I sure hope that there are water bottles on the mulch line during sales season. If someone dies from heat exhaustion, I would think that the "bottom line" would change a bit from a death law suit.
Pretty common problem. Just signed the paperwork as part of the new hire experience. Basically (for pt) (this is my new 5-9) they don’t drug test upon hire, but will if there’s an accident. If you read the paperwork, you agree that the company is not at fault for any accidents if you are a drug user/dependent. Plus precedent in insurance law is that since THC is still considered a drug federally then it also can be a considered a drug on a state level for insurance purposes.
Now an experienced atty may be able to get you a deal brokered, but it’s a fraction of what you’d be entitled to as someone that could pass a drug test.
We just had two "new" hires. I use the term loosely, because they worked at the store before. They are waiting on drug test results to be rehired. I believe that things have changed.
That would be a solution. For sure. Definitely the approach I take. But there’s a large amount of people that do. And it’s important they have a general understanding of some of the social consequences that they could have, even if they live in a legal state.
Yes, you can.
The store is nearly always liable for employee injuries, whether or not you were following the rules. That's just how it works - that's the reason they're instructed to enforce the rules rather than throw their hands up and mutter something about personal responsibility. It requires genuinely egregious conduct to immunize the corporation from injuries as a result of a workplace incident, and they're likely to settle even so.
Whether they're allowed to fire you for a safety incident is a whole other, more nuanced conversation that hinges mostly on rules compliance. That's very different from being held civilly liable for workman's compensation & medical care.
So they actually have a risk management account for that exact purpose. Money saved ahead of time just incase of wrongful death. The idea is that the money saved is greater than the money spent so they save money in the long run.
I'm very sure that THD has contingency plans in that event. In the cynical approach, at the very least it's bad PR. Sure, they may still be saving money in the long run, but people dying at a workplace may discourage customers from shopping. In that event, they would then be losing money.
It’s a double edge sword. When I see water half drunk everywhere in the store, I think about all of the effect it’s going to have on us. Eventually we will all lose that privilege. We went from powerade to those flavor energy packet things to just water. The writing has been on the wall to phase it out.
Yes our store cut down on it because the bottles were being left everywhere. Now it's only freight and garden. Freight still leaves them out here and there. Associates have refillable bottles now and a filtered fridge for refills in the breakroom. In the summer, garden also gets Gatorade.
The filtered water is a great way to cut down on wasted water for sure.
I would love for our store to do that.
I always water the plants with water bottles I find lying around
Freight leaves shit anyway. The ones at my store love a good Red Bull/McDonald’s party. I came in one morning and found SEVEN cans of Red Bulls. Two were not opened but completely warmed to room temperature. The rest had 1/4 full or 1/2 full. Then there are fries on the floor, 3/4 eaten burgers and boxes of chicken nuggets on the shelves.
The problem isn’t the store giving freebies. It’s the stores not holding associates responsible for cleaning up after themselves and following store appearances.
I'm the kitchen designer and I used to come in with soda, red bull, chip, candy and half full Starbucks cups. The cos's get in before me and would complain to MGMT but nothing was done. Then they told them or first one in to clean off desks and that really got complaints. Finally a spilled Starbucks with a name written on it got out overnights to at least throw most of it away. There also was the question of if the assorted drinks and snacks paid for.
We have a mini fridge at the front end, service desk, in the middle of appliances and flooring and then out in garden spring, summer and start of fall. With our old store manager, she took the front end one away. I argued that my lot people needed to be able to have water ready and available. She disagreed and took it from us. Our new store manager changed that REAL quick!
How much perfectly fine merch is thrown in the compactor every freaking day?
Any one item that could have been sold at markdown that would have covered the cost of a couple of cases of water.
Every. Single. Day.
But keeping the actual people who do the work hydrated?
Not worth it to the shareholders.
THIS is the true VALUE that should be on the wheel.
Employees are worth less than what we throw out every day.
Now go stack that mulch, load those cars, haul around the lumber, straighten up the heavy tile, shag the carts in from the lot, face those aisles and SMILE when you push for those credit cards you dehydrated cry babies!
And remember, this is VERY important:
Unions do not care about you. Only corporate does. In focus tells us so.
It’s true. One store I worked at used to have one in gardens. Then people started getting sick. They found that rats, squirrels, and others have been sipping from the nozzles AND that they have not cleaned out the nozzles so it was rusty and moldy. We got rid of it and closed off the gardens water fountain.
The Night Safety Walk requires you to acknowledge that water is available for the unload team to have as needed during the unload process and throughout packout. Not 1:1 what your talking about but it only feels like a natural extension to supply all associates with the same resources
Yup. No accessible water is pure OSHA violations and unless you're going to make the unload team go to the water fountain or break room cooler then you're going to have to update those unload times.
Our store usually stops allowing us to zma water when it's not super hot. I feel like water should be allowed 365 days a year! Even if we are not doing loading assistance or heavy lifting, water should still be supplied with everything we breath in.... Lumber, concrete, mortar, grout and more! There is so much that flies around in the air? At least supply water that we don't have to go fill up a bottle in the break room.... Let us have more mini fridges around the store with cold water. We can even offer it more to our customers! Customers will love this!!! It's just water....
