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It’s interesting the notion of waiting in lines. Yesterday at Home Depot I needed a four foot length of hose cut from their hose area. Most employees, even a pa

It’s interesting the notion of waiting in lines. Yesterday at Home Depot I needed a four foot length of hose cut from their hose area. Most employees, even a pair standing and talking right near the hose, said they couldn’t help me, we needed someone from plumbing. They called three separate times for someone from plumbing and after 10 minutes or so someone arrived. But another man had been waiting since just before me, so he was helped first. That took an additional 20 minutes. Even once he came to me, it took maybe 10 minutes because the hose didn’t have the right SKU and he didn’t know what to put on the ticket. So I had to wait more than 30 minutes for a single piece of hose. I bet that’s not as bad as lines were sometimes in the Soviet system, but it’s not fantastic on its own. Imagine if Boris Yeltsin had to wait 30 plus minutes for a four foot length of hose that none of the employees standing around were able or willing to help him with... I’ve been remembering to go to the small Ace Hardware store in town lately. They are much smaller but still seem to have stock of the right items, and I can get a person or two to help me immediately. Capitalism as we know it played a big role in the abundance we’ve had here, but it has also left the US with the most expensive medical care and alienated individuals. Our system may be better than the Soviet system in many ways, but is it the best we can do?

bdamm 7y ago
Honestly I'm tired of Home Depot. If you want real service go to your local Ace or similar. Plus they have a more refined selection of products.
- luckydata 7y ago
  Ace barely scratches the surface if you need to do anything beyond what a normal homeowner would do by themselves. It's the training wheels of hardware stores but the selection (and quality) of tools is a lot lower because for higher priced, more specialized stuff nobody goes there.
  - bdamm 7y ago
    I agree, but Home Depot has been piling a lot of junk on their shelves lately. Think the $5 keychain package with strap when a $0.50 loop will do. Do they stock the $0.50 loop? Good luck finding them or anyone that will know where they are! But you'll surely have no problem finding the big stand of trinkets next to the terrible key cutting machine. Ace will just have a bin of loops and you pick the ones you want, done. This pattern, over and over. Yes, you CAN get great stuff at Home Depot for a decent price, but good luck getting out of there with all your bits at a reasonable price. It just seems to me that they're losing sight of what makes a big box store useful. Of course if I want a stack of PVC or conduit or pressure treated lumber I'm probably going to Home Depot (or a local lumber supplier.) This guy was looking for cuts of hose. That's an Ace visit.
- mc32 7y ago
  If you’re doing remodeling work or additions you need Home Depot or Lowe’s. Ace is for minor things around the house.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    My not particularly large community has a Menard's and a decent lumber yard (that also sells nice hardware items) and a place ~10 miles away that you can order whatever from. I sort of hate Menard's, but they do charge a lot less than the better builder stores. Another small town I've lived in had a Home Depot and a higher end builder store right across the street.
HillaryBriss 7y ago
ah... Home Depot dysfunction. yesterday, at Home Depot a fellow customer told me about his experience buying bags of gravel. he paid for the materials and the HD workers told him they'd bring it out to the loading area so he could put it in his vehicle. he waited there for forty minutes. no gravel. his patience ran out and he decided to ask for a refund. they sent him to the refund desk, which, naturally, required him to return the gravel before they could give back his money.
CryptoPunk 7y ago
>>Capitalism as we know it played a big role in the abundance we’ve had here, but it has also left the US with the most expensive medical care and alienated individuals. Healthcare is one of the least capitalistic parts of the economy, in the US and the rest of the Western world, and consequently, suffering from increasing costs. In contrast to the increasingly regulated and subsidized major medical fields, the most capitalistic fields of medicine, like cosmetic procedures, have actually seen prices increase at below the rate of inflation over the last several decades.
- ghettoimp 7y ago
  I think you're calling cosmetic procedures a "capitalistic sector" of the medical industry because insurance companies won't cover these elective procedures, so folks have to pay for them out of pocket, so the providers have to price the service at a level that people are willing to pay for. That all seems like a good example of companies that are competing on price, classic capitalism, fair enough. But if we pick any other particular area of medicine where prices are out of whack -- say drug companies that raise prices by exorbitant amounts, or hospitals charging hundreds of dollars for an aspirin -- isn't that still classic, unchecked capitalism in action? Aren't these just ordinary companies, working to optimize their profits by cornering a market on certain products or services and charging the maximal value they can extract from their customers?
