Suggestion
They should sign a contract with each other to both begin the new 7a-9p timeframe Monday through Saturday and 9a-7p on Sundays the exact same day, so no sales are lost, and neither company can revert to old hours for 5 years.
Think about how much better this would be. You would have 2 extra hours of overlap from openers and closers to get bigger tasks done, help customers, etc. 7-4 and 12-9. That’s a whole 4 hours of overlap vs the normal 2 hours of overlap now. That’s a huge difference.
One of My top 3 wants from Lowe’s is 7a-9p 6 days per week and 9-7p on Sunday.
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I know some stores mine including where contractors are very much waiting at the door when we open
I work the 6-3 shift in pro and 4/5 days I have customers waiting when the doors open. Usually the electricians
Yeah same here, I do 7-4, by the time I’m in there I typically have my 3-6 usuals buying their stuff for the day and I have about 6-10 texts with quotes to run for the morning runs.
Op is dumb. Dudes start working at the crack of dawn, being open then makes sense.
That's just sad.
We have contractors waiting when we open too, but only 2 or 3.
In the whole 6am to 7am hour we have never gotten to double digit customers on any day I open.
When I go it at 6 or 7, there are plenty ahead of me. Mostly work trucks in the lot instead of grocery getters.
Contractors need to start early. I was in building maintenance and often I got there prior to 6am and waited for them to open.
I have covered for cashiers on both business days and weekends and no one comes in except "the wife wants it done first thing in the mawnin" DIYs.
6AM open makes complete sense, stop being lazy in the mornings. However, a close at 8PM would be much better, we can’t justify the payroll vs sales the last two hours of the day.
Please. 6am might....might...be justified during the summer when it's hot as shit come noon but it is useless during the winter months. All it does is kill my SPH and this diminish my bonus. Which I'm sure of all part of corporates matrix to insure they don't have to pay the bigger bonuses. Assholes
Yeah dude definitely the 6AM opens has everything to do with not giving you a bonus and nothing to do with serving pros early in the morning
Well when the pros don't come in til 7am +, then yes it does. You are in paint it appears...you don't know my store or my pros or my desk.
Based on his tone, he's pretty sure that he knows everything.
Sales specialists in my store are all scheduled between the hours of 8am to 9pm. It’s a rare day if they are there earlier or later than that. I was told it was to protect their SPH. I was a specialist for 5 months and I think I only stayed till 11 one time and it was by request.
You kinda sound like a bitch bro
6am is dead at my store outside of 3-4 contractors. We have pictures of the parking lot at 6:30am with only 1 car in whole lot
do all of your coworkers just take the bus or?
Obviously I meant not counting the employee parking area, lol.
In my store usually after 730, 8pm it's dead as a doornail. Just associates working or chatting around till close. I think closing earlier is a good call but it's corporates choice in that matter.
The whole point is that contractors need to get supplies before they head to the job site. Either early morning or the evening before. Those contractor accounts also account for a higher % of revenue. This is a really silly remark.
Most contractors don’t shop after 7 and pro don’t stay open pass 6 nice try thou
They don’t shop.. they pick up. They can pick up after pro desk is closed… many times these orders are not pro desk orders. They are the nail or the glue they need for the job. Or the mud… less $ than pro desk and bid room.
You start working early b/c if things don't go the way you planned, you need time to figure something out before dark.
Idk considering how they act on Sundays when we close at 8, I guarantee you the customers would just be pissy
Let them be mad, customers aren’t as important as they think
lol. Hilarious
Nope...would not work for my store. Contractors already waiting by the Pro doors at 5.30 am...our big sales comes from the early Pros.
Well because of theft the Depot nearest us now closes at 9:00pm and it really hasn’t helped our sales between 9-10 that much. Mostly we’re just getting more of their thieves.
What area is this in?
Store 1556 Hemet California
Yeah cause the last hour of each night is when the repeat shoplifters come in. Lose more in theft than gain in sales for that last hour.
I’ve always thought that electrical and tool world should have double closers every night to deter shop lifting.
People come steal during that time cuz they know we are on a skeleton crew in the high theft departments. I think tool world and electrical have 2 closers every night would get rid of a large amount of shop lifting
Smells like entitlement of not knowing how early the ones who build and maintain our world have to get up to do so.
🤦🏻♂️ smells like entitlement to think the contractors are too good to good to work an hour later into the evening, or perhaps buy their materials the night before.
Every contractor I’ve ever known, stops working at 4pm.
