Beyond asking where something is I never speak to people at home depot or Lowes. They are generally no help.

I think at Home Depot you can look up the item on your phone and it will tell you which isle and bin it is in.

I stand corrected!

I won't tolerate rude behavior in my outfit.

Anytime you have to deal with customers you will run into those who love to try and push your buttons.
One word whispered you don't think they heard, or even a facial expression will get you reported to the management.
Don't ask how I know this!

When I was teaching High School kids in Ag Science classes, sometimes adults would say things about how much it must suck to teach teenagers, or how there is no way they would be a teacher, etc.

Let me tell ya, the KIDS have an excuse, they have small brains that are till developing.

ADULTS..... I have no tolerance for their ignorance, arrogance, rudeness and flat out obnoxious behavior. I would quit or get fired within an hour of working with the public.

I work in retail too. Over the past ten years people have gotten a lost worse.

I have had a much different experience at both of those. I find that generally they are willing to find out if they don't know. I recon every store is different. The Decatur Lowes is awesome , and the Home Depot off Western Center Blvd in Ft Worth as well.

Couldn't pay me enough to ever work in retail again. On the other hand, I am gonna do the part time Census gig when the Rona calms down. Should get to experience the rudeness first hand once again.

Are you sure you would even make it a day?

The employees at most places are not experts in the dept they are in. The supervisor tells them they are in a certain department . They make minimum wage and are thrown under the bus. I may ask them where something is but never any questions about it. I know they know about as much or less than I know.
Even in my tech support job I am expected to be an expert in everything. I get calls about Microsoft office issues, webex, visual studio etc...I have to Google and try to fix the issue. I can't escalate it up because there is no where to escalate.

On the other side of the coin,i find dealing with the younger folks getting hired,hard to deal with.Most got no people skills.

This. And I have found their managers to be imbeciles also.

Our local Lowes folks are very helpful, if you can find them. I only go to HD for paint since Behr is much better than both SW & Valspar IMHO. Other than that, I stay out of HD completely. They treated me horribly when I first set up my business account, so I give my money to Lowes if at all possible.

I'm never rude to them IMO, but I probably do ask some dumb questions.