I have worked at HD for 7+ years. Nearly all of my boxes were cut on the panel saw. I do my cuts for two reasons. 1) The lumber people are usually too busy and have more important things to do than to spend a half hour to get perfect cuts on a $22 sale. 2) I want them to be perfect. Yeah I usually spend almost an hour. Here's why.
Those tape measures that the manufacturer attatches to the saw are somewhat accurate. Sometimes they are pretty ****ed close. Well pretty ****ed close isn't good enough for me. I will break out the tape measure and mark my wood exactly where the cut needs to be. I will do a line at the mark and one 1/8' from the mark. I pull the vacuum hose off the saw and sight up the blade on my lines. If the ends of the blades cover BOTH lines then it's going to be a perfect cut. No I'm not done there.
I turn on the saw. I run the blade until I barely hear the teeth cut into the wood. I pull the saw back and make sure that it cut exactly where I wanted it to. If not I tap the blade over (or tap the wood over - depends on horizonatal or vertical cut) until it is perfect. I do another lovetap cut and make sure it's perfect. Once I know it's perfect I do the rest of the cut. Yeah it takes time. However it's a hell of a lot faster than a circular saw. Also when you live in an apartment complex you might just get kicked out for using a circular saw.
Nowadays HD hires a diverse mix of people. I mean with the wages they start people off at you are a complete ignorant moron to expect that person to be an expert wood cutter, know everything on how to fix the fungus problem on your exotic plant, or how to fix a leaky faucet. When you call some kind of customer service that person on the other end of the phone knows as much as what the computer screen says.
On the same token the HD associate knows as much as what he/she learned through training. When I started in 1998 we had product knowledge classes all the freaking time. You woke for classes 6am-8am once a month on a Sunday morning. Now nearly everything you learn is from a stupid computer-based class. Of course you learn a lot from on the job experience. I knew nothing when I started, but I have learned a whole shyte-load of stuff since working there. The longer the person works there the more he/she knows. Again, back to the wage issue, most people use HD as a part time job (2nd job, moms, or college students), use it as a stepping-stone onto a brighter future, or you get the occasional professional who has not job and cannot find anything better.
If you graduate high school and aspire to make a career of working at HD then yes I can see how you might expect people to know a lot there. On the other hand if you are some successful professional making $$$$ and would never stoop down to the level of working at HD, it baffles me if you expect that person making a few bucks more than minimum wage to know it all.
OK I'm totally off topic and I'm just ranting away. Ignore me. Do read the part about how I cut the MDF //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif
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