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    I don't think anyone is arguing that the market for health care is functioning well. The question is - why is it broken? Prior to consumer protection laws, you would take your car in to an auto mechanic, they'd "fix it", and then they'd charge you whatever they felt like. Now we have laws requiring written estimates in advance. How about we start with that?
- jopsen 7y ago
  It's not an either or... Our supermarkets have lots of regulation ranging from what food may contain, how it is produced, to how it may be markedet.
derp_dee_derp 7y ago
Capitalism also funded the research and development of that medical care you're complaining about being too expensive. Better that it exists and is expensive rather than that medical care not existing at all.
- jtr1 7y ago
  Are you sure about that?
- silversconfused 7y ago
  Plenty of medical science has been done with less greedy motives, such as eliminating suffering. For that reason, medical science can easily survive the capitalists abandoning it.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  This sounds like a positive claim that could use proof.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    I think arriving at a hard percentage would be difficult, but I don't see how it is controversial that US government funded research has been well supported by capitalism and contributed much medical knowledge, or that there has been lots of private research and development work in the medical field in the United States (I guess lots and lots of development has been privately funded). Of course, that history played out that way is a different argument than claiming that we could only arrive at our current level of medical knowledge by that path.
    - KirinDave 7y ago
      All we'd need to do is look at the tax code for health care businesses.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
asdf21 7y ago
You can shop somewhere else besides Home Depot... that's the beauty of the free market.
- eropple 7y ago
  Only if you've got alternatives. Where I am, your choices are Home Depot or ten-foot-wide hardware stores where you can find any bolt you want but can't get a sheet of plywood.
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    Sure... but you're living in a rural area! What do you expect? I also live 20+ minutes from big box stores. Being away from civilization is kinda the point of being in the country, no? Watch the 1990s era video linked in the original article (and mentioned elsewhere in the commentary here). Those 90s Muscovites were living in the most urban part of the Soviet Union. Just imagine trying to get a grade 8 bolt in the countryside.
    - eropple 7y ago
      I live in Somerville, Massachusetts. It is the sixth most densely populated city in the United States that isn't part of the NYC metro area. That's why the hardware stores are the size of closets. If I lived in a rural area--well, I grew up in Maine, surrounded by large hardware stores that frequently did have that sort of thing, like the Aubuchon Hardware chain. Home Depot is the only store in the city, and the only one within quick-trip distance outside of the city, that has a broad selection and services like rough-cutting. (I do like Tags in Porter Square, but their selection is lacking. Great people though.)
      - stickfigure 7y ago
        How far do you really have to go? In the outskirts of San Francisco (where I moved from), it's easy to find massive hardware and fixture stores that aren't Home Depot. The East Bay is full of them too. In LA and Sacramento there are literally giant industrial parks full of retail stores dedicated to specific home improvement niches. I once spent nearly a whole day walking door-to-door looking at flooring. Of course, it might take you an hour to get across town if you time traffic badly...
darkhorn 7y ago
Aren't there any other countries than Soviet Union and the USA?
- dazc 7y ago
  According to TV, no.
fatnoah 7y ago
>I’ve been remembering to go to the small Ace Hardware store in town lately. I never made a conscious decision to avoid the big box stores, but living in downtown Boston forced that decision on me, so I got used to going to a small, local store for just about everything. I've since moved to a suburb, but still go to the small stores, even when it's less convenient.
RandallBrown 7y ago
At the same time, I can preshop Home Depot online and it will tell me the row and bin that I need to go to for just about every item in the store. IKEA is the only other store I've ever actually been able to do that.
smacktoward 7y ago
