Good Lord, when will I learn, you DO NOT listen to the recorded message that comes on initially when you call the various stores for the hours of operation. I'm in a bizarre situation of working over vast stretches of the Bay Area. I go to about 8 Home Depots on a semi-regular basis, and about 4 or 5 others now and then. I guess that could be called market penetration. Only one Lowes in my range, maybe one other somewhere else. I go to smaller, locally owned stores when possible but the late hours of HD are handy.

Therein lies my beef. Lately, some - about half - of the branches are open til 10, M-Sa and 8 on Sunday. The others til 9, and 7 on Sunday. One branch just south of SF is open til 11 and 10, respectively. Complicating matters, some of them go to shorter hours during winter months, or have in the past anyway.

Oh well, you can just call and ask them right? The key phrase there is "ask them" because the recordings have been wrong way too often. At least 5 times I've shown up at 9:05 only to be disallowed entry. I object, mention the recording, and they say, "oh yeah, we're trying to get that changed (!?). First time I experienced this was a few years back. For the longest time, I'd press zero as soon as the recording picked up and asked the operator. Then it began to seem as though they had gotten it together.

Last night, I was lying on my side, working on a leaky main cutoff valve, the one on the house, not the meter valve of course, about 8:45 pm, I'd had a full day but this lady is a good client and it was leaking pretty bad, so I called the nearest HD, listened to the recording - 10 pm it said. So I go down, easier just to do it then, owner was home, would pay me on the spot. I must have gotten there about 8:59, I didn't notice anything, then at 9:05 I hear an announcement, "we will be closing in 5 minutes," I'm "WTF? Closing at 9:10?" A guy walks by, I think he was the manager, I asked him, he said "yes, 9 pm," I tell him about the recording, he says "yes, we're trying to get that changed."

I about lost it, erupted, saying this happens way too often; I had $h!t taken apart at someone's house, I needed about 15 minutes to gather all parts, and WITF can't you people get something so simple together??

Then he got pissed, I calmed down, we talked some more, I did manage to get the parts and land on my feet but holy crap, who needs the aggravation?

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