A 91-year-old was arrested for blockading a Home Depot. He was upset about his generator
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A 91-year-old Rhode Island man was arrested in November at a Home Depot after authorities say he blockaded the door with his pickup.
Edward Hayden's protest had nothing to do with retail rage or other holiday craziness, he said. He was disrespected as a customer for months, he explained, after purchasing a generator that generated only frustration.
“Finally I had it," he told the Providence Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network.
“I don’t like to be stepped on.”
The whole sequence of events was costing him sleep. So he rose early Nov. 27 from his bed in Snug Harbor, in South Kingstown, grabbed his heart pills and hopped into his pickup truck for one more 30-minute drive to the store.
'They sold me a used genny'
The trips to the store started in the spring, when Hayden went to The Home Depot in May, dropped several hundred dollars on a Ryobi portable generator, and headed home.
Hayden spent $765.82 on a Ryobi portable generator that he planned to use in his 19-foot travel trailer on road trips to NASCAR races.
He never opened the generator’s box until months later, and when he did, he said he couldn’t get the thing to start.
Hayden, who used to run the family business, Hayden Machinery, in Thomaston, Connecticut, diagnosed the problem: “The gas tank had oil in it.”
He took the generator back to the Home Depot in Westerly where, he says, the store agreed to repair it. But when he returned a few days later, he says he was told the generator had been shipped to the manufacturer in Illinois.
And he’d be facing a repair bill for $203 because, he says, the store accused him of running the generator.
“I think now they sold me a used genny and charged me the full price for a new one,” he said.
(A representative for Home Depot did not immediately return a phone message placed with the store’s corporate media office.)
'Raise holy hell'
The dispute dragged on for months, with Hayden appealing to store managers and getting nowhere, he says. By Thanksgiving week, he was losing sleep, dwelling on how, he says, the store was mistreating him.
And so he awoke early on that Wednesday, made sure to take along his pills for his heart condition, and drove back to the store with a defiant plan in mind.
When a store manager told him, no, he would not be getting his money back, Hayden put his plan into action.
“I knew it was two days before Black Friday, which is a big deal for those stores,” he says. “I figured the only way I’m going to get any satisfaction is I’m going to have to raise holy hell.”
So he drove his Dodge Ram pickup up to the store door and parked right there, close enough so you couldn’t even get a shopping cart through.
“And I told everyone going in, ‘Be careful in there, they’re gonna take you,” he said.
Two police officers found him 20 minutes later, reading the morning’s Wall Street Journal, drinking coffee and refusing to move.
Hayden didn’t go easily.
When he rolled the window down, “the cop jumped in over me, popped my seat belt and dragged me out.”
'She gave me a tracking number'
Hayden was scheduled for a court hearing Friday, but a couple of things have happened in the interim.
First, Westerly police dropped the charges after Hayden donated $150 to an animal shelter. Court records show the case was dismissed Dec. 2.
But Hayden still wanted his generator — or his money back.
So this week, he called the customer-service number for Ryobi generators and spoke to a “wonderful representative,” Pam Weaver.
He suggested that she Google his name and the Westerly Police to find the Providence Journal story about his arrest.
“She called me back in 15 minutes and said, ‘Give me an hour.’”
When she called back, “she gave me a tracking number, and you know what that means — something’s being shipped to you. I walk out of the house the next morning, and sitting in my driveway is my new genny in a shiny big box.”
Hayden started it right up. It purrs like a kitten.
Hayden says he never heard back from anyone at Home Depot, but when he last spoke to Pam Weaver, “I told her, ‘Somewhere in heaven, there’s a place for you, Pam.’″
Follow Tom Mooney on Twitter: @mooneyprojo
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rhode Island man, 91, arrested in Home Depot protest over generator