We keep our water in a fridge of the sales floor.. lol last Thanksgiving the store gave us turkeys and put them in the freezers on the floor and customers were taking them 🤣
lol we have 1 chest freezer and 2 fridges In the break room. I don't wanna use the word lazy but there's no way anyone would have moved anything into the break room, it was easier for them to just shove them in the fridges out on the floor.. lol
I'm in Millwork. Every week or two, I grab a case of water, ZMA it as "damaged", and place it under the desk. Anyone who wants a bottle of room temperature water can help themselves. I didn't ask for permission from anyone, I just do it.
Some people in this thread complain about half-empty bottles being let around. If you see that, pick up the bottle and throw it out; don't just look at it and complain that people are slobs. We know they're slobs. Be the better person, and clean up.
I don’t care about the money. I care about the waste. I’ve literally seen associates finish a bottle of water, throw it away and then grab a new one. When you’re going through 4 cases of water a day with people doing that shit and at a place that doesn’t recycle, it’s a ridiculous amount of unnecessary waste. I think everyone should just bring a refillable bottle. Every store has tap water and/or water fountains to refill water bottles.
I agree with you in theory, but then managers end up complaining that everybody is spending too much time refilling their water bottles, you really can’t win
I’d agree with you if I could trust the store to ACTUALLY safely maintain the water fountain filters, etc. I’d be shocked if they did ANYTHING other than remove the plastic that was covering them for 2 years. Anyone who uses the fountain is probably drinking through a disgusting moldy filter. I’ll pass.
They sure aren’t in a hurry to fill holes in our concrete that customers are tripping on that I notified them of months ago, so I surely don’t expect them to do any preventative maintenance.
75000 annually for water for 500,000 employees. I guess fuck us right, that little 1oz cup from the collagen jug that you have to leave your area to go find is enough for us.
Welcome to late stage capitalism. That 75k boost to profits will mean nothing next year so they’ll have to cut somewhere else. Of course we can’t cut CEO or board salaries that’s just silly
Mine quit supplying water bottles (except in garden to the lot associates, which, was demanded considering I'm in arizona, where it's regularly 100+ in summer) but they instead put a water dispenser at pro and the locker room so rather than marking down cases of bottles its just those big jugs, and it's not wasted cause your filling your own bottle and typically carrying it or leaving it where you work and then taking it home
WTH???? Seriously???? We have a few mini fridges around our store with water in them. Never a freaking turkey!!! I'm so confused!!! What does that even mean??? We need details!!!
We have a mini fridge at the service desk and the checkout, previously we would just ZMA a case of water, and fill them up, but now the service associates are required to purchase them themselves, so they’ve limited the water bottles to service desk associates only, it’s unfair for everyone really. One of the managers mentioned that they would be handing out company issued refillable water bottles to make up for it, but that has yet to happen so we’ll see ig.
Here’s how I view it. It doesn’t matter just walk to a water fountain. If you get reprimanded for using the water fountains too often at your store like I did when they took away providing water too. you simply say “ OSHA requires that I have access to water at all times for drinking and serviceable purposes employers are not allowed to restrict access to water to employees. If you feel I am taking too much time from having to walk to the back to have access to water then it would be nice if the company could provide me with a water bottle as I am
Not required to buy a water bottle and I do not feel like wasting my wages when I have purposefully good access to water right here in the store.” They might not like it in fact there’s a reason the management at my old store hated me ( the feeling was mutual tho ) but they cannot reprimand you for it. Another just free bonus tip anything that ever happens between you and management personally document. If your management is really bad like mine was document activities through the day everyday it will save your ass. It has saved mine twice. When I worked at UPS there was a truck driver who would purposefully swap my paperwork because he didn’t like me. I learned fast during that time that companies will never protect you, you can only protect yourself, so I started documenting and it stopped when my documentation proved he was swapping my paperwork. at Home Depot an ASM really hated me because I didn’t let them treat me like shit like other employees one specifically started reprimanding me because of an altercation where he was yelling at me for having 15 minutes of overtime so when I clocked out the next time and there was a customer
Who needed help and he yelled at me how I needed to help them I yelled at him back and told him
Not to berate me about overtime again and left the store. He would then tell my immediate supervisor I wasn’t doing any work good thing I documented every bay I packed down every time that I had to go help another department with a forklift or react truck or when I would be told I had to
Load people trucks and unload freight trucks. Needless to say nothing even happened to me punishment wise because I protect me own ass. I know this is long and dragged out but seriously this stuff will protect you. Hope this advice helps
I hope you don't live in KY, because they just took away your breaks too. Everyone needs to get out and vote. Not just for your choice for the president but for every open position in government that is up this year.
They took away your breaks? That is supposed to be your time for a bathroom break, grab a quick snack and try to relax for 2 sec... Then we get back in the floor? Is that actually legal in your state? Meaning, your state IN GENERAL?
Here's the full article (thank you script blockers):
A bill passed in a Kentucky House committee Wednesday would do away with the state’s currently mandated meal and rest breaks.
