Bob Nardelli, we hardly knew ye'.

Okay, far be it from me to stand steadily on ceremony but I do have to blow the trumpets from the castle walls, because on January second 2007, Home Depot investors finally and workers finally may have caught a break, CEO and company president Robert L. Nardelli stepped down from his position and left the company. I bring this up in my blog, straying into a realm from which I would ussually avoid, to say," welcome back to the real world Home Depot investors , now make the best of it". I am sure it's not all noise makers and confetti over in Atlanta, HD's Corporate HQ, since nardellis walking cash was reported in the area of two hundred and ten million dollareenies, which I view as a ridiculous sum for anyone, anywhere that does any thing! Last year, a reputable Wall Street magazine reported that the average CEO of a Fortune 500 company raked in a comfortable 11.75 Million dollars a year, Bobs 2006 pay package, came in at a wopping 123.7 millon, that is close to the same pay of the entire Boston Redsox team in 2006! Nardelli claimed that most of that money was tied up in stock options and equity so if the company didn't expand and the stock didn't go up, he wouldn't even see some of that money. Well I geuss he's seeing it now ladies and gentlemen! Home Depot seems to be buying out his stock options, that is probably the reason for his giant package, ( I am going to skip the obvious reference to genitalia that I would ussually put here and take the high road, just this once) which is a good thing since, on january second NYSE, HD ( New York Stock Exchange, Home Depot) opened at thirty seven dollars a share and just three days after Nardellis departure, they opened at 40.44, I am not a Wall Street guru but I know that is a huge jump. So my question is, why did they keep him on for so damn long? I was an employee of the Depot during Bobs tenure and let me just say that, being a builder before working for them, seeing how the company used to be run and then being there during it's downward slide, I can not fathom how the investors didn't just form a lynch mob and remove the problem, I can tell you the employees were ready too. Since 2001 Nardelli and his team "streamlined" the company, which is corporate crap talk for getting rid of as many expenses as possible, including employees, that the company sees as unnecessary. Streamlining ussually helps to increase stock prices and makes the higher ups wages (managers, human resources...etc.) increase as well, sometimes the remaining emploees get a share in the profit as well. Under Nardelli however, stock prices decreased, average wages and raises dropped by huge margins, emploee theft skyrocketed, most of the loss prevention people at HD couldn't find their ass with two hands and a map and they were being focused on employee theft while every shakey crackhead in the nation could just walk out with anything at there leisure. These are the signs of BAD MANAGEMENT, it is not the employees who ruin a company it is the CEOs, the DMs and managers who ruin them, while workers take the blame. In a short lived bit of video idiocy, Bob Nardelli stated, on video that at Home Depot, "Managers are God"! I am not a religious man in any real viable way but I do believe that, if this was heard during my tenure, there would have been a storewide Salem style witch burning, you can fit a lot of heretics in a lumber yard. In responce to that statement. No! Managers are not God, corporate managers , infact tend to be and this is a broad generalization, angry little smatchets, with high blood pressure, feeble bodies, bad attempts at goatees, Napolean complexes and an ever failing fight against simple chronic hallitosis. They are only authority figures in the eyes of the people they can fire and tend to lord over those people as if the were gods. I say if you're gonna lose the job anyway and you don't mind an assault on your record, give 'em a good kick in the groin when they hold out that pink slip, if they even have the guts to fire you themselves. Sorry I tend to rant, back on subject now. One of the last things I read from the Nardelli office before I left was a store news letter stating how he very much wanted to hire military men and women, which is admirable for any company, however he said he wanted to run HD as a military organization more disciplined and all that crap. If I had wanted to work for a military organization I would be in the military right now! I have nothing against military service, mine being a military family going back quite a way, I do have something against the ideals of the military being forced upon you. Besides the fact that in all my digging I could not find one drop of military service on Mr. Nardellis record. Born May 17 1948, B.S. WIU (1971),M.B.A. U of Louisville (1975), Pres/CEO of Camco, as well as GE. transportation systems, GM of Case Construction Equip. and World wide Parts and Components. My point I suppose is this, I am sure that Mr. Nardelli has worked hard to get where he is in life and I am sure he can justify his pay, this is just another showing of how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, think of that pay incentive every time you go into a store and can't find hel, or there is one person trying to answer six people at once, don't get mad at the workers, call that manager up and say, " hey jagoff, how about hiring more help"? THose big money corporate checks come directly out of workers pockets, streamlining companies so the few remaining workers are so fearfull of losing there jobs that they will take pay cuts to stay at work. This is just the tip of the iceberg America, we are on our way down to a world where soon well over half the country will be living in poverty, an America where twenty percent of the people do sixty percent of the work, fifty percent do thirty percent of the work, nine percent do none of the work and one percent gets all the money. We are headed toward a Stallinist class versus class future and corporate money men are at the helm. I have gotten long winded on this so I shall sum up. Mr. Nardelli I do not know you so I can not hate you, I like to talk to people before I dispise them, so no real ill will intended here, even though you did help raise 300,000 for the Republican National Convention, politicians being not being my favorite people in the world. i'd like to give your kind the benefit of the doubt as hard as that may be for me. Mabye your just a failed college football player who made it in big buisness, of course mabye Hitler was just a failed artist who made it good in Vienna or mabye Castro just didn't try hard enough to be a real big league pitcher. The world may never know.

I know it was long and not as funny ass usual but the story has it's moments I thought, and for people who take it too seriously, stop it! It's parody people picking at lifes little foibles and what have you. Now heres that penis joke... Large package? Mabye to micheal Jackson. or the lollipop called, they want you to help measure there pinkies.