All I wanted to do is buy propane……

If anyone has ever been down to the Home Depot, you know how insanely busy it can get. I found myself down there on Saturday afternoon in the hopes to refill my propane tank and get home quickly. Unfortunately their system in buying propane was not as straight and forward as it should be. According to the signs they had posted, it should have gone like this:

First off I really felt weird just leaving a propane tank outside the store. Anyone could just come and scoop it up for the $30 deposit. After all there were no security cameras outside the store, well at least not in that section.

Against my better judgement, I went inside and proceeded to pay for my refill. The employee then called out on the loud speaker that I needed assistance at the tank area. I was then told to wait outside (clearly this process diverged from the signs outside said). I went outside and waited for 10 minutes and no one came. There was a door right next to the tanks, which leads to their tool rental shop. There was even a bell for service. The door was open but there was an employee talking on the phone.

I decided to go back inside and ask the lady to page the person again. She did so I went back outside again and proceeded to wait for 10 more minutes. Only when I started taking pictures outside did the man in the tool rental place come out and decided to help me.

There was no one responsible or even accountable for this lack of customer service. This process could easily be automated through the following method:

1. Customer Purchases Refill
2. An automatic alert is sent to either the employees phone or some other sort device that would alert whoever is responsible for tank refills
3. Employee could then punch in a code to stop the alert (the pad would be by the propane) once the customer is serviced

OR

They could quite simply put a sign by the door “ring for assistance for propane refills”.