Customers!

Exactly! They refuse to wear their glasses when they shop. Come on, lady, you are not now, and never were, Wonder Woman! Going without your glasses does not allow your imagined beauty to shine. One such woman asked for a wine called "Charly Head." I told her it was "Gnarly Head," but refrained from saying Charly Head makes no sense.

When I showed her the bottle, she had to admit that I was right. I never saw her again.

Exactly! They refuse to wear their glasses when they shop. Come on, lady, you are not now, and never were, Wonder Woman! Going without your glasses does not allow your imagined beauty to shine. One such woman asked for a wine called "Charly Head." I told her it was "Gnarly Head," but refrained from saying Charly Head makes no sense.

When I showed her the bottle, she had to admit that I was right. I never saw her again.

To her it clearly said Charly Head.

Well, there you go, she really did think it said Charly

Then she looked at the label again . . . the type face is an old-fashioned, Western-style print. Oh, she said, this is not a C. What is this? I told it was gnarly. She seemed embarrassed for having sniped at me. She refused to make eye contact.

I don't think it's good practice to let a customer remain embarrassed. I hate it when a person gets embarrassed in front of (or because of) me, and I try to do something to eliminate their shame. Personally, I would have said to her "Oh, don't worry about it, that happens all the time. The script is really ornate, and it's easy to take it for a C. In fact, see this wine here call Farging Icehole? You wouldn't believe what I thought it said"
Didn't it make you feel bad that you embarrassed her, and she couldn't look at you?

You would be surprised just how many customers have no idea what they want. There is a woman who comes in several mornings each week and asks What is that wine I always buy. Never buys anything else but can not remember it.

So, when you see this woman come in, how about saying "Good morning Ms. Regular and Valued Customer. Let me get you a bottle of your favorite wine, Woop Woop. You know, I've discovered another wine you may like also, would you like to try that also?"

Once, a man came in and told me that I had recommended a Spanish red about 6 weeks before. Did I remember which one it was? Frankly, I did not remember him. I said that I probably deal with 60 customers a night and each recommendation is different, so I can't remember which wine I sold to him more than a month ago.

There are people who insist the wine was from France and when they finally locate it, it turns out to have come from Oregon. Or they ask for the wine of the month but become angry when I lead them to it. Generally, it was a wine from the previous month or another sale wine.

"I'm sorry, would you like to get on our email or mailing list so you'll get notification of when your preferred wines go on sale?" or maybe (if you have this ability) "You're one of our regular customers. Let me ring this wine up for you at the sales price this time. You know, the best way to know when this wine is on special is to get on our email or mailing list so you'll receive notification"

I generally suggest to people that they keep a wine diary . . . that they buy a small notebook, generally a 4 x 6, and record the date, the grape, the name of the vintner, the name of the wine and the price, with comments following.

How about if YOU buy a small binder, with alphabetic tabs, and set up your own customer diary? When you take care of a regular customer, you can quickly flip to their page, note the date, and what they bought. You could encourage them to tell you their experience with the wine, and you could set up at the top of their main page a little area of a few lines to list their favorites.

Something like this....

Johnson, Carol
Favorites:
a. b.
c. d.
e. f.
g. h.

Date: Wine Purchased:
3/28/10 Woop Woop
4/3/10 Big Woop
4/6/ 10 Old Falstaff

You don't always take care of them you say? Well, you'd have a pretty good idea of their likes from you own book, or, you could present your idea to a manager and tell him you'd like to own the responsibility of devising a quick, easy tracking system for everyone to use. Then, you could place a larger binder at the register, and as regular customers come in, all employees can record their purchases.
You and your co-workers end up spending less time trying to figure out what wine the customer likes, and manager now knows you come up with solutions, and not just complain about problems.

Our wines are presented by varietal and some people become upset with that and prefer wine by classified by country of origin.

I personally like that classified by country thing too.
How about doing a poll of your customers, asking their opinion how how they like the wines classified, and take those results to the boss. Of course, everyone won't be completely happy with what is decided, that's just how it is. But what if it turns out most of the customers like that idea, and just never bothered to say anything? You have to stay on top of your customers likes, and stay on top of them if possible.

Actually, you all should hear my coworkers complain. With the exception of another woman my age, most have little patience with several customers.