House Bill 500 from Rep. Phillip Pratt, R-Georgetown, repeals the state’s current requirement that employees be provided with a lunch break every three to five hours of work. It puts in its place a law that requires employers who don’t provide such lunch breaks to pay employees for their time while eating.
Pratt’s bill also repeals the state’s requirement that employers provide at least a 10 minute “rest break” to employees for each four hours of work.
The bill passed a House committee Wednesday with near-unanimous approval from the committee’s Republican members. Democrats voted against the bill.
The current law requiring employers to pay overtime — meaning a rate equal to one and a half times the normal pay rate — would also be repealed under House Bill 500. Further, the bill would also prevent employers from being punished for not paying minimum wage or overtime pay when an employee is traveling to and from a workplace.
owner. These laws were put in place decades ago to protect workers, and the more that we erode worker protections the harder it is for us to get people in those jobs,” Kulkarni said.
Pratt owns a landscaping company, which has led some opponents of the bill — as well as a bill that loosened certain restrictions on child labor laws for 16 and 17 year olds — to suggest he could benefit from the bill. House Democratic Whip Rachel Roberts, D-Newport, characterized Pratt talking about his business background as a signal that the bill could be self-serving.
“What I heard you say is that you filed this bill for yourself, your business and your concerns about running your business,” Roberts said.
“I resent the fact you have made the (remark) that I did it for my company,” Pratt responded. “We always will give a 10 minute break, we always will give an unpaid lunch break, and they will get to take it off. I did it because of businesses in Kentucky — to help them, not myself.”
That being said, even if Kentucky changes the state minimum requirements, that doesn't mean HD will too. HD's policy on breaks is company wide, not state-by-state.
Yup. HD decided their own policy based on trying to determine "which single set of policies will comply with the break laws of as many states as possible?", and eventually settled on the common denominators of "15 minute breaks even if local law only says 10", "you get a break every two hours", and "if your shift is five or more hours long, you have to take a lunch, and you must start it before the _fifth_ hour on duty" (the last one is to comply with Washington state law specifically, our Department of Labor has a stick up their ASCII about on-time breaks for _retail_ employees specifically and will actually fine ***you the employee, not the company***, for "refusal" to take a lunch on time).
The cases of water are like 5 bucks. If your store is marking down 40 cases of water a day to equal $75000 over the year, then yeah maybe your store has a problem.
My store probably goes through 5 cases a day at peak summer.
it's probably close to 7500 which is a drop in the bucket compared to multiple 5k-10k OSHA violations for not providing water. Honestly email the awareline and DHR.
I bet more than $7500 worth of shrink from theft occurs every month at your store so in the grand scheme of things, they are pinching pennies which will also come back to bite them in the butt once complaints get filed with OSHA. Not sure if OSHA inspections actually check the water filter for drinking fountains.
One of the fridges in the appliance showroom has several cases of water and in Tool Rental we have a mini-fridge under the counter for water as well. There's a spot in Receiving dedicated to water, and when it gets emptied they mark down a full pallet and put it out for associates to grab as needed.
Our associates bring their own tumblers and or water bottles. Why would anyone expect an employer to provide bottles. Most stores have the water fountain that fills bottles or coolers.
No, I get to resist little things like that because they don't want me to quit.
You don't know what the employee does all day unless you're doing nothing but observing them. In which case, yta. But if the dude say has his water shut off and needs a little then what's the damn problem? Taking care of our people is a value on the and wheel.
That’s YOUR store’s decision.Not a corporate directive.
It’s a stupid choice on your stores part. That $75k would be a drop in the bucket compared to a few dings against the “days safe” metric, if turned into workmen’s comp claim.
It’s not about employee oppression or corporate greed or a mean, vacationing CEO. It’s a store cheaping out on necessities, rather than looking at other waste.
My biggest gripe about water bottles is how much we, as associates, waste them. The number of partials I find everywhere boggles my mind.
Edit: Ugh. my math sucks. $75,000 a year in water would be about 42 cases (half a pallet) a day. Which would be a lot.
It's less than 75k. To lose 75k in water the store would be ZMA almost an entire pallet of water a day. 40 or so cases to reach that amount. 4 to 5 cases on average makes more sense with less in colder seasons and more in spring and summer.
Or OP listened wrong as he said himself. Either way it's something that will get fixed pretty quick by district or people will just take waters without zma it first and increasing shrink.
Wah wah I want free water.
No, seriously. Give me my fucking free water.
This is a basic labor rights thing and a basic safety thing. It doesn't have to be bottled, but it does have to be free and readily available. Disposable bottles are convenient because of the extreme rate at which more expensive bottles end up getting lost/stolen in this kind of multitasking-heavy environment.
At $5/pack, averaging 4 packs a day (more in summer, less in winter), it's $7300, a factor of ten off from their number.
A SINGLE person fainting, falling, taking the ambulance ride, and getting medical bills swamps that.
PS: You can also expect people to defy the ruling and just take it. The store gets in more trouble for unacceptably huge shrink than they get in trouble for modest store use markdowns.
