Last night I was told as I took shift that we could probably expect a visit from our Corporate Internal Theft/ Loss Prevention division. Well this makes the night a little harder than usual, because now we have to dot all our I’s and cross all our T’s, but then we also have to go and initial that we did that & get verification that we did indeed dot & cross and initial those I’s and T’s.

And it struck me: the business model is flawed. We don’t do on a daily basis what the Loss Prevention department would have us do. We can’t. If we followed all those directives, we’d not get anything done that is needed to get done to move product out and get the store shoppable. We just can’t, it takes too much time to be so tight-fisted on every front. Obviously the simple answer to all of that is “schedule more people,” and I agree, except that we’re also on hour budgets, so we can’t. If we schedule more people, we go over-budget on man-hours, and we get raked over the coals for that. And that’s when I realized that there’s this disconnect between the people designing the directives and the ones carrying them out. They’re not carried out is the trick, because it’s simply not possible to complete the overall mission and actually follow all the conflicting directions. No one ever tells the higher-ups how it really works, because they don’t want to be hung out to dry. Because honestly, if one store steps out when no others complain? Then it seems they’re mismanaged, because no one else complained, so they get reprimanded, which stands as a good testament to the other stores as to why they shouldn’t mention it.

So the Loss Prevention Department works to restrict sales and efficiency. And the Sales and Marketing department works to grow sales and efficiency. They collide. Fun ensues.



Pomp & Circumstance
I also thought, however, that it might be a necessity. As in, perhaps they do indeed know that their directives step all over one another. In a perfect world, maybe it would all be possible to do. However, I thought that perhaps the district personnel know that it’s an utter impossibility to toe the line and still meet sales objectives. Perhaps they know it’s all a show when they’re in town….

What I was thinking was that, even though we can’t follow the rules as strictly as they’re set, maybe it’s like aiming for the moon. Sure you’ll never get it, but by setting the goal at that level, you are more likely to stay in a “middle ground” that is acceptable. I mean, I thought to myself, why don’t they relax the rules and let us do our jobs? But then I thought, if they did relax the rules, probably a great many stores would not be as close to the standard as they now are; lowering the standards typically lowers performance, even if you’re simply lowering the standard to the current, sustainable level of performance. See “No Child Left Behind” for the point.

Maybe? Maybe that’s what it is? Maybe it is all show & go… They show up, we do the little dance so they know how important they are, and then they go…. And we get back to doing our jobs.

I think that may be it.