Bob Nardelli agrees with Pickles Bush...well, in a roundabout way

[jmowreader]

Laura "Pickles" Bush says "the reality (of the Katrina damage) isn't anything like what we're seeing on TV."

As we all know, on Thursday Home Depot's CEO Bob Nardelli toured Louisiana and Mississippi. Last night, he sent a message to the stores. Allow me to excerpt it...

"On Thursday, I toured our facilities from Baton Rouge and New Orleans to Gulfport and Biloxi. It was an extremely difficult and emotional trip, and I wanted to share with you how your fellow associates, as well as the community at large, are holding up. I have to say that in my 35 years of business, this clearly is the most significant dislocation and relocation of humanity I have seen. I was on site post 9/11 at Ground Zero and in Florida after the hurricanes last year, but the expansiveness of this is beyond comprehension...

"What you see on television does not compare to the reality of the worst-hit areas. The magnitude of loss is indescribable relative to the damage inflicted upon homes, infrastructure, spirits and so much more. The devastation is very difficult to measure, as the economic and social burden touches not only individuals, but our entire nation. In short, the strike zone was nothing less than shocking."

The only things I left out are comments he made about how wonderful our associates and customers have been through this--apparently there are a few stores that have reopened, and the associates are working hard while the customers are working with us.

Apparently the reality isn't anything like we're seeing on TV, it's a whole lot worse.

[liberal N proud]

1. Bob Nardelli is looking forward at the record profits his company is about

to reap from the rebuilding.
I am sure he has already secured sub-contracts for Halliburton

[jmowreader]

4. Not much profit in THIS rebuilding

even if diesel wasn't three fucking dollars a gallon and we weren't locked into pre-hurricane prices for the stuff.

First, we lost a store. As in the building is no longer there. It will have to be rebuilt from scratch. I don't know what a whole Home Depot store is worth, but they aren't giving them away. Let's throw out a nice round number and say $30 million.

Second, there are nine HDs in Louisiana and nine in Mississippi. I'm going to be very conservative and say each store lost one-half of its inventory to floodwater. Figure they lost everything that's lower than your chin--the product on shelves above head height should be okay. If a Home Depot store contains $10 million worth of product, you're looking at $90 million in merchandise we're going to have to throw away. Then add in the freight charges to haul all of that shit away--let's say $18 million total.

To make back this $138 million (which doesn't count a lot of minor crap like putting full work crews into buildings that aren't open for business, buying tons of cleaning products and loss of business because someone wants drywall when all the drywall in the building is waterlogged), for the first few months we'll be selling largely products that, under the best conditions, have five percent initial markup attached to them.

[young_at_heart]

2. Laura Bush needs to read this

Her statement implies that she has toured extensively in the whole area and is an expert on such things.

[Broken_Hero]

3. yeah...

I knew it was it a lot worse than what the tv's were making it out to be, and on that, tv was making it out to be pretty chaotic...my wife can't even watch it anymore, and i know it has to be worse in the effected areas....