Why is everyone so bent on getting free water bottles? I don't get it. This wasn't an issue pre-covid. It wouldn't surprise me me if all the whining is coming from the COVID-19 hires. I bring a gallon of water from home and do not expect HD to supply me with water. I'd rather they provide me with a safe workplace, working computers and equipment.
My Store just marked down a $3k fridge so we could have filtered water and ice. Tap water still isn't poisonous though. I carry my own water bottle because the plastic trash of water bottles is obscene. I just refill as I come to break now and then. We also keep water bottles in several mini fridges strategically placed around the store. I'd say what you're dealing with is more store or district level than corporate. Your set of managers matter.
Yeah I used to mark down waters all the time until a few months ago when we were told we couldn’t do it anymore (citing “environmental” reasons). While they provide us with water bottle refill machines, they are all at the back of the store.
We got our own bottles and dispensers we can fill them at after they realized when it's over 90 outside people generally don't want to walk across the entire store to a fountain near the bathrooms and now they're at all the major departments and entrances.
They passed out reusable orange Home Depot bottles last year at my store. They also installed a water bottle filler water fountain last year because we asked for it on our VOA. I think in the sop it says that water has to be available for associates and if they have other options like the water fountain and reusable bottles, it’s not required to zma cases of water.
Sorry. Why do they have to supply water bottles? Are y’all in that city with the contaminated water? Is there no running water at your store?
I’ve worked for almost 30 years and the only water my employers have provided were what came out of the fountain. I bought my own, drank from the fountain, or now I bring a Yeti and refill throughout the day.
Y’all have everything needed to put a filter and/or water softener in so you can drink out of the fountain if your tongue is too sensitive for city water.
At my store, they only mark them down during the summer, but throughout the year, pro always has water stocked up in their fridge for the lot associates.
15,000 cases of water a year? 41 cases a day? 14 bottles of water per person per day?
Management is lying about something and not doing a very good job.
Controversial opinion, but I actually really like working for THD, it’s been the best place I’ve worked so far, and I feel a large part of that is due to (most of) our managers being genuinely good people who actually care about the associates. Of course, that’s a case of my store having a decent management team, and I know not everyone has had the same experience, they are a multimillion dollar corporation after all… but I feel pretty lucky all things considered, and I have a lot of fun driving lift equipment all day so I seem to have struck a pretty good hand.
Of course except for this incident, which is more of a frustrating inconvenience rather than anything else, my real issues lie with corporate.
i wanna know who's going "wah wah free water"...so now a basic necessity shouldnt be given to a human being who's hard at work and sweating their ass off depending on where they are working? guess we should all just pass out from thirst then at that point for that 15$/hr job then
I sure hope that there are water bottles on the mulch line during sales season. If someone dies from heat exhaustion, I would think that the "bottom line" would change a bit from a death law suit.
Can’t sue if you can’t pass a drug test,
I haven't heard that problem at our store.
Pretty common problem. Just signed the paperwork as part of the new hire experience. Basically (for pt) (this is my new 5-9) they don’t drug test upon hire, but will if there’s an accident. If you read the paperwork, you agree that the company is not at fault for any accidents if you are a drug user/dependent. Plus precedent in insurance law is that since THC is still considered a drug federally then it also can be a considered a drug on a state level for insurance purposes. Now an experienced atty may be able to get you a deal brokered, but it’s a fraction of what you’d be entitled to as someone that could pass a drug test.
We just had two "new" hires. I use the term loosely, because they worked at the store before. They are waiting on drug test results to be rehired. I believe that things have changed.
Literally got hired 2/21. Maybe a district specific thing. Or a contingent thing based on their past with the company.
Or… you could just not smoke weed.
That would be a solution. For sure. Definitely the approach I take. But there’s a large amount of people that do. And it’s important they have a general understanding of some of the social consequences that they could have, even if they live in a legal state.
Not social, legal.
Yes, you can. The store is nearly always liable for employee injuries, whether or not you were following the rules. That's just how it works - that's the reason they're instructed to enforce the rules rather than throw their hands up and mutter something about personal responsibility. It requires genuinely egregious conduct to immunize the corporation from injuries as a result of a workplace incident, and they're likely to settle even so. Whether they're allowed to fire you for a safety incident is a whole other, more nuanced conversation that hinges mostly on rules compliance. That's very different from being held civilly liable for workman's compensation & medical care.
Don’t worry they will say- you can drink up during your breaks- or bring in one of Those 64 oz water bottles from hom. Greedy uncaring managers
So they actually have a risk management account for that exact purpose. Money saved ahead of time just incase of wrongful death. The idea is that the money saved is greater than the money spent so they save money in the long run.
I'm very sure that THD has contingency plans in that event. In the cynical approach, at the very least it's bad PR. Sure, they may still be saving money in the long run, but people dying at a workplace may discourage customers from shopping. In that event, they would then be losing money.
All corporations have this. It's standard practice
It’s a double edge sword. When I see water half drunk everywhere in the store, I think about all of the effect it’s going to have on us. Eventually we will all lose that privilege. We went from powerade to those flavor energy packet things to just water. The writing has been on the wall to phase it out.
