Janet, All I can say is, "Bless your heart." It sometimes is difficult to be a plant lover and work there, I remember.

Although, sometimes customers can make you wish it could just be you and the plants, no people to deal with!

When I started in the garden dept a number of years ago, I asked to be better trained to answer questions, and there wasn't any such training available! (They told me that they had some old manuals but they were being revamped so we couldn't use them.) So I grabbed every book on plants that HD sold and read it whenever I could, looked up questions when I didn't know the answer, etc. That was how I learned. Of course, that was in between unloading plants, watering plants, loading bricks or topsoil, answering phone questions, answering customer questions, answering cashier questions, checking prices, sweeping debris, and.....Whew, I'm tired just remembering all that!

You are so right about garden dept mgrs usually not knowing a thing about plants. While I worked there, we went through at least 3 dept mgrs and not a one knew anything about plants. If I hadn't had any plant-loving co-workers, I would have been up the proverbial creek! They were life-savers.

Home depot's garden centers have gone downhill in the past couple of years...now I know why. Thanks for the explanation. I suggest you find an employer who values your skills.

It would help if customers would read the plant labels. Though not 100% correct, labels give a lot of useful information. I'll say this for Myer's and Pike's, they seem to take care of their plants.

I know you are only following orders, but I have a pet peeve about phone calls at retail stores. I am willing to wait my turn to be helped by a store employee. I am not offended if you tell me you will help me as soon as you have helped your current customer, even if that customer is on the phone. When it is my turn to be helped, I should be the center of the store employee's attention. I am not offended if you tell 'new' customers you will help them when you finish with me. Any other customer waiting to be helped should be handled in the order in which they arrived. If you can juggle two customers at the same time, fine, as long as you don't abandon me. When stores instruct employees to take phone calls while waiting on a customer, they are telling me that the phoner is a more important customer than I am. I am on site and the phoner is not. My purchase was important enough to me to make a trip to the store. Customer Services should be able to look on the computer to see if the store has the items in stock for which the caller is searching. I have asked store employees who take phone calls while waiting on me, who was first, me or the caller and insisted that I be waited on first. I must be getting ornery in my old age.

Terry

No, Terry, it's not called ornery--it's called "fair."

Another thing I found ridiculous as an employee can be summed up by this example: I had a LONG line of customers and was the only employee in the dept. I was dealing with them first come, first served. One lady decided that wasn't good enough and kept trying to walk in front of everyone else and ask a question. I thought I was being polite when I told her that I would answer her question after I helped the customers who had been waiting longer than she. That wasn't good enough, so she started pitching a fit and made a scene. That didn't get her anything so she then got an asst mgr and pitched her little fit. They gave her $40 of merchandise free to get rid of her!!!

What did the customers who had been patiently waiting their turn get? Nothing, except waited on when it was their turn. Why couldn't the nice customers get free merchandise? Ugh.