Home Depot

A few weeks ago I was at Home Depot with my husband. We were looking for dock parts for our dock. We approached the customer service desk, and a big, robust burly man with a beard came out and approached us.

My husband kindly asked, “Do you know if you carry Tommy Dock parts?”

“No, I don’t think we do,” said the salesman. “If we do, you’ll find them over in the garden center.”

I was thinking. The garden center? This guy doesn’t know what he is saying and I don’t even think he believes himself! I didn’t believe this guy had a clue, so I probed him further.

I looked up at him and said, “How confident are you that you don’t have Tommy Dock parts?”

He looked at me and said, “50 percent certain.”

I retorted, “So, really, you don’t know. It’s just a toss up.”

Yeah, this man was confident. Not. I believe it was his choice of words, and his manner of speaking that alerted me to his lack of self-confidence and lack of belief in what he was saying.

When someone says “I believe” it usually means they don’t know for sure — or that they aren’t confident in their answer. Then when the customer service guy said it was in the garden center — the placement of parts was all wrong — and my second alarm bell went off. In other stores, we had seen the parts in the lumber department. And third, his facial expression nailed it for me. It wasn’t strong and confident. His face revealed his doubt.

I said to my husband he was lucky I questioned that guy and saw through him because otherwise we would have tracked back and forth across the entire store twice before we had an answer. Trekking from the garden center to the lumber yard and back was like a two mile hike!

Instead, I went and asked a second person in the lumber department. I got a quick, confident answer. The guy said to me they did have at one time, but not anymore. He explained it was indeed once in the lumber department — but because they didn’t sell but one part in a season, they discontinued it.

Ha!

Answer found. Time saved. The benefits of reading people, knowing if they believe what they are saying or not! While the guy didn’t lie and he utlimately was right — he truly didn’t have a clue. He was going to send us on a goose chase looking in the garden center — wondering if they had them. The garden center would have sent us back to the lumber yard and we would have gone mad!