How about working until 5pm? 8-5pm is fine. Contractors seem to insist on 7-4p.
Or how about continue to work 7a-4p and just buy the materials for your job the night before?
Not saying that it couldn't be shortened for when they close but it's foolish to say they has never been an early morning emergency, item needed on route to their job because they were already started for the day, or just wanting to beat the regular morning traffic. There are others that live outside of retail or corporate hours.
They couldn’t collude like that. DOJ would see it as noncompetitive. But I agree it would make sense financially. The cost to keep the stores open isn’t worth it.
And if contractors really need in an hour early maybe do pickup only from 6-7. The only part of the store physically open can be the pro desk. They can staff a runner or two to go get the product the pro needs.
And therein lies the rub. Many of us ..including my desk...do not have runners. So when some contractor comes in before 7/8am, and needs something, and doesn't want to pull it himself, guess who that reverts back to??!!
As a current department manager at lowes I agree with closing at 9 pm every day but the 8-8 on Sundays I think is already good enough.
Bruh you got 8-8 on Sundays? 🥲 pretty sure the rest of us are 7-9.
Nope same here 8-8
It all comes down to beating the competition. This is an old argument. Both HD and Lowes open and close at same time in order to capture every sale. If one or the other is not open, the store that is open will get the business.
It does not matter what employees think should be the opening and closing hours. The store needs to be open for customers to shop, regardless of the type of customer. Customers know which stores are open and will go elsewhere if your store is not open.
Stores are staffed based on historical sales volume. If your store had historical low sales at 6 AM or 9 PM, you likely will not have many associates in the store. The whole salary to sales concept is not foolproof but it’s in place to avoid over staffing. If you work at open or close and you’re not busy helping customers, your SSA or DS should be aware and will find something for you to do to keep busy.
Yeah so if they both opened and closed at 7am-9p then they would still be able to capture every sale.
Mom and pop shops are not usually open that early, and they’re more expensive anyways.
Great idea! It will never happen but I like your suggestion. What would work better is cut some of the middle management and corporate parasites and re invest that money into hiring tradespeople and place them in the correct departments. Find tradesmen who are knowledgeable enough to take a DYI type and give them confidence to do the job and also tell them when they have no business messing with stuff. Simple tasks I get. But what the average joe fails to understand is that taking on a job they aren’t qualified for causes a lot of problems. Safety, time is money even if they are doing it for “free” they are missing out on Leisure time with family and that is priceless. Plus unless you are an experienced home repair specialist, your work is going to look like hammered dog shit. Marvin and his group of experts work for the shareholders. They can’t fathom working for the customer again. If they did you would see the tide turn and the store sales would increase when customer service is the Number one KPI
I’m not interested in having trades people work for Lowe’s. All that does is increase customers expectations of getting advice, tips and tricks from us, which is the worst part about this job. I do not give advice, tips or tricks.
Ok, how are you still a department head? Ever heard the phrase feed a man a fish or teach a man to fish? I work for Lowe’s too and training my customers is a way to build trust and win their business even when they could go across the road the road and pay less at the Orange Box. That’s the complaints I hear the most is there isn’t enough floor associates and the ones who do don’t like to be bothered and actually be a trusted advisor. Keep up what you’re doing. You can choose to run your department as you wish.
In hindsight my comment came off way wrong.
It’s not that I don’t give advice to my customers, I do, but only to a certain extent.
Some people want you to tell them what breaker to use, or to tell them if they need an S trap or P trap, or for you to explain how installing a replacement window is different than a new construction window.
I don’t really get into that stuff, is what I mean.
But if a customer comes in wanting to know what appliances I recommend, what paint I recommend, what storm door model I think is the best, etc, I do that.
But the technical stuff I don’t get into and I get mildly annoyed when customers expect us to know a lot of that stuff.
Sorry about my comment, I totally get how it made me sound like a dick. I get surveys regularly from my customers saying I was very helpful, I just meant I don’t like helping with really technical tips and tricks
Thank you for that . I appreciate you and I sometimes have to come back and say I made I mistake. So you are good with me. My point to hiring experience pros is to encourage DYI to do projects to they are capable of, and also be able to say to them in simple terms how much is this costing you to do it yourself vs. hiring it done with a professional. In the end of the day time is money and some people don’t know when a project is out of our reach. Plus, the same knowledgeable tradesman turned lowes solution expert can always recommend one of our MVP pros who are customers too. Win Win. At the end of the day though we can only do so much, we can give our heart and soul to the mega corp only to be laid off or replaced for a young kid with no experience and will cost lowes half of what we make. Take care of your self!
