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Recently I took my son Trent to purchase more school uniform
items. He's a growing (very fast) 13 year old, and it was
time for more clothing. When the school pants no longer
drag on the ground and the hem barely reaches his ankles
you know it is time.
Anyhow we went to a school uniform shop nearby which we
hadn't previously been to. Trent insisted we go there as
they apparently stocked the longer sports shorts he wanted
and the usual place we went to didn't have them.
Well what an experience it was. Firstly the shop was in
a time warp. They had probably been there for decades and
nothing internally had changed. You didn't know who the
staff were, in fact when we finally found them they looked
like they had been dragged out of bed to come to work. The
only exception was the older lady who seemed to be the boss.
The girls who were in their early 20's looked scruffy and
were very unhelpful. They stood around watching the older
lady work and only did something when she asked them to.
They had no initiative whatsoever and you had to (or should
I say I had to) tell them what to do.
The older lady later told me that the actual owner of the
business, never listened to her suggestions to make improvements,
in fact he hardly ever visited the store.
Actually it was interesting watching her in action. In
her position she could have taken charge and taught those
girls how to deal with the customers and let them use their
initiative. Even though she was disgruntled about the owner,
she could have changed her own situation. Because she appeared
to be the only person who knew about the stock and styles
that would suit, she was run off her feet with the customers.
The least she could have done was to organise the girls
so that one was at the counter handling the sales and returning
stock to the shelves and the other one assisting her with
the customers' needs.
The amount of money this business could have been making
if it was run properly would be enormous.
There's a couple of interesting points that come out of
this story...
- The older lady although she was disgruntled with the
situation, didn't take charge (and she certainly was in
a position to do so) and unhappily continued to work there.
More than likely she had been there for years and didn't
have the skills or self-esteem to make her role better.
How many people do you know who stick at their jobs because
they fear they may not find another one or aren't prepared
to get out of their comfort zones to improve themselves?
Of course, the business owner should have invested in
staff training etc. however if they don't and you want
to improve, would you invest time, energy and money in
becoming better? Because if you're not getting better,
you're probably getting worse.
- How many businesses are run by untrained staff while
the business owner is too busy to notice what is happening
inside their own business?
- And why are many business owners in business? They will
generally tell you they are in business to make money
yet if you look at how many business are run, they may
as well be in business to lose money.
And as a result of our life changing experience, there
is no way we will ever set foot in that shop again! My son
is only in Year 8 so that leaves another 4 years to go before
he finishes high school. How many more times will I need
to buy more school uniform items because he's a growing
boy? A few more that's for sure.
And being a boy he's more than likely going to be more
hard-wearing on his clothing than what my daughter was when
she was at school.
By the way, we also had to buy him another pair of school
shoes in the same shopping strip. The staff in that store
were fantastic and guess where we'll definitely spend more
of our money?
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