Home Depot trio has stayed since year one

Calvin Moon was 18 and fresh out of high school when he hired on with Home Depot. He loaded customers' cars, gathered carts from the parking lot and swept the store's aisles for $3.75 an hour.

That was 31 years ago, when the new Atlanta-based company had just three stores. Now Moon, 49, is one of three employees who've been with the home improvement giant essentially since the beginning.

Moon met his wife through a Home Depot co-worker. He bought his house after cashing out Home Depot stock. And while he has applied for one other job, it was with a company Home Depot owned.

"You cut me, I'd bleed orange," he said. "My true guts (are) right here."

Moon is now a pro account sales associate, working with contractors and other professionals at a Kennesaw store. His comrades in longevity include Adina Schmidt, executive assistant to Home Depot's vice president of learning at the corporate headquarters; and Mark Naugle, who works with special orders in the receiving department of a Concord, Calif., store.

The trio took different career paths, but all said that, from where they sit, the company's familial culture has endured throughout decades of growth and top-level turnover. And while each has briefly entertained the possibility of leaving, they agree now that they're unlikely to go anywhere else.

Naugle, 53, started at Home Depot on June 14, 1979, while on summer break from the University of Georgia. Anticipating that the company had a bright future, he decided in the fall that he would stay at least a little longer before going back to school.

"It stuck," Naugle said. "When I first made that decision, I never looked back."

Now, Naugle is the longest-serving Home Depot employee. As the company grew, he traveled to Florida, Louisiana, Arizona and California, helping to open more than a dozen stores. And while he has had casual thoughts of working elsewhere -- perhaps turning his hobby, off-road racing, into a full-time job -- he has never even interviewed elsewhere since starting that summer.

Other people make more of his longevity than he does, Naugle said, and come to him for his expertise and company lore. While the job is part of who he is, he said it's just a piece of what defines him. Still, he appreciates the attention.

"It shows that this whole journey has been worth something," he said. "It has been a great contributor to being able to be where I am."

When she started on June 18, 1979 -- days before the grand opening of stores on Buford Highway and Memorial Drive  -- Schmidt was an 18-year-old cashier who left her job at Western Sizzlin' Steakhouse and took a pay cut because of the "dream and opportunity" that Home Depot presented.

She spent about two years in the stores, counting cash in the vault room and as a head cashier, before moving to the corporate office. Schmidt still remembers the trouble co-founder Bernie Marcus had luring people into the store on the first day, even when he handed out $1 bills to entice shoppers in.

As Schmidt got married, divorced and married again, she said her jobs with the company defined her.

"This place is my life," she said. "The most constant thing in my entire life is Home Depot. I always had a job, I always had a purpose, I always had a reason to get up in the morning."

Working at Home Depot has has even become a family affair. Daughter Megan, 23, has worked in the building services department for nearly three years. Schmidt said the thought that Megan, too, could spend her career at Home Depot makes her proud.

Moon's son, 21-year-old Jeffrey, worked at Home Depot for three months on a summer break, but he doesn't think it will flourish into a career. Moon, who has worked in every department but hardware over the years, said in the early days, the work was hard but the stores were small enough that it felt like a family.