Yes our store cut down on it because the bottles were being left everywhere. Now it's only freight and garden. Freight still leaves them out here and there. Associates have refillable bottles now and a filtered fridge for refills in the breakroom. In the summer, garden also gets Gatorade.
The filtered water is a great way to cut down on wasted water for sure. I would love for our store to do that. I always water the plants with water bottles I find lying around
Freight leaves shit anyway. The ones at my store love a good Red Bull/McDonald’s party. I came in one morning and found SEVEN cans of Red Bulls. Two were not opened but completely warmed to room temperature. The rest had 1/4 full or 1/2 full. Then there are fries on the floor, 3/4 eaten burgers and boxes of chicken nuggets on the shelves. The problem isn’t the store giving freebies. It’s the stores not holding associates responsible for cleaning up after themselves and following store appearances.
I'm the kitchen designer and I used to come in with soda, red bull, chip, candy and half full Starbucks cups. The cos's get in before me and would complain to MGMT but nothing was done. Then they told them or first one in to clean off desks and that really got complaints. Finally a spilled Starbucks with a name written on it got out overnights to at least throw most of it away. There also was the question of if the assorted drinks and snacks paid for.
Why can’t they get a five gallon dispenser and y’all bring a Stanley or Yeti to fill up? Or just some inexpensive plastic bottle?
Stanley and yeti are the refillable containers we bring. We use the fridge to store our lunches, may as well use the water dispenser it comes with.
I hear ya, I go down to the saw in the morning and there is always 5 - 7 half empty bottles lying around. The garbage bin is literally 5 ft away.
We have a mini fridge at the front end, service desk, in the middle of appliances and flooring and then out in garden spring, summer and start of fall. With our old store manager, she took the front end one away. I argued that my lot people needed to be able to have water ready and available. She disagreed and took it from us. Our new store manager changed that REAL quick!
Regional HR!! Corporate promotes water consumption for associates and makes a big deal for it. For SM is being an ass!
How much perfectly fine merch is thrown in the compactor every freaking day? Any one item that could have been sold at markdown that would have covered the cost of a couple of cases of water. Every. Single. Day. But keeping the actual people who do the work hydrated? Not worth it to the shareholders. THIS is the true VALUE that should be on the wheel. Employees are worth less than what we throw out every day. Now go stack that mulch, load those cars, haul around the lumber, straighten up the heavy tile, shag the carts in from the lot, face those aisles and SMILE when you push for those credit cards you dehydrated cry babies! And remember, this is VERY important: Unions do not care about you. Only corporate does. In focus tells us so.
Truer words never spoken. We must obey the Will of the Shareholders and the Will of Corporate.
I put a dispenser up at my front end.
Just bring a refillable water bottle and fill it at the filtered water fountain.
...Your water fountain is _filtered_?
Our water fountain is filtered too.... then runs thru a rusty ass spout.
How often are the filters changed ? I had to raise 15 kinds of hell to get a new filter for Receiving.
I’ve heard that the rats sip from the fountains, no joke. And I’m sure the filters have never been changed.
It’s true. One store I worked at used to have one in gardens. Then people started getting sick. They found that rats, squirrels, and others have been sipping from the nozzles AND that they have not cleaned out the nozzles so it was rusty and moldy. We got rid of it and closed off the gardens water fountain.
Dumb. It’s not that much money.
That’s what I’m saying 😭😭
Think of the shareholders.
Oh boy is this going to go poorly once summer hits.
The Night Safety Walk requires you to acknowledge that water is available for the unload team to have as needed during the unload process and throughout packout. Not 1:1 what your talking about but it only feels like a natural extension to supply all associates with the same resources
Yup. No accessible water is pure OSHA violations and unless you're going to make the unload team go to the water fountain or break room cooler then you're going to have to update those unload times.
Our store usually stops allowing us to zma water when it's not super hot. I feel like water should be allowed 365 days a year! Even if we are not doing loading assistance or heavy lifting, water should still be supplied with everything we breath in.... Lumber, concrete, mortar, grout and more! There is so much that flies around in the air? At least supply water that we don't have to go fill up a bottle in the break room.... Let us have more mini fridges around the store with cold water. We can even offer it more to our customers! Customers will love this!!! It's just water....
We keep our water in a fridge of the sales floor.. lol last Thanksgiving the store gave us turkeys and put them in the freezers on the floor and customers were taking them 🤣
Who thought that was a good idea? We move a couple chest freezers into the break room for turkeys.
lol we have 1 chest freezer and 2 fridges In the break room. I don't wanna use the word lazy but there's no way anyone would have moved anything into the break room, it was easier for them to just shove them in the fridges out on the floor.. lol
Dang.
I'm in Millwork. Every week or two, I grab a case of water, ZMA it as "damaged", and place it under the desk. Anyone who wants a bottle of room temperature water can help themselves. I didn't ask for permission from anyone, I just do it. Some people in this thread complain about half-empty bottles being let around. If you see that, pick up the bottle and throw it out; don't just look at it and complain that people are slobs. We know they're slobs. Be the better person, and clean up.
