My first stop today was Home Depot where it was confirmed that the Campbell River Home Depot is the best in Canada for customer service. Every time I stopped to look around, someone offered me help. When I was picking up foam brushes in the paint section and went to consult my list, an associate offered me help with my list. No one was annoying, but simply made sure I would get out with everything I need in as little time as possible.

One of the items on my list was a variety of moulding, with some needing to be specific lengths. Home Depot charges by the foot and provides a cutting station with a mitre box and hand saw so I spent a few minutes cutting my various pieces to the right length. A couple came by while I was busy and the man asked me if I worked there! I pointed to the ‘customer use’ sign and the guy replied “Cool!” I agree; it’s nice to be able to do it yourself and not have to wait for an associate to free up to do it for you.

Next stop was Canadian Tire. I have a love/hate relationship with Canadian Tire. When I’m not sure where to find something, like a grommet kit, I know Canadian Tire will have it. The store also has amazing deals. But shopping there SUCKS. The associates, when you can find one, are rude and don’t know where anything is. Even if something is displayed in the flyer, it can take an hour to find it. Today was a particularly bad day and I lost my cool with the associate who snarkily told me “This is my section and if it’s not here, then it’s not my problem to find it” (I’m paraphrasing). She told me that I should have shopped online first and found the SKU since that’s all they can search for on their lame, archaic system. I finally told her to forget about it and decided to do one last loop through the store.

As I headed for the cash, the associate came up to me, with a completely different attitude and said she was still looking. I was a bit shocked by the turn around; she’d gone from complete bitch to being friendly. I had told her “I’m not angry with you, just at the way Canadian Tire trains you guys” and I just might have gotten through to her. She dug for a bit more time and finally found the elusive grommet kit. I was still simmering, but my mood improved.

I got to the cash and the first item rung through was a new staple gun. It was a deluxe model that was labeled at $13.95 on sale from $19.95. It went through at $20.95, down from $29.95. Anger boiled up again. This is another Canadian Tire trick; making the pricing confusing and hoping that you won’t notice or won’t care when you get to the cash. The cashier said she’d call someone for me and I replied “No, I’ve had enough of you guys and I just want to get out of here; take it off the bill.” I had been there an hour!!!

Needless to say, I was completely drained by the time I got home, but I still got a lot of work done.