This is really off topic for my blog but I felt compelled to share. My family moved this week and in the process of moving out of our old home, we needed to replace a door we installed a cat door in. While I had the Uhaul truck we were using to move, I stopped at Home Depot to buy a door. I had my 11 year old son with me. Upon pulling into the Home Depot parking lot, the Uhaul was literally accosted by no less than 20 latin day laborers. When I say accosted, I mean running at the truck, beating on the hood, yelling, tapping on the window and one individual even jumped on the passenger side step and started knocking on the window.
As you might guess, my son was terrified. I was quite shocked myself. As we pulled through to the contractor area we passed a few more workers with more understated but similar results. We did our shopping, got back in the truck and only to have the experience repeated on the way out.
Now I understand that these people need work. I am not saying that there isn’t a place for this type of on the spot labor. I am saying that it’s incredible that Home Depot would allow their customers to be swarmed by dozens of non english speaking individuals who are literally climbing on the vehicle.
I wrote Home Depot to explain how inapropriate the situation was. I received a response tonight and it was really surprising. If you don’t feel like reading the following, it can be summarized as “Yea, it’s a complicated issue and we aren’t going to do anything about it, we expect you to continue shopping here.”
Dear Mr. Burns,
Thank you for contacting The Home Depot Customer Care.
We appreciate receiving feedback from you and want to thank you for taking the time to forward your concerns regarding day laborers. We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced.
The Home Depot supports legal immigration to the United States and does not support illegal immigration. The existence of day laborers is a complex social issue beyond The Home Depot?s control. To provide our customers with a safe and convenient shopping experience, we prohibit solicitation on our store property by any group or individual.
To address these and other concerns related to day laborers on our property, Home Depot diligently works with civic groups, local governments, government agencies, law enforcement and other businesses to determine tangible solutions to this social issue. Home Depot’s principal concern on this issue is safety for all persons.
Some local governments believe that The Home Depot can address this issue alone and are mandating various accommodations for day laborers.
This approach is not sustainable. Only when local governments, community groups, non-profits, law enforcement and businesses work together in partnership can solutions be found.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts.
We look forward to your continued patronage and assisting you with all of your home improvement needs.
Sincerely,
Nitya
Customer Care
So that’s that eh? “We don’t think it’s our problem and until local government and police agencies take responsibility for the safety of our customers on our property, we will continue to tolerate loitering at the expense of our patrons.”
I have to say I am very disappointed in Home Depot’s policy here. I’ll be shopping at Lowes.
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Well I know it gets frustrating when there are no taken for your complaints. I would feel the same if I were in your situation. However, things like this can become a big issue that could lead to complications. Probably home depot is trying to protect themselves from getting into complex situations. That could be bad for the business.
It was unfortunate that you and your kid were the ones to experience such disturbing activity. For the very least, let’s thank that you and your kid didn’t get hurt in the process.
Besides, if Home Depot cannot do anything about this even if it becomes a recurring issue, then probably it will be their loss. They might loose their loyal customers. Why don’t you try to file a complaint to your local officials that way, this won’t happen again.
I think it’s interesting that there is such a “big social issue” and “nothing we can do about it” mentality here. I remember when I was a teen, if we hung out in the Wal-Mart parking lot on a weekend evening the police were there shortly. Cruising and loitering are both illegal and I am pretty sure that you could make an argument that this is also solicitation which you can use as a reason to have people removed from your parking lot. I would be curious to do a survey of customers and see how correcting this so-called social issue would negatively impact their customers vs. leaving it unchecked. I am willing to bet I am not the only one who found this type of behavior completely wrong. Home Depot is not a temporary work facility, if they intend to get into the realm of man-power and other daily labor type businesses then they should create a bull pen and make sure that it’s opt-in, not opt-out. What these guys were doing is illegal as they were congregating at the Home Depot and were not there for the purpose of shopping, that is the definition of loitering. If Home Depot calls the police and they do nothing, then it’s on us to help them push it with the local government to do their job. I get the idea that Home Depot feels that it’s a racial time bomb and that they would rather let it sit than risk it exploding if they try to disarm it.
What did you want them to say? “You’re right Mr. Burns; We’ll shut everything down and begin working on the enforcement of immigration laws.” You are entitled to your opinion and that is great, but I personally wouldn’t base my opinion of a home supply company on how well they enforce federal laws. I suggest a blog post on how the lack of government action regarding this issue is harming businesses.
Thank you for your explanation of what happened at the store. It’s interesting to see what is happening in different areas. I hope you and your son are alright!