I work at a Home Depot here in South Florida. I'm almost positive this has to do with long term government business. Home Office probably got wind of some regulatory monsters coming down on them and decided to bail on official, large scale government business. We're not going to piss off our customer base by telling guys in Uniform to go pound sand.
This will be straightened out when the guys at Legal sit down with the Justice Dept. and make sure that our butts are covered. What the people at Lowe's haven't figured out is that when you do big business with the Feds, they can often call the tune.
Be Seeing You,
Chris