This could be the perfect handyman’s paradise if only so much of the merchandise weren’t sitting unlabeled with no prices on it and no help to be found. I went here for the first time ever the other day after not finding what I needed across the street at TSC. My first impression was great, as I was looking for hydraulic hoses and connectors for my compact tractor, and right outside the door there was a nice compact tractor for sale next to a beautiful grapple tractor implement that I was very interested in, except that the specs and price of the grapple were nowhere to be found at all. I went inside and was blown away by the sheer size of the store, which looked clean and inviting, with what appeared to be a wide variety of merchandise.
Then I started looking for what I needed. Not only were there no signs I could find indicating the presence of any hydraulic hoses, fittings, implements, or couplers, but there wasn’t a single employee in sight who wasn’t sort of busy apparently going through the motions of doing something without much enthusiasm or interest. Not one employee I walked by even showed any hint that they saw me, let alone offered to help me or even looked like I could interrupt whatever they were doing to ask for directions. I kept going, feeling like I was getting closer and closer as I saw tools, tires, and then oil and filters and similar things for cars, until I finally found a single hydraulic supply aisle with about twice as much in stock as at the TSC I had just left, but it looked like it had been ransacked by vandals who just threw parts back onto the shelves and left many containers open and some spots missing the merchandise they apparently held. I saw another small attachment I thought would be handy for my tractor, but although there were two of them in the aisle, neither had any label or price tag anywhere on it, and there was no label with that information anywhere near the items on the shelves, so again I left it, not being willing to bring it from the farthest corner of the store all the way to the checkout line just to find out its price.
Ultimately, I left with two hoses that were longer than I had hoped to find and didn’t look as robust as the ones sold at TSC and elsewhere, but seemed like they would work where I needed them, along with a small variety of connectors I purchased in the hopes that some of them might be useful to my application, despite the disorganization of their layout and my uncertainty that the contents of the packages I had were really what the label said, since so many of them had been opened and replaced, with some clearly put back in the wrong place.
The best part of the experience was the checkout, as the cashier was kind and pleasant, and rang me up quickly and efficiently. I walked by the grapple again on my way out, wondering if I had missed something where maybe such items were stocked outside, but all I could see in the lot outside were rows and rows of empty pallets, with no indication that there was anything for sale there.
To be fair, this was on a Sunday early afternoon, so it may well be that shoppers had left things in disarray and that the store was understaffed for some reason that would be remedied the next day, but I doubt I’ll ever find out, because the store is far enough away to make it an uncomfortable drive for me, and it’s not worth the uncertainty that I’ll even have a fun browsing experience, as it really kills any sense of interest or excitement at seeing a nice compact tractor right by the door only to find very little tractor-related inventory and a messy disorganized aisle with a widespread lack of price information available anywhere to be seen. With a bit more staff, some care in stocking and labeling inventory, and with store management making a concerted effort to improve customer experiences and the willingness of staff members to offer help, this store could be a homeowner’s or handyman’s dream destination shopping center, but as it was when I found it, there was some significant room for improvement in a...
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