I could see opening early cuz the pros need supplies for the day but they need to close a LOT earlier. My store is open until 10pm but from about 6pm on, it's a ghost town. There's almost no customers for the last 4 hours of the day and they're spending money on salaries during that time. It's completely pointless.
A lot of us trade workers don't get home till 7:30/8. It's nice being able to buy tools after work, instead of having to hit a store on the way into work. It's a giant pain doing it in the morning
And us retail people like to get home before it's dark. We can't help you wanna get your stuff after our desk closes...that's just the way of the world.
So you are aware, buying replacement tools is different than using pro services or getting lumber or mulch. I'm all for those closing earlier
What you sure pointing out is the difference between local demand (some stores have high demand at 6am/9pm) and corporate reliability (corporate wants Lowes to be a consistent, reliable experience for customers).
So corporate sets the hours across all stores, with limited ability to vary. They set the times to maximize total profit/revenue across all stores, which means they are taking a loss during those windows at some stores.
You might be completely correct for your local store, and completely incorrect for Lowes as a whole.
Yeah so even if there are some Lowe’s who are super busy from 6a-7a, if the Home Depot also opens at 7a, then those contractors will either wait or buy their stuff the night before.
Sure, government regulation could limit hours like some states do for selling alcohol. Obviously you'd need to include all companies not just the largest two.
In practice, you'd probably shift a lot of sales to distributors that deliver directly to job site vs having contractor pick up, I.e. non-retail merchandisers
What does government regulations have to do with it?
Your are instead suggesting two companies with a majority market share engage in collusion to reduce opening hours for customers, potentially increasing profit for their oligopoly? If so, how will you prevent existing and new small independent hardware stores from shifting their hours to take advantage of the now unmet demand?
No they won’t, been proven they’ll find another supplier that opens when they need them to be open.
I don’t mind opening that early tbh I just wish we’d close at 8
I would be down with closing earlier. I worked until 11pm last night. Wife messaged me that we needed some meds for the baby. Well Target closed at 10pm. Walmart closed at 11pm. Luckily one of our grocery stores was still open until midnight so I could pick something up. Certainly sucked closing when COVID was full bore because pretty much nothing was open after 10 pm.
Years ago, my location tried opening an hour later during the winter months and we had so many complaints from contractors that after 2 weeks, we went back to 6am
In my area Lowe’s is killing Home Depot. Since they started accepting contactless payments I’ve seen Lowe’s more packed with people than ever before
My local Home Depot has had contactless and Paypal payments since 2020. It is frankly embarassing how long it has taken my store to just get tapping. We still dont have Apple Pay.
Personal experience, going in at 0600 to get my order (lumber, electrical, plumbing) is a lot easier when I'm not having to deal with soccer moms and other weekend wannabe handymen getting in the way. I have to drive nearly an hour to my nearest Lowes. The staff there know me, and we generally get along (plus the 3 boxes of Krispy Kremes I bring in seens to smooth things over, lol). But getting in early means I'm back at the homestead before 0800-0900 and gives me a solid 8+ hours to work depending on the time of year due to available light. You have to factor in drive time, available light, weather, etc. for your customers. Corporate raises that, and that's why your stores are open at those times. The late hours are for the homeowner who just had xyz break and needs to fix it or get the materials/ services scheduled to fix it. Or, the project manager or homesteaders on their way home from their other job and need to get supplies for the next day and trying to be proactive. Either way, the store is going to be open, and you are going to be at work. If it's not for you, then seek employment elsewhere.
My job position luckily doesn’t start work before 8am, but I still wish my co-workers who come in at 6am could come in at 7am instead so they had an extra hour or two to work with the evening shift people.
Currently there’s only 1 person in each department besides the overlap period of 1pm to 3pm. Where the morning shift and night shift are both there at the same time.
If they switch hours to what I recommended it would be extended to 12-4!
That’s 4 whole hours every day where every department has two employees on duty at once. From a customer perspective, that sounds awesome. No more waiting 20 minutes until the sole employee is finished with the customer before you
Omg food...donuts...that will get you a long way with Lowes employees. At least in my store at my desk. Hell, if there are some cruelles in there, I'll pull the lumber for you!
As an employee perspective, that would be awesome.
As a customer perspective, no, there are too many people that require getting tools/supplies early to get a head start. They don’t all shop at once in the same store at 6am, but there are just too many spread all over.
