They have a florescent work light shaped like an upside down mushroom at the one in Lake Delton, WI, that I quite like. It is a self righting work light, which is a very useful device, at least when this Badger is working around the burrow.

Home Depot's selection of lighting fixtures stinks. They're either light-bulb-dangling-from-a-wire basic, or they're plastic-chrome-70s ugly, or they're a lame attempt at looking old-fashioned. But then they do something stupid, like make the ceiling fan blades to look like palm fronds. Yeah, I remember that fan in Casablanca, spinning slowly over Sidney Greenstreet's head. Not.

Get it right, Homer!

But the good folks at The Home Depot know darned well who wears the pants in the house when it comes to spending big bucks on things like remodeling the kitchen, new carpet, a new washer-dryer.

Forget guys.

They have your business and they know it. Besides, all you do is come in every other Saturday and waste valuable oxygen looking at garden tractors or woodworking tools you'll never use, then buy fifty cents worth of hardware to hang a picture or a tube of Gorilla Glue.

Do you think women will fall for such an obvious suck-up job?

You betcha. Have you ever watched all those home makeover shows on various cable channels? Thank goodness my wife likes to watch football instead.

You'd be hard pressed to find a man in ANY commercial that acts like a MAN. I don't mean a guy strutting around like John Wayne, shouting orders like George C Scott pretending he's Patton. Show me one commercial where the man isn't portrayed as either, a wimp, a hand servant to his shopping wife, or just plain not too bright. It'd be a refreshing change to see a man in a commercial who actually looks like he's got his act together, isn't afraid of his wife, isn't outsmarted by his kids and doesn't turn into a simpering dolt at the sight of a new car or power tool. Ah well, I guess it's just me, living in the past. This rant is over.

Thurber/White cover all of this in Claustrophobia, or What Every Wife Should Know (``Is Sex Necessary").

The guy if anything is alarmed by any shifting of furniture ; and the wife can't resist.

``They think that a man wants a home. Well, he does, in a vague sort of way. Not so much a home, however, as a house. He likes to be able to say where he lives when he goes to vote, and things like that. But he doesn't want a home in the sense a woman does, to potter around in. He has neither the same urge nor the same talent for hanging pictures and rearranging furniture. A woman, no matter how opposed she may be become to housework, still gets a small thrill out of shifting things. It never wears off..''

This is Home Depot's cue. We've got to get women into the store.

Home Depot cannot live on guys fixing the toilet.

The male as a quivering mass of hen-pecked incompetence has been a meme for quite some time. Somewhere post-"Father Knows Best", TV men lost the ability to operate standard household appliances without them exploding or turning into abode-shredding engines of destruction. Around the time of "All In the Family", TV dad even lost his ability to perform handyman-level tasks without injuring himself. Home Depot is just expanding on the theme.

HD, as in Harley Davidson...

Some of the dealerships are "starting to" clue in to the fact that Women Riders are one of the fastest-growing demographics. (I said "Starting to" - we're not entirely there yet!).

A few years ago, after I bought my new Heritage Softail, I was talking to their -ahem- "Chrome Consultant" (yes, that *was* his title!) about add-ons for my bike. He was pretty good about answering my questions, until my husband walked up. Next thing I knew, said "Consultant" diverted all of his attention to DH to talk about Race-Tuners vs. Power-Commanders, and drag pipes vs. slip-ons, and Dyno-Tuning ("Arr! Arrr! Arrrrr!!!" - Tim Allen Style).

I mean, you could practically smell the testosterone!

Occasionally, I would try to break-in with a question, and Chrome-Dude would direct the response to... Hubbie!

That aggravated the bejeezus out of me. Needless to say, I didn't drop another HD (Hundred Dollars) that day.

Since that time, I've noticed the service and attention has gotten quite a bit better. I can actually hold the attention of a Sales-Droid for a few minutes, and they don't feel compelled to route all communication thru my husband.

I still think it's primarily male-dominated - so they know better than to utilize the "Man-As-Moron" advertising campaign (in fact, I think they really don't tailor their advertising to either gender), but they're definitely getting a bit more female-friendly.............

Here's an article

No clue if I typed the html right, so here's the url:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/business/25biker.html

I and my husband buy appliances etc..together. Often the salesperson talks only to him. I've been in technical support for 10 years and can troubleshoot a wireless network myself. I should be able to, I set it up. But I disagree that commercials target men as dolts. They target all of us a dolts, which is why we need their products so badly. Also,women get those wonderful commercials that remind us that we smell badly, can't swim during certain times of the month and go crazy monthly as well. Lucky us.

I always cringe when I hear the music start on those radio commercials.

. . . that I did not end up with a biker for a wife. My gal is smart, strong, independent, stylish, and drives better than I do. But she has zero interest in horsepower, amps, mHz, and watts per channel. If a lady who knows how to change brake pads (and to check for pitting on the rotors) turns you on--God bless ya. I prefer a woman who just shakes her head and says, "Honey, whatever--that's your thing" when I ask her opinion on which washing machine or flat-panel display. In fact, I rarely ask anymore because all she cares about is the color. Nothing could interest me less than a woman who reads Consumer Reports and takes a hard line with the salesman on four-wheel discs. Sexist? No, we are equals with different interests and we play to our individual strengths. I buy the tires, and she buys the towels (male chauvinist pig accusation protection/ along with a lot of very amazing thing she does in her career that I can't /end male chauvinist pig accusation protection). After 20 years, I think we've found an arrangement that works. Yours may be the other way around.

