I worked at Home Base as a lumber associate in Arizona when I was in high school. I went to work at HD here in Summerville when we moved out here to SC just to get a decent little income ( semi retired, collecting disability, but able to work ). With my overall experience, which is very wide and deep, they put put me in the garden department. Now, I was gonna load all the guns and fire back but I won't.
I too avoid HD on weekends, especially in the spring and summer, simply because everyone gets a frog up their rear end and decides to do ridiculous things.
From an associate's point of view, you simply can't put 75 bags of mulch in a Jeep Cherokee. Nor will your beloved half ton truck safely carry a pallet of pavers. Sure, call me on the phone and ask me if we have burgundy Ranunculuses because hey, I'm a horticulturist that takes inventory of over a 1000 different plants every day. Ok sir, you don't want the mower with the torn box? Wait right here while I go get three rolling gates, two spotters, a reach truck, then close half the store so I can bring down a pallet full of merchandise I can't stock to get your undamaged box. While I'm trying to do that, two of your fellow customers just walked through my gates so now I can't pull down the pallet..
30 second cleaner, pool chlorine, mold remover and bleach are all sodium hypochlorite. I'm not going to say it again. N is nitrogen P is phosphorus and K is potassium. I don't know why, I didn't invent the stuff. I'm just going to try to explain to you what each one does.
You can pour muriatic acid into water but DO NOT pour water into acid. Again, I'm no chemist but when I owned a pool service, I learned that one through the pain of others. Dichlor for hot tubs, trichlor for pools.
Seriously, for the most part, those folks that wear them aprons have alot of work to do and satisfying every customer is impossible. Some are great and some are just rude and feel they need to abuse you and leave the store satisfied with themselves.
Personally I hate self checkouts and the front end cashiers tend to drive me nuts. Customer service reps get it the worst..