Hello Orgers! This afternoon, I stopped at Home Depot to get some flower pots, potting soil and some rust remover for my bike chain. When I got to the checkout stand in the garden department, there was these 2 dudes buying about 10 super sized bags of potting soil. They looked like they were about 30-40 lbs a piece. She rang them up and then she began to ring me up. One of the dudes went to pull their car around to the exit to load the huge bags of soil. A minute later, the guy comes back to the cashier who is about 5'6, 120 lbs soaking wet and asks her to help him put his soil in the trunk! I couldnt believe what I was hearing!! There was 2 evidently healthy adult males who refused to load their own purchases and wanted this young lady to muscle those huge bags into the trunk. I was too disgusted by this. As I walked to my car with my stuff, I looked back and this girl was heaving those bags into their trunk while one of them sat in the car and the other supervised!!

What ever happened to common decency?

Did she look like a man?

AcutenPetiteGrl said:

Absolutely not.

Did she help them? I would have given them the finger...and maybe they were asking her cause they wanted her number or something of the sorts

gender equality at work!

AcutenPetiteGrl said:

Yes, she helped them. Even if they wanted to holla at her, she was so annoyed, she wouldnt have given them the time of day anyway. She was kinda looking at me as if she wanted me to tell them to fuck off. Maybe I should have intervened.

so were they being overtly harrassing or were they just being lazy and wussy? i think they're fully in their right as customers to be lazy and wussy, but if they were sexually harrassing her - even subtly - she had every right to walk away and talk to a manager.

No. From what I saw there was no sexual harrassment. They just seemed to be two healthy adult males that were too lazy to load their own purchases. It was obvious that it was very difficult for her to load bag after bag of potting soil but they just sat and stood there and didnt even bother to help. These were those super sized bags. I couldnt believe the laziness. It was unbelievable how she struggled and they did NOTHING to help.

Anxiety said:

This is an issue that usually slips under the radar in the workplace. Obviously, the young lady needed to satisfy certain requirements to have that customer service job at the Home Depot, but where is the line drawn between simple duty of occupation and abuse by cutomers/employers? I suppose its just a matter of opinion in most cases, but in this case, there was no way that she should have been made to haul all of that stuff into their trunk.

I mean, there is also the wage issue that goes along with this. Should men be paid more where lifting heavier items is required? Afterall, this young lady was not one of those women with lots of brut strength.

Am I overreacting or do I have a point? U be the judge.
[Edited 4/19/05 19:09pm]

It's quite lame of them, but it's probably in her job description.

*shrug*

Could she not have asked for assistance from other staff?

Fauxie said:

Fauxie said:

There wasnt anyone else around at the time. There was only 1 checkout open in the garden department. I suppose she could have paged someone but that could have taken a while. The man insisted that she help him. I just thought that was so rude and inconsiderate.

Fauxie said:

good question. but instead of asking for assistance she should've gotten some oneelse who can lift something heavy to do it altogether. i would've told them i couldn't lift things that heavy and that would've been it.

brownsugar said:

I agree, that if it was too heavy for her she should have asked for assistance, but, if she did, was she really doing her job? Don't places usually tell you that you may have to lift up to 50 pounds, or whatever weight requirement they may have, that you sign prior to getting hired?

And, if she's a cashier, does she really have to load, too? Aren't there loader people for that?


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[Edited 4/19/05 19:40pm]

dreamfactory313 said:

Were they rude? Sure! Was she just asked to do her job? yeah, probably.

brownsugar said:

Right. You just wouldn't be lifting 'em!

Simply say you don't think you can lift them because they're too heavy, page someone to come down and help. If they have to wait, that's tough.

What it comes down to though is two guys being assholes. Any decent person would lift it themselves or at least wait for some suitably strong staff to come and do it.

Fauxie said:

There we have it!

The particulars of the job description shouldn't really come into it. Decent people wouldn't ask that of someone whether officially they had to do it or not.

I think you're right to diregard the customer service side of it.and be disgusted from a human point of view. People don't have to help strangers with their shopping or help old ladies across the street, but they do it to be helpful. Seems more and more people these day will try to take as much as they can.

heck, i wouldn't ask just because i'm stubborn like that.

dreamfactory313 said:

Just by any chance, was this girl a "minority"? And were these two men white?

Yes. The girl was black and the two men were white.

dreamfactory313 said:

Maybe we are all being prejudiced, too, and in actual fact both of these men suffer from severe back problems, which could be brought on by heavy lifting..








Nah, they were jus' a pair of assholes

dreamfactory313 said:

The way Home Depot works is that they hire a lot person, and then cut his hours, or send him to do some other type of work because they can't stand to see him standing around. The next option for a cashier is to call someone from that department to help, at times this takes 45 minutes or more so cashiers end up doing it themselves. As was mentioned, this situation had nothing to do with HD policy, and a lot to do with decency.


And by the way, how did you know she was soaking wet.

i cant belive someone would ask that

noonblueapples said:

Just a figure of speech regarding her size. She was a petite young lady.

dreamfactory313 said:

You're going to have to expain that one.

Its an old figure of speech here in America. We say this about very small sized people. People weigh more if they are drenched with water (soaking wet) so its like giving them every benefit of the doubt in order to make them seem of more significant weight.

Its like saying that the person in the most extreme circumstance of being soaking wet or drenched is still only a certain insignificant weight. I hope I explained that well.