The Home Depot ads ARE inane, but then what does it matter? Home Depot is a local source for building commodities that my friendly hardware store can't provide. I don't look to them for role-modeling and I imagine most henpecked men would be henpecked with or without the advertising.

And I certainly don't look to Home Depot for style. Their products that involve aesthetics are intended to appeal to the large, broad, middle-brow masses, and if you truly want a special lamp or an unusual mailbox, you'd better look elsewhere.

I suspect that if one were to do some investigation of Madison Avenue, they'd probably find the same groupthink-inducing isolated environment that has developed within the profession of journalism, leading to the insulting yet politically correct stereotypes we see all over advertising today.

That point aside, I don't pay much attention to Home Depot's radio commercials, but as long as you're bringing up the subject, I'll point out an example of bad radio advertising we have over here. There's a small regional electronics store chain called Video Only that specializes in TVs and other video equipment (hence the name) which runs frequent radio ads here. The ads always consist of a man and a woman talking about some newspaper ad for one TV or another in relatively vague terms (it's always "the top-rated 42-inch Sony" or "the 37-inch Toshiba model," never anything specific) and some spectatularly low price for it, which always leads to the fact that Video Only sells it for less, and if they buy it somewhere else, They'll Be Sorry(TM).

The main problem with these ads is the fact that every single ad has contained these same two people for more than a decade, indulging in their single-minded obsession with buying new TVs from Video Only. I'm picturing a house somewhere with every wall covered completely in flat panel TVs, with multiple bedrooms packed to the rafters with the "obsolete" leftover big screen CRTs to the point that you can't even walk around every more, with the mailman delivering a crateload of bills from the financing company daily. All the neighbors know it's a problem, but everyone is too afraid to be the one to intervene, lest they be tasked with hauling all the old CRTs out when the time comes. As a result, everyone just whispers whispers quietly between themselves each Saturday as they haul in the latest top-rated JVC or Hitachi to add to the collection.

I do remodeling and repairs.
I live at Home Depot and Menards.
Home Depot is 5 minutes away. Menards is 10 minutes away.
I will always go to Menards if I am buying lots of stuff; large ticket items, or if I have a little more time.
Why?
Because Menards has better prices; better service; better selection; and people there who have been there for over 10 or even 15 years who know what the hell they are talking about.
Sure, I've got some occasional buddies at Home Depot who are competent and friendly, but they only last a year or so until they move on to some kind of "real job."
The absolute craziest thing about Home Depot is the acres of check out lines they install in their stores with just one or two check out clerks on duty at any one time.
It boggles the mind.
My thought would be "why would anyone shop at Home Depot after watching a clueless husband giving into his clueless wife, who, a priori, ipso facto, is clueless because she got all of her advice or knowledge from the clueless (but well meaning) folks at Home Depot?"

I, on the other hand, prefer the advertising of the competitor. A man's voice is heard, "day 5. I've been wandering around in the abrasives aisle" or some such. And the thing is, as we used to say in high school, it's funny 'cuz it's true.

Home Depot fills a void, I know. But they're awful. The 3 stores that are nearest my home employ high school and non-high school students as their "experts" in all manner of home repair. You cannot get help at the places when you want them and quite honestly, my local hardware store's prices are the same as Home Depot's. They've got very little to appeal to me...

Still, there was the one time when I got ambitious and decided to completely re-insulate my attic. Went to Home Depot and bought R-30 plastic wrapped fiberglass insulation. Had to make two trips in the mini-van, but they had it...

My parents are currently knee-deep in a remodeling project, and in the "4-5 trips to Home Depot every Saturday" mode that accompanies it. Our local Home Depot is only about 3 blocks away though, so it is at least reasonably convenient. Around here, pretty much the only viable alternative is Lowe's, which borged a well-regarded local/regional chain about a decade ago (Eagle) and promptly got rid of every reason to go there.

Oh yeah, and they run pretty much the same "clueless henpecked male" ads that Home Depot does.

We still have some old-fashioned hardware stores close by, so I don't have to contend with "The Horror That Is Home Depot" very often. As a particularly inept handyman, I find I get better advice from the guys at the small stores.

Plaudits to you for blasting the advertisers who continue to malign the American male/husband/father. Home Despot has earned my ire in many ways, and this is one. Too bad they're so danged accessible, or I wouldn't spend a dime there.

This will teach me to not read BUZZ on the weekend. I fast-forward through so many commercials that I wear out remotes. However, my favorite commercial, that I don’t fast-forward through is for automatic shift Nissan Maxima with the husband and wife. He’s pulling out and she’s getting ready to put on lipstick. They are both great actors and he isn’t dumb, with his eye movement he realizes something is wrong; it’s his wife waiting for the shift shock, so he makes the sound with his mouth to please her. I would too.

Guys, as long as you can keep your wife busy changing things about the house, she won't have the time or energy to change anything about _you_. Long live Home Depot, say I!