Posted by Anonymous Poster , Nov 27, 2007 1:36PM

There is a mid-level SSC (HD HQ) Merchandising Exec who got the
shaft - LITERALLY and on two levels, Ha! from HD. The suit is Sexton v. Lopez et al. in atlanta federal court (Et al is HD and many of its individual EXECUTIVE, HR and senior merchandising employees)

The crux of the suit is that the lady in the suit and the other female merchant trainee in a 15 person merchant trainee program were only offered jobs which were the
split of a former male's merchant's job at the tiny, 34 store EXPO division, while ALL
the males got "real" 3000+ store jobs, where they could make real money and
had an opp to bonus. 15 people in the program, only 2 women and the women, who had more "experience" than the men, were only offered a
"split" of an "EXPO" male merchant's former job. EXPO closed 20 stores in 2005 and they haven't added any since then. She also claims she was paid less than
the men.

Apparently, this lady made many internal complaints (right up the ladder and to Nardelli himself) before she made an external complaint to the EEOC.

HD denied that she had ever made verbal or written complaints in their motion to dismiss that is now under court consideration. Sexton has documentation, written, verbal and digital that she did make complaints, she says. A merchant friend of mine who was at HD at the time Sexton was there says that it's common knowledge that she taped her interactions with her training and other supervisors, HR and other execs when she made internal complaints about discrimination to them and when they were badmouthing other female employees. Sexton showed another merchant copies of internal emails, written letters sent to execs and HR and phone records of her internal complaints. She claims that she her supervisor changed her resume and told her that she would not be able to take a temporary job in a traditionally male field of gypsum because they "were concerned that she wouldn't fit in because she was a woman". She actually has this on tape and my friend says he heard her supervisor say this to her himself.

BUT HERE'S THE REALLY INTERESTING PART OF THE STORY!!!!!!

HD Board Director Kenneth Langone ADMITTED that
HD had an "HR function that was the epitome of the good old boy network" in
a 2006 Directorship Magazine article - and this suit points out Langone's
admission. In the article, Langone was trying to list reasons for Bob Nardelli's wild pay package but couldn't come up with any concrete ways that Nardelli changed
the way HR and HD Execs treated women at HD.

Kind of hard to assert that no exec or board member knew HD was discriminating against women with a statement like that by Langone
WHILE Sexton was making internal and external complainst about discrimination, retaliation and harassment in 2005 and 2006.

EVEN MORE INTERESTING IS THAT:

According to the suit, HD's Execs and HR not only continued to discriminate
and retaliate against this woman and other female employees but improved
upon their SHITTY behavior by

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS! -
allegedly covering up the fact that Lopez, former Business Process
Improvement and Customer Service EVP, pressured the single mother trainee to
f*ck him in his office at the SSC HQ. Lopez was directly responsible for
signing off on this woman trainee's "graduation" from training. Even worse,
Lopez is rumored to have told other execs and employees at HD that he was f*cking her,
ostensibly to get the other execs from approaching her for s*x too.

This woman claims in her suit that after she made an internal complaint to HD, HD employees retaliated against her by, among other nasty things, shutting off her office phone for a few weeks, trying to cause her to have a road accident by putting nails into her car tires (in the employee card-controlled parking lot when her child's car seat was in the back of the car) and stopping all of her store's merchandise from being shipped to her stores so that her EXPO business would tank. She says in the suit that she has all of this documented.

I believe what she claims in her suit and I've heard that they do worse to women from the stores. This woman is a mid-level merch exec who says that she managed $135M and $55M businesses for HD as a Merchant and not some typical store clerk angry at a slap on the fanny. You can bet if she's a merchant she made over 100K a year and probably wouldn't tank a good job like that for no reason.

My ex employee friends from HD say that after this woman filed her EEOC claim in the summer of 2006 and told the company she was
going to "out" Lopez and the other execs and HR & Merchandising employees for the discrimination, harassment and retaliation,
that other execs, who were rumored to have had their
own "issues" with women employees there left before they could be identified for the same bad behavior. They all got big package deals when they left.