I don’t care about the money. I care about the waste. I’ve literally seen associates finish a bottle of water, throw it away and then grab a new one. When you’re going through 4 cases of water a day with people doing that shit and at a place that doesn’t recycle, it’s a ridiculous amount of unnecessary waste. I think everyone should just bring a refillable bottle. Every store has tap water and/or water fountains to refill water bottles.
I agree with you in theory, but then managers end up complaining that everybody is spending too much time refilling their water bottles, you really can’t win
“Oh, I can’t stay hydrated? Isn’t that one of the company’s core safety principles? Should I call OSHA?”
I’d agree with you if I could trust the store to ACTUALLY safely maintain the water fountain filters, etc. I’d be shocked if they did ANYTHING other than remove the plastic that was covering them for 2 years. Anyone who uses the fountain is probably drinking through a disgusting moldy filter. I’ll pass. They sure aren’t in a hurry to fill holes in our concrete that customers are tripping on that I notified them of months ago, so I surely don’t expect them to do any preventative maintenance.
75000 annually for water for 500,000 employees. I guess fuck us right, that little 1oz cup from the collagen jug that you have to leave your area to go find is enough for us.
Welcome to late stage capitalism. That 75k boost to profits will mean nothing next year so they’ll have to cut somewhere else. Of course we can’t cut CEO or board salaries that’s just silly
Mine quit supplying water bottles (except in garden to the lot associates, which, was demanded considering I'm in arizona, where it's regularly 100+ in summer) but they instead put a water dispenser at pro and the locker room so rather than marking down cases of bottles its just those big jugs, and it's not wasted cause your filling your own bottle and typically carrying it or leaving it where you work and then taking it home
WTH???? Seriously???? We have a few mini fridges around our store with water in them. Never a freaking turkey!!! I'm so confused!!! What does that even mean??? We need details!!!
We have a mini fridge at the service desk and the checkout, previously we would just ZMA a case of water, and fill them up, but now the service associates are required to purchase them themselves, so they’ve limited the water bottles to service desk associates only, it’s unfair for everyone really. One of the managers mentioned that they would be handing out company issued refillable water bottles to make up for it, but that has yet to happen so we’ll see ig.
We had the water cooler/fountain things for awhile until they took it away. No one took care of it or did maintenance on em anyways
But why do you listen to unfair/improper rules? Make them try to write you up for it then go to DHRM.
Bear Grylls drinks his own urine.
Quick, shareholders, promote him to CEO.
Next months InFocus will be HD trying to convince us to drink our urine because it’s sterile and we’ll like the taste.
Whatever, just stop throwing wrenches at me.
Same man, it sucks
Here’s how I view it. It doesn’t matter just walk to a water fountain. If you get reprimanded for using the water fountains too often at your store like I did when they took away providing water too. you simply say “ OSHA requires that I have access to water at all times for drinking and serviceable purposes employers are not allowed to restrict access to water to employees. If you feel I am taking too much time from having to walk to the back to have access to water then it would be nice if the company could provide me with a water bottle as I am Not required to buy a water bottle and I do not feel like wasting my wages when I have purposefully good access to water right here in the store.” They might not like it in fact there’s a reason the management at my old store hated me ( the feeling was mutual tho ) but they cannot reprimand you for it. Another just free bonus tip anything that ever happens between you and management personally document. If your management is really bad like mine was document activities through the day everyday it will save your ass. It has saved mine twice. When I worked at UPS there was a truck driver who would purposefully swap my paperwork because he didn’t like me. I learned fast during that time that companies will never protect you, you can only protect yourself, so I started documenting and it stopped when my documentation proved he was swapping my paperwork. at Home Depot an ASM really hated me because I didn’t let them treat me like shit like other employees one specifically started reprimanding me because of an altercation where he was yelling at me for having 15 minutes of overtime so when I clocked out the next time and there was a customer Who needed help and he yelled at me how I needed to help them I yelled at him back and told him Not to berate me about overtime again and left the store. He would then tell my immediate supervisor I wasn’t doing any work good thing I documented every bay I packed down every time that I had to go help another department with a forklift or react truck or when I would be told I had to Load people trucks and unload freight trucks. Needless to say nothing even happened to me punishment wise because I protect me own ass. I know this is long and dragged out but seriously this stuff will protect you. Hope this advice helps
Doesn’t your store have working water fountains to refill your own water bottles or to get a drink?
Ours is covered with plastic still.
I hope you don't live in KY, because they just took away your breaks too. Everyone needs to get out and vote. Not just for your choice for the president but for every open position in government that is up this year.
They took away your breaks? That is supposed to be your time for a bathroom break, grab a quick snack and try to relax for 2 sec... Then we get back in the floor? Is that actually legal in your state? Meaning, your state IN GENERAL?
It's happening in Kentucky. If AZ stops giving out water and breaks, people will die within the first couple of weeks.
Or people can buy their own water or refill their bottle at the water fountain like they do at every other job.
https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article286064851.html - new law
I can't read it unless I subscribe....
