Menards — Local services in Oak Creek

The associate in the yard equipment department is saving your review. I am sorry I did not get his name. This was Saturday 10/11/25 and we were looking for an Ariens single stage snowblower we had seen on your website. Get to the aisle and low and behold there is nothing but the display model there. Your website on my phone is telling me there should be six in stock. I flagged down your nice young man employee walking by and he agrees his system says there should be another pallet in back. He says he'll go look for it while we finish shopping. Long story short we me him back by the display model like ten minutes later, no snowblowers. He says funny story, apparently we've been looking for that pallet all morning. It has disappeared. BUT...there is one in a battered washed out box in the garden center if you want to look at it. So, we did. The box was indeed very white from being washed out with water. The young man associate explained that it had been stored in sort of an open warehouse where rain could get and did at it. It was sitting on top of some other branded snowblowers in equally waterlogged boxes. He kindly opened the box so we could look at the machine, which appeared in decent shape to us. We decide to take a gamble and purchase it, so he gets the pallet jack to lift it down for us. I kid you not, water was pouring out the bottom of the box. Now we're invested in this thing though. Nice young man associate gets a flat cart for us as it is threatening to fall through the bottom of the box. We rolled that thing all the way through the store to the registers leaving a trail of water behind us. We get home and have to clean a ton of water out of the back of our SUV. Open then box on our driveway and while taking out all the parts are greeted with a cicada and more large stink bugs than my husband could count. Fortunately, the machine parts were in good shape. We were able to assemble it and fire it up without issue. I did not take photos sadly but I would like to see store management respond to the deplorable condition of that box...

Decent pricing and layout, but once I'm done with my latest rebate I doubt I'll return. The customer service here is constantly abysmal; I say that as someone who shops here nearly weekly.

I wouldn't be surprised if the following were actual excerpts from the Menards customer service manual.

1: Never make eye contact with passing customers. 2: If eye contact accidently occurs, never offer assistance. 3: If customer actually requests assistance, point in a general direction. 4: Never interrupt a non-customer related conversation amongst employees to assist customers in line. 5: If there is a pricing issue at a checkout, use your radio to contact help and wait silently with a blank stare while a line builds up behind you. 6: If you're a manager or lead of some type responding to #5, be sure to only slowly meander over to the register. Urgency makes customers think you respect their time. 7: Send customer to other sides of store to complete transaction before customer insists transaction can be completed where he is and you prove him right. 8: Make sure to have 2 people standing and chatting, watching the front lane cashiers while the customer service line balloons and one person slowly meanders to assist.

As someone who spent 15 years in retail field leadership, I know how difficult it can be. But the list above seems to be the basics for this store. To be fair, the yard folks have always seemed helpful and most cashiers are usually friendly.

I hope this store can get this figured out before I spend through all of this rebate considering Menards is local to Wisconsin. It would be a shame to have to use Lowes or Home Depot right...

Really creepy behavior from a guy in hardware. He was struggling with the computer to find either of the 2 SKU's I was looking for. When the computer turned up only one of them, we walked to the aisle. That's when he instructed me to do something else, while he tried to find the correct display box and drawer. NERVE! When he couldn't dismiss me, he started rooting around the different compartments, of the drawer. I said that wasn't necessary. (Since Covid, I don't appreciate clerks handing me any products. Nor is it appropriate to invade my space by leaning over the same drawer.) Not listening to me, he kept saying, "When was the last time that I sold this to you?" WEIRD question. Then, he bickered with me, when I pulled out the product with the SKU that he couldn't find on the computer. I was trying to buy 2 sizes of the same product, DUH. Does Menards train their clerks to say things like, "When was the last time that I sold this to you?" Only a hardware store owner, or maybe a franchisee has the ability to say that kind of thing.

This episode reminded me of a young clerk with a similar know-it-all attitude. I had the correct digital door lock in my hand. I was on my way to check out, when he intercepted me. He actually attempted to take the merchandise out of my hand, because "When you bring it back, we'll have a hard time selling it." REALLY! I wanted to say, "Get out of my way, boy, you don't know what you're talking about." As I was walking away, he followed with a long interrogation of questions. Where do these young bucks get...