I think it's a big, BIG story no one is talking about but should be. Especially if you are a shareholder, which I used to be until I met some people who had worked there.

Maybe the mass exodus at
HD's top level, perhaps, and this is just conjecture, is NOT ABOUT BOB - it's about getting the hell out of dodge
before the execs may be caught with their hands in the female rookies' cookie
jars.

Liebert is rumored to have shacked up with one of his "cookies", leaving his wife and kids behind with HD's approval and then later,
before he left HD, was rumored to have been caught with his "hand in the cookies' jar" in the SSC
board conference room with a different "cookie".

They actually called the EX HR
VP Donovan's attractive female HR staff on the 21st floor "Dennis' Harem".

My bet is that this woman will be going on a federal court discovery spree to id and out all the jerks at HD who may have supported or did this sort of thing.

Maybe this is why some vendors are said to have to take HD execs and merchants to strip clubs to get any business done. Four stupid HD flooring merchants were recently canned for trying to get kickbacks from a Chinese vendor - I say -stupid- b/c how did they expect the Chinese vendors to file the hard currency exchange forms? Under "Bribe"? But like HD Director Langone says - it's a "good old boy network" and no currency control forms are necessary within the good ol' US of A for booze, girls or golf outings.

And if you are a vendor, rumor has it that you have to pay for all of these, including "donations" to HD charities, marketing and coop programs where you are not guaranteed that you'll ever get an ad, etc.

Check it out with HD employees, if you can find any who haven't left already, if you don't believe it's true.

Oh, and if you think that HD Merchandising or the Execs at the HD HQ/SSC has any idea whatsoever as to what merchandise they have on the store shelves at any given moment, that their merch systems are up to date and accurate, and that their balance sheets correctly reflect the amount of inventory they have in the stores, maybe you should talk to ANY Merchandising personnel at HD for insight on how merchandising staff have to fight with an antiquated and wildly inaccurate inventory system. No wonder their stores look like sh*t and they're always out of stock.

Good ol' boy network - that's a good one, Mr. Langone. I sold my stock long ago.

Posted by Anonymous Poster , Nov 27, 2007 1:37PM

There is a mid-level SSC (HD HQ) Merchandising Exec who got the
shaft - LITERALLY and on two levels, Ha! from HD. The suit is Sexton v. Lopez et al. in atlanta federal court (Et al is HD and many of its individual EXECUTIVE, HR and senior merchandising employees)

The crux of the suit is that the lady in the suit and the other female merchant trainee in a 15 person merchant trainee program were only offered jobs which were the
split of a former male's merchant's job at the tiny, 34 store EXPO division, while ALL
the males got "real" 3000+ store jobs, where they could make real money and
had an opp to bonus. 15 people in the program, only 2 women and the women, who had more "experience" than the men, were only offered a
"split" of an "EXPO" male merchant's former job. EXPO closed 20 stores in 2005 and they haven't added any since then. She also claims she was paid less than
the men.

Apparently, this lady made many internal complaints (right up the ladder and to Nardelli himself) before she made an external complaint to the EEOC.

HD denied that she had ever made verbal or written complaints in their motion to dismiss that is now under court consideration. Sexton has documentation, written, verbal and digital that she did make complaints, she says. A merchant friend of mine who was at HD at the time Sexton was there says that it's common knowledge that she taped her interactions with her training and other supervisors, HR and other execs when she made internal complaints about discrimination to them and when they were badmouthing other female employees. Sexton showed another merchant copies of internal emails, written letters sent to execs and HR and phone records of her internal complaints. She claims that she her supervisor changed her resume and told her that she would not be able to take a temporary job in a traditionally male field of gypsum because they "were concerned that she wouldn't fit in because she was a woman". She actually has this on tape and my friend says he heard her supervisor say this to her himself.

BUT HERE'S THE REALLY INTERESTING PART OF THE STORY!!!!!!

HD Board Director Kenneth Langone ADMITTED that
HD had an "HR function that was the epitome of the good old boy network" in
a 2006 Directorship Magazine article - and this suit points out Langone's
admission. In the article, Langone was trying to list reasons for Bob Nardelli's wild pay package but couldn't come up with any concrete ways that Nardelli changed
the way HR and HD Execs treated women at HD.