I was just thinking about this myself, having recently had to spend exorbitant times waiting in line at both my local Sprint store and a Best Buy. It does seem like this is a problem that isn't specific to Home Depot (where I've had to wait in long lines as well); it's more a problem that seems to be metastasizing across all sorts of big retail. My suspicion is that it has something to do with the jobs these companies offer being increasingly precarious, poorly trained and ill-paid. Corporate America has spent decades striving to get to a point where workers can be treated as interchangeable widgets, swapped around at will and just discarded when they wear out. Well, they got there, and now we discover that when you build an entire culture around treating people without respect they don't have a lot of respect for you or the job you're asking them to do either. Workers in the old Soviet Union supposedly had a joke: "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." It's not hard to imagine someone working first-line customer support at a big box store saying the same thing.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
A singular example of 'having to wait for a few minutes' in Home Depot doesn't really help make your case. Whatever we might not like about the 'Big Box' nature of it ... 'Home Depot' is actually an excruciatingly example of that which is articulated in the article. HD is this massive place where you can buy a gazillion different types of products (and services); there is an amazing degree of variety and specialization in every little aspect of it all. Home Depot is in many ways a luxury store of the suburban middle class, a blatant example of the massive surpluses inherent in the modern economy. It's a testament to a lot of things. It's a kind of 'bourgeois for the masses'. Consider for a moment that such a thing doesn't even exist in Europe! Now, most of this is cultural, in that, for a variety of historical reasons, they don't have that 'DOY' kind of culture; but make no mistake, it's also economic. People generally don't have the garage space (or a garage/shed) in which to store all of the semi useful bounty they collect from such a place. And neither the income to support it. If HD were a place wherein it was impossible to get service, where staff 'knew nothing' and it was a desperately terrible business, then I think there'd be a point to be made but as it stands ... 'having to wait in line once for something' is almost crossing the line into entitlement. And of course, the reason lines existed in the Soviet Union is something else entirely, and so the comparison is problematic to begin with. Education and Health Services are 'problem areas' for capitalism, at least in the American sense, but I suggest with some meaningful reforms, it could work out. A handful of European nations have 'somewhat/mostly private' though still 'socialized' systems that work well. "He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, "there would be a revolution.". This is really a historical statement. If we can move past issues of national pride and the 'we are better / I told you so' jingoisms, there's a lot to be learned from this. In fact, so few statements communicate so much.
- dmurray 7y ago
  In what sense does such a thing as Home Depot not exist in Europe? In Ireland we have two chains of big warehouse-style DIY stores: Woodies and B&Q, sized around 50,000 sq ft. In both of them you can get power tools, timber, bathroom and plumbing supplies, garden furniture, paint, flooring, doors... I've never been in a Home Depot but they sound pretty similar. Are they just so much bigger?
rasz 7y ago
>Imagine if Boris Yeltsin had to wait 30 plus minutes for a four foot length of hose You have rubber hose!?!?! What do you mean its not rationed? I can buy whole 4 feet at once? Are you sure I dont need my ration stamps? and someone will actually cut it for me? :o no signup lists? I only have to wait 30 minutes? so quick I dont even have to hire someone to stand for me! https://culture.pl/en/article/10-mind-boggling-oddities-of-communist-poland https://culture.pl/en/article/10-mind-boggling-oddities-of-c...
- razius 7y ago
  This! I don't think western people can grasp the communist queues and shops.
stcredzero 7y ago
Yesterday at Home Depot I needed a four foot length of hose cut from their hose area. Most employees, even a pair standing and talking right near the hose, said they couldn’t help me, we needed someone from plumbing. They called three separate times for someone from plumbing and after 10 minutes or so someone arrived. I was at Home Depot to get some roller blinds, which they advertised they could cut to measurements. I got the blinds and went to the machine, which basically had a thing to spin the blinds around and cutting blade screw-clamped to a ruler-like fixture, which allowed adjustment to measurements. (The point being, that you could align the blade to any measurement shown on the ruler.) A store clerk finally comes after a long time, and I give her the measurements. Her response: "The machine doesn't do fractions." This was clearly a lie. The machine did fractions. The clerk didn't.
Digory 7y ago
I’ve felt a general decrease in retail experience in the past year or so. Maybe Amazon is eating everybody's lunch. But labor is tight, and employee quality is down. NYT reported yesterday that we are well past full employment -- because employers are willing to hire anyone, including felons, and will overlook things that used to be firing offenses.
razius 7y ago
Not even in the same ballpark, imagine having to queue up for 5-6h to be able to buy your monthly ration of 1kg of sugar in the only shop in town without knowing if it will run out by the time you get there or not. 30m waiting time with the option of coming back or going somewhere else is a breeze.