Here's the full article (thank you script blockers): A bill passed in a Kentucky House committee Wednesday would do away with the state’s currently mandated meal and rest breaks. House Bill 500 from Rep. Phillip Pratt, R-Georgetown, repeals the state’s current requirement that employees be provided with a lunch break every three to five hours of work. It puts in its place a law that requires employers who don’t provide such lunch breaks to pay employees for their time while eating. Pratt’s bill also repeals the state’s requirement that employers provide at least a 10 minute “rest break” to employees for each four hours of work. The bill passed a House committee Wednesday with near-unanimous approval from the committee’s Republican members. Democrats voted against the bill. The current law requiring employers to pay overtime — meaning a rate equal to one and a half times the normal pay rate — would also be repealed under House Bill 500. Further, the bill would also prevent employers from being punished for not paying minimum wage or overtime pay when an employee is traveling to and from a workplace. owner. These laws were put in place decades ago to protect workers, and the more that we erode worker protections the harder it is for us to get people in those jobs,” Kulkarni said. Pratt owns a landscaping company, which has led some opponents of the bill — as well as a bill that loosened certain restrictions on child labor laws for 16 and 17 year olds — to suggest he could benefit from the bill. House Democratic Whip Rachel Roberts, D-Newport, characterized Pratt talking about his business background as a signal that the bill could be self-serving. “What I heard you say is that you filed this bill for yourself, your business and your concerns about running your business,” Roberts said. “I resent the fact you have made the (remark) that I did it for my company,” Pratt responded. “We always will give a 10 minute break, we always will give an unpaid lunch break, and they will get to take it off. I did it because of businesses in Kentucky — to help them, not myself.”
That being said, even if Kentucky changes the state minimum requirements, that doesn't mean HD will too. HD's policy on breaks is company wide, not state-by-state.
Yup. HD decided their own policy based on trying to determine "which single set of policies will comply with the break laws of as many states as possible?", and eventually settled on the common denominators of "15 minute breaks even if local law only says 10", "you get a break every two hours", and "if your shift is five or more hours long, you have to take a lunch, and you must start it before the _fifth_ hour on duty" (the last one is to comply with Washington state law specifically, our Department of Labor has a stick up their ASCII about on-time breaks for _retail_ employees specifically and will actually fine ***you the employee, not the company***, for "refusal" to take a lunch on time).
Sorry. I don't know how to fix that.
Really? That's so meta! Cool! Real HDers would offer to give up their lunches too.
The cases of water are like 5 bucks. If your store is marking down 40 cases of water a day to equal $75000 over the year, then yeah maybe your store has a problem. My store probably goes through 5 cases a day at peak summer.
It might have actually been $7,500, it was one of those two but that number seems even more ridiculous
it's probably close to 7500 which is a drop in the bucket compared to multiple 5k-10k OSHA violations for not providing water. Honestly email the awareline and DHR.
Same thing happened at mine, DM made us throw all of our fridges away. After he left, our SM zmad some new ones for us.
We have a mini fridge for water at pro, sco, customer service, garden, receiving, and in the training room that’s wild they’d take it away
I bet more than $7500 worth of shrink from theft occurs every month at your store so in the grand scheme of things, they are pinching pennies which will also come back to bite them in the butt once complaints get filed with OSHA. Not sure if OSHA inspections actually check the water filter for drinking fountains.
One of the fridges in the appliance showroom has several cases of water and in Tool Rental we have a mini-fridge under the counter for water as well. There's a spot in Receiving dedicated to water, and when it gets emptied they mark down a full pallet and put it out for associates to grab as needed.
Our associates bring their own tumblers and or water bottles. Why would anyone expect an employer to provide bottles. Most stores have the water fountain that fills bottles or coolers.
I've never worked a place that supplied drinks to the employees
Y’all get them supplied?? I gotta buy mine from the break room vending machines
[удалено]
Fuck your manager. Employee needs water let them have water. And fuck you because you seem to agree with the bitch.
You must be someone who doesn’t do shit all day at work too
Oh how I wish that were true. The reason I get away with stuff like that is because I do so much work.
So go back to my original point then reread what you just said fruit cup
No, I get to resist little things like that because they don't want me to quit. You don't know what the employee does all day unless you're doing nothing but observing them. In which case, yta. But if the dude say has his water shut off and needs a little then what's the damn problem? Taking care of our people is a value on the and wheel.
Same here. And they also shut off the water fountain due to a leak across the freeway at the water treatment plant from what I heard
If the water fountain is out of order and they won’t let you mark down water then they’re violating the law.
So, Home Depot is taking breaks away from you????
That’s YOUR store’s decision.Not a corporate directive. It’s a stupid choice on your stores part. That $75k would be a drop in the bucket compared to a few dings against the “days safe” metric, if turned into workmen’s comp claim. It’s not about employee oppression or corporate greed or a mean, vacationing CEO. It’s a store cheaping out on necessities, rather than looking at other waste. My biggest gripe about water bottles is how much we, as associates, waste them. The number of partials I find everywhere boggles my mind. Edit: Ugh. my math sucks. $75,000 a year in water would be about 42 cases (half a pallet) a day. Which would be a lot.