Kind of hard to assert that no exec or board member knew HD was discriminating against women with a statement like that by Langone
WHILE Sexton was making internal and external complainst about discrimination, retaliation and harassment in 2005 and 2006.

EVEN MORE INTERESTING IS THAT:

According to the suit, HD's Execs and HR not only continued to discriminate
and retaliate against this woman and other female employees but improved
upon their SHITTY behavior by

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS! -
allegedly covering up the fact that Lopez, former Business Process
Improvement and Customer Service EVP, pressured the single mother trainee to
f*ck him in his office at the SSC HQ. Lopez was directly responsible for
signing off on this woman trainee's "graduation" from training. Even worse,
Lopez is rumored to have told other execs and employees at HD that he was f*cking her,
ostensibly to get the other execs from approaching her for s*x too.

This woman claims in her suit that after she made an internal complaint to HD, HD employees retaliated against her by, among other nasty things, shutting off her office phone for a few weeks, trying to cause her to have a road accident by putting nails into her car tires (in the employee card-controlled parking lot when her child's car seat was in the back of the car) and stopping all of her store's merchandise from being shipped to her stores so that her EXPO business would tank. She says in the suit that she has all of this documented.

I believe what she claims in her suit and I've heard that they do worse to women from the stores. This woman is a mid-level merch exec who says that she managed $135M and $55M businesses for HD as a Merchant and not some typical store clerk angry at a slap on the fanny. You can bet if she's a merchant she made over 100K a year and probably wouldn't tank a good job like that for no reason.

My ex employee friends from HD say that after this woman filed her EEOC claim in the summer of 2006 and told the company she was
going to "out" Lopez and the other execs and HR & Merchandising employees for the discrimination, harassment and retaliation,
that other execs, who were rumored to have had their
own "issues" with women employees there left before they could be identified for the same bad behavior. They all got big package deals when they left.

I think it's a big, BIG story no one is talking about but should be. Especially if you are a shareholder, which I used to be until I met some people who had worked there.

Maybe the mass exodus at
HD's top level, perhaps, and this is just conjecture, is NOT ABOUT BOB - it's about getting the hell out of dodge
before the execs may be caught with their hands in the female rookies' cookie
jars.

Liebert is rumored to have shacked up with one of his "cookies", leaving his wife and kids behind with HD's approval and then later,
before he left HD, was rumored to have been caught with his "hand in the cookies' jar" in the SSC
board conference room with a different "cookie".

They actually called the EX HR
VP Donovan's attractive female HR staff on the 21st floor "Dennis' Harem".

My bet is that this woman will be going on a federal court discovery spree to id and out all the jerks at HD who may have supported or did this sort of thing.

Maybe this is why some vendors are said to have to take HD execs and merchants to strip clubs to get any business done. Four stupid HD flooring merchants were recently canned for trying to get kickbacks from a Chinese vendor - I say -stupid- b/c how did they expect the Chinese vendors to file the hard currency exchange forms? Under "Bribe"? But like HD Director Langone says - it's a "good old boy network" and no currency control forms are necessary within the good ol' US of A for booze, girls or golf outings.

And if you are a vendor, rumor has it that you have to pay for all of these, including "donations" to HD charities, marketing and coop programs where you are not guaranteed that you'll ever get an ad, etc.

Check it out with HD employees, if you can find any who haven't left already, if you don't believe it's true.

Oh, and if you think that HD Merchandising or the Execs at the HD HQ/SSC has any idea whatsoever as to what merchandise they have on the store shelves at any given moment, that their merch systems are up to date and accurate, and that their balance sheets correctly reflect the amount of inventory they have in the stores, maybe you should talk to ANY Merchandising personnel at HD for insight on how merchandising staff have to fight with an antiquated and wildly inaccurate inventory system. No wonder their stores look like sh*t and they're always out of stock.

Good ol' boy network - that's a good one, Mr. Langone. I sold my stock long ago.