Every Employee Has a Fantasy about the Ousted Chairman
Want to have some fun at Home Depot?
Go far back into the depths of most any store and find a sales person ( they’re called “associates”) who is working alone. Ask him or her to turn up the bottom of their orange apron so that you can see the apron’s backside. The associate is likely to glance furtively about to make sure a supervisor isn’t watching before showing you the backside of the apron.
What you most likely will see is a photograph of Bob Nardelli, the Home Depot chairman who was ousted by the building supply chain’s board of directors early this year. The board, fed up with six years of the Nardelli rein in which the stock price barely budged and arch rival Lowe’s gained ground, ousted him and sent him on his way with a $210 million exit package.
Included in the package was this: for the rest of his life Nardelli can buy anything he wants in Home Depot at no cost.
“I’m ready for that no good sucker,” said Frank, an associate in a Goleta, California store. “I’ll help him find anything his little heart desires. Yes sir, you can count one me.” He laughed sardonically.
Frank, like thousands of other Home Depot employees, isn’t paid a magnificent salary. Instead, a sizeable portion of his overall gain is supposed to come from appreciation in price of the Home Depot stock he gets. But Home Depot stock actually lost ground during the Nardelli years.
“I have to admit I fantasize about what I will say to him,” said Rose, who flashed a Nardelli photo from the underside of her apron in the paint department at the store in Plano, Texas. She said she checks her Nardelli photo often, whenever she thinks she sees a pudgy, fiftyish man who fits Nardelli’s description and clearly looks out of place in a Home Depot.
“I suppose it’s a little like watching ‘America’s Most Wanted’ on television and then scanning people on the street hoping for a match,” she said.
At the Hampton, Maine store, Ethbert, who described himself as a “longtime, true blue employee”, said he has two photos of Nardelli, one on his dart board in the basement recreation room at home and the other on the underside of his apron.
“I watch for him, I surely do,” he said. “My fantasy is that he comes up to me and asks me to help him find something. Then I’ll take him on this long, wandering trek all through the store searching and searching. I’ll be just as helpful as I can possibly be, but never, ever will we find what it was that he wanted.”