It would be better for employees but customers would go elsewhere. Horrible idea
We have guys sometimes waiting at 6am but not often. Sunday on the other hand, multiple people are waiting at the door from now til about november. 9am would be much worse IMO.
That’s called collusion and it’s illegal
I don’t think we’d lose much in most locations closing at 9pm even thru the spring season as well as 8am-7pm on Sundays all thru the year.
Surprised none of the big box stores don’t have their biggest stores be 24/7, ever since Walmart shut their 24/7 operations down durning Covid my night shift love to bitch about it
Then they both would use the “reduced hours” to reduce staffing to match. Be careful what you ask for…
Literally nobody goes into Lowe’s past 8:45ish it be dead… I just feel like closing at 10pm is a reach
I hate people, so I hit the stores when they open and have fewer people. I can get in, get out and back home before a lot of people even wake up and head to town
I have a couple of grocery stores that open at 6 or 7 and other types of storess that open at 8. I hit Lowes, then an early grocery store (or the reverse), then the others as soon as they open and I'm on my way home.
My store opens at 6am and closes at 10pm
Everyone’s does. What are you saying?
In their eyes, there's simply no reason to make such a change. They're not nearly as concerned with making our jobs easier as they are with getting those sales as early/late as they can. Contractors are up long before the sun, and Pro sales drive this company. I'm honestly surprised we don't open at 5 AM yet.
They wouldn’t lose any contractor sales if Home Depot also opened at 7am though is what I’m saying.
Right now they would because the contractors go to Home Depot. If Home Depot has the same hours though, contractors wouldn’t have anywhere to go besides mom and pop shops and they usually aren’t open that early either and are also more expensive
But at that point, it's not about just numbers. We already have contractors at our doors before 6 AM, think about how upset a lot of our Pro customers would be if we made them wait even longer to get what they need. Contractors also have jobs to do and would like to go home at a reasonable hour, so if we're forcing our Pro customers to wait another hour, that's just less work they can get done. It would infuriate a large group of people that give Lowes the majority of their profits.
Possibly, but it’s not like they would be infuriated at Lowe’s so they go to Home Depot. Home Depot would have the same hours in this theoretical situation so in reality, the pros wouldn’t actually have anyone to be mad at
Customers don't think like this, unfortunately. They would simply recognize that they're now forced to wait another hour to get what they need and be upset. It's not just about sales and profits, it's also about convenience for the people that make Lowes the most money. Plus, Home Depot would never have a reason to agree to something like this. They have no reason to. Either both sides stay as they are, or one moves their hours in a way that benefits the competition. No logic behind agreeing to it.
In the summer, they like to get their stuff and get to the job before it really gets hot. When I had part of my roof done, they were here at 5 or 530 and left by 1 or 2.
Please. We never heard a complaint before we had our hours starting at 7....and I'm lucky to wait on a true pro customer before 7 most days. Usually I'm twiddling my thumbs. It's ridiculous
It's entirely possible your store is more the exception than the rule. My store is typically packed by the Pro section before 6:30
We don't get many, if any pros until 8. If they need stuff that bad, they could get it the day before. 7 til 9 is very reasonable.
absolutely not. I am an overnight worker. We work Saturday nights 9p-5:30a, so you'd essentially be forcing us to do the hard close for a couple hours. You know that the openers would complain if they'd have to come in earlier than 8:30am for this timeframe. And I would certainly say no if I had to do something stupid like a 11-7:30am. It makes no logistical sense. We are a Tuesday-Saturday 5 night truck store. However, that being said, the inverse would benefit day stocking stores more since they'd have more time to do top stocking while the store is closed.
Us working men start way before 7am
Yeah so if Home Depot and Lowe’s both opened at 7am then the contractors would learn to buy their stuff the night before.
I don’t see any reason why a contractor can’t come into the store at 5pm or 6pm and buy their supplies for the next day
Wrong
What would happen
Tell me you know nothing about what Lowes and HD sell in one paragraph.
No one cares about your wants, it's the needs for the contractors that matter.
Take your feelings back into the corner and shut up.
Lowes and Home Depot were open 7am to 9pm up until 2019, so it’s not like my idea is super crazy. I want them to revert back to how it was.
My store, and the store 10 miles down the road, never have more than 6 or 7 customers the entire 6am to 7am hour, so it’s not worth it
Should close at 8 weekdays 7 on Saturday and Sunday.