bdamm 7y ago

Honestly I'm tired of Home Depot. If you want real service go to your local Ace or similar. Plus they have a more refined selection of products.

luckydata 7y ago
Ace barely scratches the surface if you need to do anything beyond what a normal homeowner would do by themselves. It's the training wheels of hardware stores but the selection (and quality) of tools is a lot lower because for higher priced, more specialized stuff nobody goes there.
- bdamm 7y ago
  I agree, but Home Depot has been piling a lot of junk on their shelves lately. Think the $5 keychain package with strap when a $0.50 loop will do. Do they stock the $0.50 loop? Good luck finding them or anyone that will know where they are! But you'll surely have no problem finding the big stand of trinkets next to the terrible key cutting machine. Ace will just have a bin of loops and you pick the ones you want, done. This pattern, over and over. Yes, you CAN get great stuff at Home Depot for a decent price, but good luck getting out of there with all your bits at a reasonable price. It just seems to me that they're losing sight of what makes a big box store useful. Of course if I want a stack of PVC or conduit or pressure treated lumber I'm probably going to Home Depot (or a local lumber supplier.) This guy was looking for cuts of hose. That's an Ace visit.
mc32 7y ago
If you’re doing remodeling work or additions you need Home Depot or Lowe’s. Ace is for minor things around the house.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  My not particularly large community has a Menard's and a decent lumber yard (that also sells nice hardware items) and a place ~10 miles away that you can order whatever from. I sort of hate Menard's, but they do charge a lot less than the better builder stores. Another small town I've lived in had a Home Depot and a higher end builder store right across the street.

HillaryBriss 7y ago

ah... Home Depot dysfunction. yesterday, at Home Depot a fellow customer told me about his experience buying bags of gravel. he paid for the materials and the HD workers told him they'd bring it out to the loading area so he could put it in his vehicle. he waited there for forty minutes. no gravel. his patience ran out and he decided to ask for a refund. they sent him to the refund desk, which, naturally, required him to return the gravel before they could give back his money.

CryptoPunk 7y ago

>>Capitalism as we know it played a big role in the abundance we’ve had here, but it has also left the US with the most expensive medical care and alienated individuals. Healthcare is one of the least capitalistic parts of the economy, in the US and the rest of the Western world, and consequently, suffering from increasing costs. In contrast to the increasingly regulated and subsidized major medical fields, the most capitalistic fields of medicine, like cosmetic procedures, have actually seen prices increase at below the rate of inflation over the last several decades.

ghettoimp 7y ago
I think you're calling cosmetic procedures a "capitalistic sector" of the medical industry because insurance companies won't cover these elective procedures, so folks have to pay for them out of pocket, so the providers have to price the service at a level that people are willing to pay for. That all seems like a good example of companies that are competing on price, classic capitalism, fair enough. But if we pick any other particular area of medicine where prices are out of whack -- say drug companies that raise prices by exorbitant amounts, or hospitals charging hundreds of dollars for an aspirin -- isn't that still classic, unchecked capitalism in action? Aren't these just ordinary companies, working to optimize their profits by cornering a market on certain products or services and charging the maximal value they can extract from their customers?
- stickfigure 7y ago
  I don't think anyone is arguing that the market for health care is functioning well. The question is - why is it broken? Prior to consumer protection laws, you would take your car in to an auto mechanic, they'd "fix it", and then they'd charge you whatever they felt like. Now we have laws requiring written estimates in advance. How about we start with that?
jopsen 7y ago
It's not an either or... Our supermarkets have lots of regulation ranging from what food may contain, how it is produced, to how it may be markedet.

