Home Depot review: Discriminated against by the manager of the burlington washington location because of how I looked ( 1 comment)

To WHom it May Concern,

It is not often that I submit complaints even when I have a bad experience somewhere. The reason for this is that I understand, as I have worked in the service industry in one form or another my whole life, that sometimes people are just having a bad day or the person they were dealing with before me was extremely difficult. With that said, for me to take the time to email a complaint about just how bad of an experience I had means, in my eyes, I was treated pretty fricking badly.

Firstly, I have been a patron of Home Depot for my entire adult life. I am an HVAC installer and own my own installation and service company and I frequent Home Depots across NW Washington and never have I been treated with such disdain and disrespect.

The store I most often go to, as it is closest to where I live, is the Burlington Washington Home Depot. Yesterday, early evening, I went into the store as I had to pick up a pump for an HVAC installation. It is a job that I am doing mostly as a favor to a friend of mine in my spare time on the weekend. Spare time is not something I get a lot of and typically I spend that time with my wife and children.

I had been working at my friend's house all day and just wore my most scrubby clothes as I am not too concerned with my appearance to my friend of 25 years. I say this because, during the week when I am working I make sure I am wearing my best work clothes and I don't wear a hat, I'm clean-shaven and so on and so forth. But on a Saturday evening after having already put in 10 hours I didn't really care how I looked. I had a baseball cap on backward and I was wearing jeans and an old flannel.

I walked into Home Depot around 8 pm on Saturday, March 15th, and went straight to the aisle I needed, grabbed the pump, and walked up to the customer service counter. The reason for this is that my friend was going to pay for the pump online and then I would just take it to the job from Home Depot. When I explained this to the person at the counter she very rudely said to me 'we don't do that.' This was very confusing to me as I have done this several times. I tried to tell her this but she wouldn't hear it. She was looking at me like I was a criminal that was trying to scam her.

Suddenly the manager on duty, Debbie, was standing there with me and the customer service clerk. I was relieved as I figured this meant the situation would be sorted out and I would call my friend and tell him to go ahead and pay for the pump and then I would get the order number, give it to the clerk and I figured I was saving them a trip to the aisle to get it as it was already sitting on the counter in front of the clerk.

But I was so very wrong. The manager first looked me up and down with a scowl on her face as if to indicate 'we don't want your kind in here.' and from that moment I knew I was being judged because of the clothes I was wearing and the way I looked. Still, I explained the situation to Debbie, and cutting me off she says 'we don't do that.' I tried explaining to her that I have done this exact thing here several times and you can look online and see that this can be done especially with the coronavirus epidemic. I told her that I would be emailing corporate to explain just how poorly I had been treated and she proceeded to tell me that she was the manager of the Burlington store and emailing corporate wouldn't do anything for me because her authority was the highest I would reach. I disagreed with her and left the store without the pump. I took my business to Lowes.

So, aside from being discriminated against because of how I looked that evening, I had to spend another hour away from my family to go to a different store to get the pump. I am so disappointed in the way I was treated. And as I said before, I have never been treated like this at Home Depot in my life. So I thought it was important to let someone know in an effort to prevent someone else from being treated like this by Debbie or any other employee at Home Depot.

I respect all the employees of this store and in the service industry in general as I know just how hard their jobs can be. I always treat them with kindness and respect. I simply expect the same in return.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to hearing back from someone.

Sincerely,
Brian Dodds