Utah woman says a 45-minute trip to Home Depot broke her. Then she explains what the worker put her through: ‘We paid for the sample’

A woman who posts under the name Kat on TikTok said a routine paint pickup at Home Depot turned into a 45-minute ordeal after the store mixed the wrong color for her built-ins. She said in her video, posted under the handle @kathortin, that the store gave her a gray paint instead of the shade she had picked from a sample.

Kat said she did not want the gray color, adding, “We’re not doing millennial gray.” She said she and her husband are regular customers at the store, saying, “We’re at Home Depot all the time.”

According to Kat, she was helped by an elderly employee she referred to as Robert, whom she described as around 80 years old. She said she brought both the paint sample she wanted and the gallon of gray paint she was given by mistake back to the store to sort out the mix-up.

Employee reportedly questioned why she wanted to return the gray paint

Kat said when she reached the paint counter, Robert asked her, “What do you want?” She said she explained the situation to him, saying, “I have this paint sample of the color that I did want, and I have my gallon of paint of a color that I don’t want.”

She said Robert responded by asking, “So what’s the problem? You like the gray?” Kat said she then clarified that she had wanted the sample color, saying, “We paid for the sample, we liked it at home, went bought a gallon of it, came home, color’s gray.”

She said the confusion continued, with Robert reportedly asking again, “So you want the sample to be gray?” before she repeated that she wanted the color shown on the sample. Kat said Robert eventually pulled out what she called “this massive book of all the paint colors to ever exist” in an effort to find a match.

While Robert searched for the color, Kat said an unnamed older woman standing nearby began offering unsolicited advice. She said the woman told her, “You need to be careful with blues… Put them on your walls and sometimes they’re purple,” to which Kat responded, “Love it, thank you, thank you for the advice.”

Kat said the same woman later commented that green paint can also appear purple on walls, though Kat said she was not buying either color. She said Robert did not respond for about five minutes while searching for the shade, calling it an “awkward silence.”

Kat said the delay led her to consider picking a different color altogether, since she had other errands to run. She said she ultimately chose a new color, and Robert agreed to mix it for her. When she asked if he could make it “50% darker,” she said he appeared confused and asked, “Darker?”

At that point, Kat said the older woman spoke up again, this time suggesting she try a different store. She said the woman remarked, “You should go to Lowe’s! It’s much faster there. They’re so much more helpful,” before turning to Home Depot staff at the counter and praising them, saying, “They have been so nice to me and so helpful. They know so much about–” In another case, a Washington man bought a vanity cabinet for a penny, but the manager refused to let him take it.

Kat said the entire process took about 45 minutes, though she said the outcome was ultimately fine, ending the video with a thumbs-up gesture. A similar dispute involved a Chicago woman who paid for her Chipotle order but arrived one minute late, and they locked the door.

The video drew a range of reactions in the comments section, with several viewers asking Kat what paint color she ended up choosing. One commenter guessed the color was purple, while another user joked that a shade called “Swiss coffee” can also look purple on walls.

A commenter identified as Brittany Harris suggested that Sherwin Williams’ Swiss coffee shade was a good option and referenced advice from Lowe’s. Kat responded to that comment, saying, “We got Swiss coffee! Home Depot is being weird, at least by us, with competitors colors.”

Another commenter asked whether the color recipe was supposed to be listed on the paint sample. Kat replied, “Yes, unfortunately it’s been an issue lately for us,” and added that the employee “scanned it multiple times and could not get the computer to make it again, even though we have done this many many times.”

Home Depot has not publicly responded to the video as of this writing. Kat’s TikTok video has drawn comments from users discussing similar paint-matching experiences at home improvement stores.