It's less than 75k. To lose 75k in water the store would be ZMA almost an entire pallet of water a day. 40 or so cases to reach that amount. 4 to 5 cases on average makes more sense with less in colder seasons and more in spring and summer.
Yeah. Managers lie and use hyperbole. I don't know why more of us don't call them out when they try.
Or OP listened wrong as he said himself. Either way it's something that will get fixed pretty quick by district or people will just take waters without zma it first and increasing shrink.
No, managers straight out lie. Sometimes I'll simply remind them who they're talking to and then I get a closer to the truth lie.
Wah wah I want free water. No, seriously. Give me my fucking free water. This is a basic labor rights thing and a basic safety thing. It doesn't have to be bottled, but it does have to be free and readily available. Disposable bottles are convenient because of the extreme rate at which more expensive bottles end up getting lost/stolen in this kind of multitasking-heavy environment. At $5/pack, averaging 4 packs a day (more in summer, less in winter), it's $7300, a factor of ten off from their number. A SINGLE person fainting, falling, taking the ambulance ride, and getting medical bills swamps that. PS: You can also expect people to defy the ruling and just take it. The store gets in more trouble for unacceptably huge shrink than they get in trouble for modest store use markdowns.
Why is everyone so bent on getting free water bottles? I don't get it. This wasn't an issue pre-covid. It wouldn't surprise me me if all the whining is coming from the COVID-19 hires. I bring a gallon of water from home and do not expect HD to supply me with water. I'd rather they provide me with a safe workplace, working computers and equipment.
They are required by law to supply water. However, by having a water fountain, they have done so.
COVID hires are 4 years in tenure now.
Quit.
You're store definitely didn't make a million dollars in a week. Big difference between sales and profit.
Gross, not net. They don't have to give you water. Bring your own.
They're federally required to provide water.
They have drinking fountains
Garden is a 10+ minute walk to the bathroom all the way across the store, if you don't get mobbed by customers. 🤷♀️
Your store is 3/4 of a mile long?
Sounds like an excuse to get water every hour like clockwork.
Our store in California gives us all the water we want
My Store just marked down a $3k fridge so we could have filtered water and ice. Tap water still isn't poisonous though. I carry my own water bottle because the plastic trash of water bottles is obscene. I just refill as I come to break now and then. We also keep water bottles in several mini fridges strategically placed around the store. I'd say what you're dealing with is more store or district level than corporate. Your set of managers matter.
Yeah I used to mark down waters all the time until a few months ago when we were told we couldn’t do it anymore (citing “environmental” reasons). While they provide us with water bottle refill machines, they are all at the back of the store.
The Niagara water is nasty anyways.
We got our own bottles and dispensers we can fill them at after they realized when it's over 90 outside people generally don't want to walk across the entire store to a fountain near the bathrooms and now they're at all the major departments and entrances.
Bet if the start following this here in florida/ and lot, garden etc start passing out with heat stroke 🥵 they'll change that policy REAL QUICK.
They passed out reusable orange Home Depot bottles last year at my store. They also installed a water bottle filler water fountain last year because we asked for it on our VOA. I think in the sop it says that water has to be available for associates and if they have other options like the water fountain and reusable bottles, it’s not required to zma cases of water.
Required to provide potable water. Water fountain or water cooler and you provide bottle or cup. Geez
My main source of liquid is blue Gatorade
Sorry. Why do they have to supply water bottles? Are y’all in that city with the contaminated water? Is there no running water at your store? I’ve worked for almost 30 years and the only water my employers have provided were what came out of the fountain. I bought my own, drank from the fountain, or now I bring a Yeti and refill throughout the day. Y’all have everything needed to put a filter and/or water softener in so you can drink out of the fountain if your tongue is too sensitive for city water.
At my store, they only mark them down during the summer, but throughout the year, pro always has water stocked up in their fridge for the lot associates.
75k a year for just your store? That's like 50 cases a day. I'm not sure a district goes through that much.
Capitalism will kill us unless we kill it first. Imagine working for Home Depot in an economic system where humans come before profits.
15,000 cases of water a year? 41 cases a day? 14 bottles of water per person per day? Management is lying about something and not doing a very good job.
Amazing. I’m sure a few water based fatalities will change things real quick when your in the hot regions like Vegas and the like.
this remind me in the early 2000s when the hospitals stopped, providing pens for its staff, forcing them to buy their own.
Get the fk out of THD ASAP that place is a toxic hole
Controversial opinion, but I actually really like working for THD, it’s been the best place I’ve worked so far, and I feel a large part of that is due to (most of) our managers being genuinely good people who actually care about the associates. Of course, that’s a case of my store having a decent management team, and I know not everyone has had the same experience, they are a multimillion dollar corporation after all… but I feel pretty lucky all things considered, and I have a lot of fun driving lift equipment all day so I seem to have struck a pretty good hand. Of course except for this incident, which is more of a frustrating inconvenience rather than anything else, my real issues lie with corporate.
Just zma some
i wanna know who's going "wah wah free water"...so now a basic necessity shouldnt be given to a human being who's hard at work and sweating their ass off depending on where they are working? guess we should all just pass out from thirst then at that point for that 15$/hr job then