I used to be responsible for sales and marketing at a firm that was a supplier to Home Depot and Walmart. We always had Menards and Lowes on our targeted list (for obvious reasons). I spent a couple of years in my life one day at Menard's world headquarters in Eau Clare, Wisconsin. My impression of the place was nothing short of creepy. It doesn't surprise me at all that they don't do a good job training or educating their employees. My general impression was that John Menard still has his first dime. The conference room table in our meeting room was actually an old dining room table that looked like it came from John Menard's college dorm room. Eau Clare is a horrible, horrible place where Menard's is the single most important employer. Locals refer to it as, "The Company." It's like something out of a bad Twilight Zone episode. You can almost imagine Rod Serling greeting you at the airport. All suppliers posture. It's a negotiation tactic. Most of the time you can see the real person behind the posturing. At Menards I got the feeling though that the people really do have an insurmountable superiority complex based on the community culture they've created in Eau Clare. Also, it doesn't take too much Google searching to learn what a prick John Menard is. Anyway, I never shop there because of that experience. And no, we didn't get the contract.