Chai, It sounds like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

No, I'm quite happy today, as I am most days. My posts above were quite positive, concentrating on the improvements that could be made, including of course, some of the unfortunate for some, plan of action.

It's fine to make suggestions but you know nothing of the real situation. None of your suggestions would work there and no one would want to implement them. Seriously.

That is a typical response. The old "it won't work here" response. What I've found, is that these techniques really do work, they just don't work for the people who are determined to remain unhappy in their job. Well, they are welcome to remain unhappy. They'll just have to end up being that way working somewhere else. Those who choose not to implement these changes would need to find someplace to work where they can remain stuck and complaining, and would be replaced with people who look for better ways of doing things, and would be allowed to try out their ideas. Seriously

The person who might be called the manager is the wine buyer. She is grumpy woman given to childish fits who spies on the workers via a system of cameras which broadcast to screens in the office. I have suggested to other employees . . . who have quit rather than deal with her . . . that 20 years of working in a basement office have had a negative effect upon her. That is taken by them as the joke it is.



If a wine is popular with the customers, as for example a Chilean cabernet sauvignon called Root One is, she removes it from the inventory. I would call that shooting one's self in the foot. The irony is that the other branch of the store, which actually does have a manager, carries Root One over the objections of the wine buyer and they sell a case a week. This store is in a blue collar neighborhood and sells more beer than wine as opposed to the main store, located across the street from Smith College.

If an employee discovers a wine and asks her to carry it, she never will.

She is not a good addition to the sales floor (this is a small operation that is generally overstaffed with two employees working at once) as she lacks graciousness. She is abrupt and impatient with customers. Her presence there is limited to about four events a year and that is far and away enough.

Sounds like this wine buyer should be the first person to find more suitable employment for herself.

I was saying what I would do if I were the manager/owner.

Now, Winchester Wine and Spirits has a computer on a desk that customers can use to keep a running account. Purchases are, I believe, automatically recorded for standing customers, who can then add their remarks and research their own buying patterns. I suggested that to her because she brought in an industry based computer that constantly broadcasts announcements and allows people to obtain drink recipes. Customers hate it. They complain about the noise. The very few (in the year and half it is has been there, I have seen fewer than five use it) that ever consult think the machine is too slow.

Frankly, there is no place to put a notebook. The wine buyer would throw it out if anyone brought in such an item.

Then carry you own notebook around and keep it on your person. Wear a belt or pouch you can tuck it into, or connect to a lanyard around your neck.

Sometimes POM, a person has to rise above the situation, and just do the right thing on your own. You may be ridiculed, told it's no use, blah blah blah. But if you know it's the right thing, don't worry about what the sheep that keep trying to pull you down. Be a goat, even if you're the only one.

I hope you don't think I just pulled these ideas out of my ass. What I have said is a large part of my job. One of my favorite parts.

2 years ago, the region I work in was loosing 40% of new hires within the year.
At that time, I was put in charge of the inital screening of ALL applicants. Instead of managers making their own immediate hiring decesions, I got all the candidates emailed to me from our recruiting department.

Right now, I am directly looking at a spreadsheet I keep of all the people who have applied her over the last 2 years...

Of the 600 applicant profiles I have received from recruiting, I only called 50% of them.
Then, after talking to them, I only set up a group interview with 25% of that 600 total. The group interview knocked out a few more, bringing it to 22% of the total. It isn't until then that the manager sees them, and they end up hiring 20% of the of that original number of 600. In other words, of 600 people sent to me, only 120 got hired.

As of today, instead of loosing 40% of them in a year, close to 50 people, the retention rate is now 92%, meaning we are only losing 10 people within a year. I know from personal knowledge that 1 person left because of an unforeseeable illness, another was called into military service, and a third was found to be breaking policy.

So, yeah, I'd say I know a little something about hiring and keeping good people.

So, go ahead and tell me how wrong I am, and how nothing will work to help the situation.

What I'm going to do is enjoy myself at a dinner I planned for tomorrow night, at a really classy restaurant. There's going to be 170 people there. The tab's going to be about 9 grand.

I've arranged for groovy cocktail and dinner music a la Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darrin and the like, then later on we'll all rock out to dance music.

You know how we can afford to do this?
Because without getting rid of 40% of the employees in a year, we save a couple of hundred thousand in training costs.
I'd say that's a pretty good return.

Woop Woop!!

Hey, I gotta get back to work.