Run...right out of business

What is wrong with people? More specifically, what is wrong with businesses today? People run those businesses, I guess, so I really do want to know what in the world are they thinking when they "run" themselves out of business?

Everyone patronizes a convenience store from time to time, don’t they? You need that cup of coffee, pack of smokes or gum, a bag of chips to get you by until supper…we all make use of their sometimes overpriced services from time to time…so we dash in to spend a few dollars.

Once inside the door it hits you. Every establishment has a personality. It rubs off from the people inside. Some of it comes from the owners, some from the employees, some from the other customers themselves. Each has its smell, its lighting, its warmth or lack of same. Some are highly, tightly organized, always neat and rarely in a state of disorder. Others are more casual, homey, or personal. Our regular places to stop become familiar and in ways become “ours”. We have nothing to do with any of it, but we adopt the place and may take high offense when merchandising folks re-set our store and move everything around. We become lost in our retail “home away from home”.

As much as becoming accustomed to the atmosphere of our store, we become habituated to the personalities and treatment we receive there. The same employees are there day after day, the same coffee, the same pizza slices, the same sweet rolls. This is part of our daily routine. This proprietor or manager is able to become somewhat indispensable to you and your daily routine. Consistently executed hundreds of times each week, this business has the potential to become a success.

There is, of course, much more to a successful business than serving and satisfying the customers, but once that part has been mastered, the rest becomes easier. So why do so many people bring a business to the point of success, like our favorite “C” store or deli we were thinking of above, and deliberately do things to drive customers away?

This phenomenon occurs all too frequently and may be the number one preventable cause of business failure. You have seen it, I have seen it. One day you enter our favorite stop-off and even before we enter we know something is different. Maybe it’s the strange vehicle alongside the building, maybe it’s the way the outdoor displays appear. You can feel something is different before you actually know it. Then you get inside.

There’s a new voice in the background, the counter is re-arranged, new signs adorn new places. Line up here, no more this, out of that, don’t do this, we can’t accept that other thing. Your favorite beverage is no longer available in your favorite size. The cups are different, the lids look funny. The place smells like candles, the air tastes like candles!

Oh-oh! They won’t take a check anymore, there goes the cash I needed for lunch. What! I can’t use that fifty the teller “foisted” on me last Friday! But I bought thirty-eight dollars worth of gas and by the time I get my coffee, a paper, a box of doughnuts for the break room…OK, I guess I’ll have to charge it this time…only because your ATM is out of cash again!…but my spouse hates it when I charge “small” stuff all the time. Cheez, almost fifty bucks and it’s considered “small stuff’. I remember when that’s all Dad brought home for a week! And they call this a friggin’ convenience store? What’s convenient about it?

So, for the convenience of the new manager or owner, entire fleets of apple carts are summarily overturned. I worked in that business long enough to see it happen time after time. New owners or managers always come in with a ream of changes to get “That Place” in shape. (Yeah…I’m thinking “to get it so they can leave it to the hired help who could care less while they get in some golf!”)

New customers will come along eventually to replace those who find other places to buy what they need. Well, it is hoped new customers will come along, but very often they don’t appear, at least not in sufficient quantity to make up for the losses.

Then these managers, seeing their sales volume lagging, do things even more dramatic…hours are cut, services are dropped, hired help is run off. Then the manager/owner has to be there more of the fewer hours they are open and the pressure builds, they get grouchier and eventually there is next to no one stopping by. The business has failed, it is over.

So, for the gratification of running the place “their way” these hot shot managers/owners run themselves out of business. They failed to learn about their business, they failed to know their customers, they failed themselves, their families, and their creditors…but they enforced every little rule, every little regulation right up to the last day.

How sad.