowe's is somewhere in Scottsdale I think, and not convenient (~10 miles?)

Getting help at the TV/Ace is 100x more convenient than HD, and the guys (and gals) there at least recognize me when I come in. I'd like to think I'm shopping "local".

I had a guy renovate my bathroom and for all major materials he'd go to Home Depot because he gets a 10% discount as a veteran. For all dinky stuff he'd go to Ace since it was 1/4 of the distance away. That really impressed me.

Huge difference between saving 10% on a $20 or $2000 purchase.

I agree that Ace feels like "shop local" even though it obviously isn't. Just feels much more like it if you see the same friendly employees every time. Nobody would think of McDonalds's as local even though there's a good chance your location is actually owned by someone from that area.

Gotta love Rick's iced coffee sugar free french vanilla.

I wasn't aware HD does this, but I get 10% at Lowes, although notably it didn't apply to any of the deck lumber I had delivered recently.

Although, my understanding is that contractors can potentially get considerably higher discounts than that.

As to Ace, eh. It's been a while but my experience (up to about 5 years ago when I last stepped in one) was that they've been reduced to a place that's more expensive with everything and doesn't offer much unless it's something simple or saves you a longer trip. Or if you want to pay $35 for a snow shovel you could have Amazon deliver tomorrow for $22.

True Mom & Pop hardware stores with The Super Helpful Guy Who Always Knows What You Need, yes definitely has charm. I'm still driving to Lowes for my **** but more power to them

Thank you for your service

I too wasn't aware that home depot had a veteran program. Took about a minute to get approved for it.
Although Lowes is closer to my house there are things like ryobi tools that are only at home depot.

Seriously though there are probably a bunch of veteran discounts out there I don't know about. Some automatic online thing, sure, I like money.

But I don't want to go get a free Applebee's appetizer on Veteran's Day because I'm sure at the next table over there's still going to be that super old guy with one arm while I'm woofing down some mozzarella sticks thinking about that time I had frostbite. Now the (many) veterans I know that got deployed will all tell me no man you're good, but I still kind of feel like there are tiers a bit, at least between combat veterans and non. I'm definitely in the minority view but between friends and family's experiences with some really ****ed up things it's tough for me to put "served" all in one category. Or maybe if I had an asterisk for "luckbox" on my discharge papers.

I come from almost completely military family and I stopped wearing the uniform to funerals years ago. The older folks would come in with theirs with like 3 medals on it to my 8, except theirs came from things like catching shrapnel and winning WW2. I literally have an overseas service ribbon for a tour in Alaska, think about that.

Somewhat of a derail but I'm getting to the close to the age where it's normal.