Dear Home Depot in Westminster, Colorado

Dear Home Depot in Westminster, Colorado,

I ordered a bunch of flooring from your store a couple of weeks ago and I came to the store to pick up the first part of the order today (Saturday, 6/6/2020). When I arrived, there was the usual Saturday parking lot craziness, but you had employees tracking the number of customers allowed in the store at any given time, and everyone in the line I saw was wearing a mask. Unfortunately, when I went inside I discovered that the organization and efficiency of the line outside was entirely lacking inside the store.

First, I’d guess that approximately 20% of the customers were not wearing a mask. Masks are worn to reduce the risk of transmitting disease from the wearer to others, and so there was about 20% of the customers who were putting everyone else at risk. This is not acceptable. At this time, no-one who is unwilling to wear a mask should be allowed into a store as busy as your Home Depot. I recognize that Home Depot as a company does not have a mandatory mask policy, but the busier the story, the more important it is that your customers wear masks.

Second, very few people were adhering to the one-way aisle markings you made on the floor with red arrows. My standing of those arrows is that they are in place to make social distancing within the store easier to accomplish, and thus to adhere to Home Depot’s social distancing guidelines. This made for any number of awkward close encounters that would not have been necessary had the one-way aisles been followed or enforced, or even marked well enough that customers could see them easily.

I recognize that your store is always busy on Saturdays, and I acknowledge that your associates are busy with more than traffic control. But there were no signs explaining how to navigate the store in a responsible, socially distant fashion, nor were there any announcements about how to distance properly by using the arrows for the entire 45 minutes I was in your store.

Once the rest of my flooring is delivered to the store for pickup sometime in the next couple of weeks, I will be personally boycotting your store. In addition, I will recommending to everyone I know that they not spend their hard-earned dollars in your store either.

Sincerely,

Brian Angliss (Arvada, Colorado)