Dec 10, 2010

My boss down at the store is reading a few of the 'skinny books" about making the workplace better for all concerned.  

This sort of thing.

I admire her willingness to try to make our workplace better.  I think she is in an uphill fight because she has onerous (my word) pressures on her from the owners of the business.

Our owners manage their business by the numbers and that instills fear in the managers.   When numbers become sacred and they lead to silly decisions of the 
cutting off your nose to spite your face variety.

I've told this story before, but I had a customer who wanted to buy $225 worth of pegboard hooks and requested a 20% discount.  The store's cost on the item is $115.

The manager countered with a 10% discount and the customer walked.  The strict numbers criterion says that we would rather make zero, than make only $65 on a deal, if it violates our margin guidelines.

It seems to me that the best thing you can do for employees is to give them a little power to do their job and trust that they won't give away the store. 








Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

6 comments:

Bella Rum said...

That's a lot of pegboard hooks.

Barbara said...

Empowering employees is definitely the answer to a successful business. I read that cheese book in a similar government attempt to improve morale. I think it actually had some good points, but those things are far out of my mind at this point.

Kurt said...

The world has officially changed. I had a bill of $5.16 yesterday, and I gave the cashier $16, and he held the bills up, one in each hand, and gave me a puzzled look.

Kurt said...

That didn't make any sense because I just woke up. I gave the cashier $21: a twenty and a one.

Barbara said...

Kurt -- In a similar situation, I find myself explaining my strategy to the poor clerk who hasn't a clue as to why anyone would offer more than the $20. They have no comprehension of making change, let alone ways to minimize the number of bills returned!

a. said...

If you don't trust your employees to make decisions, then you should get new employees. But maybe I'm going about management all wrong, you know, trusting my employees to do their jobs and all?