derp_dee_derp 7y ago

Capitalism also funded the research and development of that medical care you're complaining about being too expensive. Better that it exists and is expensive rather than that medical care not existing at all.

jtr1 7y ago
Are you sure about that?
silversconfused 7y ago
Plenty of medical science has been done with less greedy motives, such as eliminating suffering. For that reason, medical science can easily survive the capitalists abandoning it.
KirinDave 7y ago
This sounds like a positive claim that could use proof.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  I think arriving at a hard percentage would be difficult, but I don't see how it is controversial that US government funded research has been well supported by capitalism and contributed much medical knowledge, or that there has been lots of private research and development work in the medical field in the United States (I guess lots and lots of development has been privately funded). Of course, that history played out that way is a different argument than claiming that we could only arrive at our current level of medical knowledge by that path.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    All we'd need to do is look at the tax code for health care businesses.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

asdf21 7y ago

You can shop somewhere else besides Home Depot... that's the beauty of the free market.

eropple 7y ago
Only if you've got alternatives. Where I am, your choices are Home Depot or ten-foot-wide hardware stores where you can find any bolt you want but can't get a sheet of plywood.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  Sure... but you're living in a rural area! What do you expect? I also live 20+ minutes from big box stores. Being away from civilization is kinda the point of being in the country, no? Watch the 1990s era video linked in the original article (and mentioned elsewhere in the commentary here). Those 90s Muscovites were living in the most urban part of the Soviet Union. Just imagine trying to get a grade 8 bolt in the countryside.
  - eropple 7y ago
    I live in Somerville, Massachusetts. It is the sixth most densely populated city in the United States that isn't part of the NYC metro area. That's why the hardware stores are the size of closets. If I lived in a rural area--well, I grew up in Maine, surrounded by large hardware stores that frequently did have that sort of thing, like the Aubuchon Hardware chain. Home Depot is the only store in the city, and the only one within quick-trip distance outside of the city, that has a broad selection and services like rough-cutting. (I do like Tags in Porter Square, but their selection is lacking. Great people though.)
    - stickfigure 7y ago
      How far do you really have to go? In the outskirts of San Francisco (where I moved from), it's easy to find massive hardware and fixture stores that aren't Home Depot. The East Bay is full of them too. In LA and Sacramento there are literally giant industrial parks full of retail stores dedicated to specific home improvement niches. I once spent nearly a whole day walking door-to-door looking at flooring. Of course, it might take you an hour to get across town if you time traffic badly...

darkhorn 7y ago

Aren't there any other countries than Soviet Union and the USA?

dazc 7y ago
According to TV, no.

fatnoah 7y ago

>I’ve been remembering to go to the small Ace Hardware store in town lately. I never made a conscious decision to avoid the big box stores, but living in downtown Boston forced that decision on me, so I got used to going to a small, local store for just about everything. I've since moved to a suburb, but still go to the small stores, even when it's less convenient.

RandallBrown 7y ago

At the same time, I can preshop Home Depot online and it will tell me the row and bin that I need to go to for just about every item in the store. IKEA is the only other store I've ever actually been able to do that.

smacktoward 7y ago

I was just thinking about this myself, having recently had to spend exorbitant times waiting in line at both my local Sprint store and a Best Buy. It does seem like this is a problem that isn't specific to Home Depot (where I've had to wait in long lines as well); it's more a problem that seems to be metastasizing across all sorts of big retail. My suspicion is that it has something to do with the jobs these companies offer being increasingly precarious, poorly trained and ill-paid. Corporate America has spent decades striving to get to a point where workers can be treated as interchangeable widgets, swapped around at will and just discarded when they wear out. Well, they got there, and now we discover that when you build an entire culture around treating people without respect they don't have a lot of respect for you or the job you're asking them to do either. Workers in the old Soviet Union supposedly had a joke: "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." It's not hard to imagine someone working first-line customer support at a big box store saying the same thing.

