My daughter recently had some issues where she worked. She tried to go up the chain of command but that didn’t work. I was happy to jump in and try to help. Several people told me that I should let her fight her own battle.

I hate to say this, she was born with a deformity. She has her mom’s backbone, not mine. She doesn’t want to stir things up because of the consequences. I, on the other hand, don’t worry about them because I don’t expect anything bad.

I’ve learned over the years, if you are writing to a corporation, don’t send your letter to one person. Send a copy to as many people as you can. One person can sweep it under the rug or completely take it out of context while with multiple people, someone is going to take notice.

I got into my biggest trouble in the mid 90s. We were hauling bricks from Pavestone in Lee’s Summit, MO to the first, new Home Depot in Wichita. Another driver and I tried to get there that Thursday afternoon to get unloaded.

We arrived at 4 pm,and were told that we would have to wait until Friday morning. It is raining the next morning when we check in. We were told that they would start shortly. Five hours later, the sun came out and that’s when we started to get unloaded. FYI, forklifts can work in the rain, the employee didn’t want to put on a rain suit.

Before I left the house the following Sunday afternoon, I went to the Home Depot website. There is a place to leave a comment, so I did. The next Friday afternoon, I pulled into the yard in Wichita.

The owner met me at the door, shaking his finger at me so hard and fast, like he had a booger on the tip of it and it wouldn’t come off. He is screaming at me, “What did you do”?

The CEO of Home Depot went to the CEO of Pavestone and told them to take care of the problem or they would not buy bricks from them. The Pavestone CEO told the Lee’s Summit plant to take care of the problem or they would lose the Home Depot account.

Lee’s Summit manager went to my boss and told him to take care of the problem or we would not be hauling their products. I became a problem over these three sentences.

It should not take five hours to get 15 pallets of bricks unloaded. For a new store, it was dirty. I would not shop there.

I was banned from Pavestone and Home Depot. The next Monday, I returned to Pavestone to get a Topeka Home Depot load. As I was checking out, one of our drivers saw me and made a remark about me standing up to Home Depot.

The shipping clerk looked at me and said I was Pavestone #1 enemy. I wasn’t supposed to be on their property. I told him what I wrote and he said, “That’s it?”

You may not remember this but the CEO of Home Depot was fired because he was running the company into failure. I wonder if my three sentences had something to do with that?