Principled Innovation LLC

I HATE Home Depot!

May 27th, 2006

I must tell you that I am absolutely appalled by what I have read in this morning’s New York Times Business section. Joe Nocera, a writer whose work I really respect, provides a truly disturbing account of the arrogant, dismissive and utterly disgraceful manner in which Home Depot treated its shareholders at this week’s annual meeting in Delaware. Unfortunately, this article is not available online, so let me post some of the “lowlights” from this embarrassing exercise in shareholder mistreatment:

Concerned about having to face tough questions about the compensation of Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli, the company’s board of directors simply chose not to show up for the annual meeting. (BTW, for context, in the five years since he came to Home Depot from G.E., the HD board has given Nardelli some $245 million in compensation, including $37 million last year alone. During the same period, the company’ stock has declined by 12 percent, while shares of Lowe’s have risen 173 percent.) Can you imagine your association’s entire board of directors abdicating its responsibility to be present at your association’s next annual meeting?
Nocera reports that Home Depot had “…big, strong men, some wearing Home Depot aprons, who look as if they could be bouncers at a rowdy club” present at the meeting. When one shareholder exceeded his allotted time to speak (all of one minute), two of these men took a step in his direction before the gentlemen sat down. Can you imagine your association bringing in “muscle” to intimidate your members during the annual business meeting?
Nardelli ran the meeting in a totally autocratic style, not permitting any questions, and completely ignoring shareholders concerns about conflicts of interest within the HD board. He blithely disregarded all requests for a more open approach, moving one shareholder to say to him, “If this is the way you are conducting this meeting, I can see why G.E. didn’t pick you.” (FYI-In 2000, Nardelli was in the running for Jack Welch’s job at General Electric before Jeffrey Im melt was named Welch’s successor.) Can you imagine your association’s CEO interacting with your members in this way?

This is how Home Depot treats the people who own the company. We already know that the HD customer experience sucks. I hereby retract any favorable comments I’ve made about Home Depot on this blog or anywhere along the way. There may be a nominal commitment to innovation at Home Depot, but the actions described above reveal that it is neither genuine nor sustainable. I urge everyone reading this post to stop giving your hard-earned money to Home Depot, and use Lowe’s, Ace Hardware or a neighborhood small business instead. The best way to send a message to arrogant jackasses such as Nardelli is with our wallets.

Of course, I am not naive about what really goes on in corporations. They are not democracies and I suppose that, in the end, corporate CEOs and board of directors can do pretty much whatever they want until they are forced out, booted out or indicted. But such a public display of contempt for shareholders is indisputable testimony about the actual state of this company, as Joe Nocera writes:

I’m sure there are plenty of boards and chief executives who have contempt for their shareholders, but most of them are at least smart enough to keep it to themselves. On Thursday morning, in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Nardelli and the Home Depot board let the world know exactly how it feels about the people for whom they are supposed to work.

So it is now official: I HATE Home Depot and I will never shop there again.

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Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, Innovation, Associations, Random Thoughts

7 Comments Add your own

1. Former Manager | June 18th, 2007 at 3:04 am

Bravo!! I’m one of the very many store level managers that have been fired by the HD for nothing more than not conforming to the Gestapo tactics style of management against hourly employees and customers. I’m still unemployed as a result of HD but it makes me feel better to know that stories like this prove that I’m not making it up when I say how horrible it was to work there and what a truly horrible company HD really is.
2. James Petterson | August 22nd, 2007 at 3:30 pm

I also work for h.d..Lately it’s been terrible there.We have what we call the secret squirrel=lost prevention dist.manager.All he does is look at old tapes from the camera to see who bought anything at marked down prices.Like riped bags of mulch etc.they get fired .We lost a lot of employees lately for that reason.@ men just got fired in auguest for buying mulch last may.I thought there bylaws stated the cameras were to watch customers not employees,but nope,it’s for us. think it’s the easy way to trim staff for slower winter months without paying unemployment.Everyone knows you can steal at home depot.We are told if $25.00 or under don’t bother the customers,let them have it.One lady last summer got knockd down ,punchd by a man trying or did steal sinks, they fired her fror confronting him.No employee loyalty anymore.JIm
3. Demetrios | March 11th, 2008 at 7:24 pm

Home Depot forced my HVAC company out of business. We thought we were doing well with the At Home Services program then the just stopped paying us. After being owed $150,000 we were finally forced to close our doors.

And they still have not paid us
4. susan | November 2nd, 2008 at 1:23 pm

I’m a home depot employee of 9 years and i hate what home depot has become.
5. susan | November 2nd, 2008 at 1:40 pm

Home depot treats their employees like second class citizens. The minute you walk into work your human rights are violated. your freedom of speech,your forced to use your ss# in order to clock in , so your privacy is compromised . Not to mention the everyday physcological games they play like changing the rules constantly on standard operating proceedures,threatning terminations,promoting people who have no clue what they are doing but, they are really good at kissing ass ! It’s actually making me sick , the stress, the workload and clueless managers, home depot is going to hell in a hand basket.
6. Lee | November 8th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

I agree that Home Depot treats employees badly, especially the hardest working ones. What is worse is how they cater to those that find it necessary to kiss ass their way along. Not long ago we had someone promoted to department manager that did just that.
Now she has sprayed our new asm and got him blinded as well.
I guess the next step is to pond the aware line until they get tired of hearing the complaints, whether it does any good or not.
7. Association professional who wants to keep her job | November 10th, 2008 at 11:20 am

“Nardelli ran the meeting in a totally autocratic style, not permitting any questions… he blithely disregarded all requests for a more open approach. Can you imagine your association’s CEO interacting with your members in this way?”

Actually I can because I worked for just such an association. The CEO was notoriously horrible to staff, flat-out didn’t do work, and on numerous occasions was rude either to members of the board or to staff in front of the board. It went on for years because nobody questioned it. Staff felt powerless to do anything other than quit–which all her assistants did in short order, and general morale around the office was horrible with such a “leader” at the helm. Nobody said anything to the board because they didn’t want to risk their jobs; meanwhile, this CEO had issued a directive to the members of the board that they were not to interact with staff unless without her knowledge and consent, other than within the strict framework of committee work.

This went on for years and nobody questioned it; it was just “the way it was.” Finally one employee, on her way out the door, requested a meeting with a board member and told about the horrible morale at the office because of this person and how the members were really being short-changed in many ways as a result of it. The board had no idea what had been going on at the office, and the CEO was swiftly terminated.

Bottom line–(and sorry if o/t to your post): people get away with this kind of behavior because nobody questions it, and/or people think if they leave this job they’ll never get another. People need to take action–either by reporting the person/people abusing the system, quitting, or–like you say–if they’re customers, taking their business elsewhere.

Here’s to Home Depot going under and Lowe’s taking over!

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