sonnyblarney 7y ago

A singular example of 'having to wait for a few minutes' in Home Depot doesn't really help make your case. Whatever we might not like about the 'Big Box' nature of it ... 'Home Depot' is actually an excruciatingly example of that which is articulated in the article. HD is this massive place where you can buy a gazillion different types of products (and services); there is an amazing degree of variety and specialization in every little aspect of it all. Home Depot is in many ways a luxury store of the suburban middle class, a blatant example of the massive surpluses inherent in the modern economy. It's a testament to a lot of things. It's a kind of 'bourgeois for the masses'. Consider for a moment that such a thing doesn't even exist in Europe! Now, most of this is cultural, in that, for a variety of historical reasons, they don't have that 'DOY' kind of culture; but make no mistake, it's also economic. People generally don't have the garage space (or a garage/shed) in which to store all of the semi useful bounty they collect from such a place. And neither the income to support it. If HD were a place wherein it was impossible to get service, where staff 'knew nothing' and it was a desperately terrible business, then I think there'd be a point to be made but as it stands ... 'having to wait in line once for something' is almost crossing the line into entitlement. And of course, the reason lines existed in the Soviet Union is something else entirely, and so the comparison is problematic to begin with. Education and Health Services are 'problem areas' for capitalism, at least in the American sense, but I suggest with some meaningful reforms, it could work out. A handful of European nations have 'somewhat/mostly private' though still 'socialized' systems that work well. "He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, "there would be a revolution.". This is really a historical statement. If we can move past issues of national pride and the 'we are better / I told you so' jingoisms, there's a lot to be learned from this. In fact, so few statements communicate so much.

dmurray 7y ago
In what sense does such a thing as Home Depot not exist in Europe? In Ireland we have two chains of big warehouse-style DIY stores: Woodies and B&Q, sized around 50,000 sq ft. In both of them you can get power tools, timber, bathroom and plumbing supplies, garden furniture, paint, flooring, doors... I've never been in a Home Depot but they sound pretty similar. Are they just so much bigger?

rasz 7y ago

>Imagine if Boris Yeltsin had to wait 30 plus minutes for a four foot length of hose You have rubber hose!?!?! What do you mean its not rationed? I can buy whole 4 feet at once? Are you sure I dont need my ration stamps? and someone will actually cut it for me? :o no signup lists? I only have to wait 30 minutes? so quick I dont even have to hire someone to stand for me! https://culture.pl/en/article/10-mind-boggling-oddities-of-communist-poland https://culture.pl/en/article/10-mind-boggling-oddities-of-c...

razius 7y ago
This! I don't think western people can grasp the communist queues and shops.

stcredzero 7y ago

Yesterday at Home Depot I needed a four foot length of hose cut from their hose area. Most employees, even a pair standing and talking right near the hose, said they couldn’t help me, we needed someone from plumbing. They called three separate times for someone from plumbing and after 10 minutes or so someone arrived. I was at Home Depot to get some roller blinds, which they advertised they could cut to measurements. I got the blinds and went to the machine, which basically had a thing to spin the blinds around and cutting blade screw-clamped to a ruler-like fixture, which allowed adjustment to measurements. (The point being, that you could align the blade to any measurement shown on the ruler.) A store clerk finally comes after a long time, and I give her the measurements. Her response: "The machine doesn't do fractions." This was clearly a lie. The machine did fractions. The clerk didn't.

Digory 7y ago

I’ve felt a general decrease in retail experience in the past year or so. Maybe Amazon is eating everybody's lunch. But labor is tight, and employee quality is down. NYT reported yesterday that we are well past full employment -- because employers are willing to hire anyone, including felons, and will overlook things that used to be firing offenses.

razius 7y ago

Not even in the same ballpark, imagine having to queue up for 5-6h to be able to buy your monthly ration of 1kg of sugar in the only shop in town without knowing if it will run out by the time you get there or not. 30m waiting time with the option of coming back or going somewhere else is a breeze.