The Red Stapler Chronicles

At work today we learned that the president of our company and all of the main buyers will be traveling to our store on Friday. Just great. Now I will be putting in a 16 hour day tomorrow. In my company, anytime that there is a visit scheduled, the store is expected to look absolutely PERFECT. This means not a single item out of place–not a speck of dust to be found anywhere. Of course, that is always the goal, but it is impossible to attain with normal staffing levels.

So what will the store do to make the impossible possible? First of all, we will completely blow our staffing expense plan my bringing in as much help as possible (including offering overtime) to help prepare for the visit. Next, we will spend thousands of dollars on creative props (demonstrating that we can think outside the box) to impress the president and the other visitors. Lastly, we will flood the selling floor on the day of the visit with at least twice the normal staffing levels in order to make sure that no customer will have to wait a second for help (I wish this was always a reality, but these days it certainly is not).

Taking a step back, what will this announced corporate visit accomplish? Well, the positive is that the store will look great and will be set up for a great weekend since everything will be neat and organized. The president of the company will also be treated to see a store in which 2 or 3 associates can team up to help each customer. The customers that come in that day will certainly benefit as well and will probably wonder what the hell is occurring.

However, think about all the money that was spent making the store appear perfect. Does the possible increase in sales the next couple of days offset these costs? Not even close. I have seen stores ruin their whole season’s profit performance just to put on a “dog and pony show” for him. Doesn’t the president go back and check the profitability numbers of the stores he visits? I wonder how he can ignore looking at all the extra costs the stores incurred because he decided to visit. Does he really think that there are supposed to be that many salespeople on the floor?

If my company’s leaders were really interested in a realistic picture on how the store looks day to day and how customer friendly the store is run, they would NEVER announce that they were going to visit. This should be a solid policy with any company. No money should ever be wasted in putting on an unrealistic show. More importantly, corporate leaders would then see a true picture of what actually goes on at the store level, and might be able to better understand and help the stores solve some of their problems.

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