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by Joe Kirkpatrick
If you have shopped at the Home Depot in Cleveland, and previously shopped at the Home Depot in Chattanooga, you will notice an obvious difference. In a time when we have lite beer, lite ice cream, and lite (or "light") most everything else, we now have a "Home Depot Lite! After shopping at the original Home Depot in Atlanta back in the 70's, and the one in Chattanooga starting when it opened in the mid 80's, I, like many others, had hoped that we would one day get one of their stores in Cleveland. From the first time I shopped at the new store here, I knew it was different - and certainly not different in a better way. As compared to their other stores I had previously shopped in, their product selection fell far short of my expectations, as well as the depth of their inventory. I had noticed at the Home Depot in Chattanooga over the past several years, the customer service and help wasn't nearly as good as it used to be, and that certainly carried over to the new Cleveland store as well.
Back in the 70's, we used to drive to Atlanta to shop at one of the first Home Depot stores. We were amazed at the selection, but even more amazed at the level of knowledge and service we received from their employees. According to an article in Business Week Online, dated June 19, 2006, the founders of Home Depot, Bernard Marcus and Arthur Black, had a philosophy of having their employees to "make love to the customer." The
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