I survived the Home Depot paint department! Ask me anything!

So we're painting the outside of the house. The old gray and white paint is going bye bye, and we picked out Honeysuckle White (main), Sabal Palm (trim), and Red Brick (accent) for the new colors. :headbang:

The dude painting the house said to go to Home Depot and get Elastameric paint, 'cause he thought it was some good stuff. :headbang:

Yesterday I went to Home Depot and got pint cans of all the colors. The Red Brick needed a primer, so I also got a can of that. There were 4 little cans in all. They gave me stickers with the formulas so I could get the same colors made up when I came back for more. I came home and put the paint up on the wall, and it RAWKED!!!!! :headbang:

So today I went back to the Home Depot. I got there at 1:00, and put my order in. I asked for 12 gallons of Honeysuckle White, a gallon of Red Brick, a gallon of primer for the Red Brick, and a gallon of Sabal Palm. They said it would be 45 minutes, so I walked over to the Barnes and Noble and got an iced mocha and browsed the Nature section. :headbang:

I decided to give the paint people an extra 15 minutes to get it together, so at 2:00 I went back to the paint department. I asked if my order was ready and they said they hadn't started. :banghead:

They said they couldn't do Honeysuckle White in Elastameric, and they gave me a sheet of the colors they could do and all of them looked wrong. I decided to go to Sherwin Williams for the major house color, and just get the Red Brick and Sabal Palm at Home Depot. :banghead:

I asked them if they had my trim and accent colors ready, and they said no. :banghead:

I told them to make my damn trim colors, and they said they would. I had to explain anew that I wanted a gallon of each color, plus a gallon of the primer. :banghead:

After about 10 minutes the dude appears with a can. He said that my primer was ready. I was a little scared because there was no smear of color on top of the can. My worst fears were realized when he said "The primer's supposed to be white, yeah?" :banghead:

Now the primer they gave me yesterday was pink. I said "No, the primer is supposed to be pink." I gave him the sticker back and I said "This is the formula for the primer." :banghead:

A few minutes later he appeared with a mysterious unmarked can, and said "This is the primer color." I asked him to open it, and it was pink. A little while later he appeared with another unmarked can. I asked him to open it and put a dab of color on the top, and when he did it looked like the right shade of green. :headbang:

Then he came back with can #3. There was a dab of the brightest fire-engine red you ever saw in your life on top of the can. The paint was wet, so I gave it a minute to dry and it was still really bright. I went and found the Red Brick color chip, and it was WAAAAAAAY off. Even allowing for minor differences in the coloring process, it was totally unacceptable. :banghead:

I told the dude that the color was wrong, and he INSISTED that it was the right color for that paint code, but he could hand-tint it to the color of the chip. :banghead:

Now I understand that people working at the paint counter make minimum wage, and they have a tough job working under adverse circumstances, but this dude was totally fucking up my order, and I was starting to freak out a bit. When you're talking about the paint color for the front of the house, you don't want to screw around. :banghead:

I asked to speak to the manager, which is something I have never before done in my life. I really didn't want to get the dude in trouble, but I also really didn't want to go home and AFTER painting the house realize that horrible mistakes had been made. :banghead:

So Frank the manager comes up and asks what the problem is. I tell Frank that jerkoff here can't get my color right. I was really starting to lose it. I had been waiting for the paint for 2 hours, and at this point I had NO CONFIDENCE that jerkoff could get my paint right. Frank announces that he'll get to the bottom of it, but he's red-green colorblind. :banghead:

So I showed Frank my Red Brick chip, and he asks if it's a Behr paint and if I got it at Home Depot. I point out the Behr logo on the front of the chip and tell him that I got the chip off the chip rack about 10 minutes before hand. :banghead:

Frank and jerkoff went off to go have a discussion, and finally they came back with the right color. :headbang:

By this point I was worried about the primer and the green color, so I asked if Frank could take a look at those too. Frank did, and I dunno if he had to mix me some new primer and paint, or if the old primer and paint were okay, but pretty soon my paint cans reappeared. :headbang:

Then Frank told me that he was very sorry for my trouble, and he would give me half off my paint. :headbang:

I took a new look at the Elastamerica color sheet, and decided that El Dorado was close enough to Honeysuckle White that I could look the other way if it was going to be half off. :headbang:

Frank told me he couldn't give me half off the WHOLE order, but he could give me half off a few of the cans, so I was cool with that. I got my paint, paid $300 bucks, and came home. :headbang:

Mission accomplished. :headbang:

That's too much.

He was just "a" manager.

:shrug: