Clean Up Your Own Mess!

Note: Is this a business story? You bet it is. Dog poop and business practices have more in common than any of us want to admit.

Let me tell you about my dog poop story. When I was a kid I had a Cocker Spaniel named Skippy. OK, actually I had three dogs in succession – all Cocker Spaniels, all named Skippy. Perhaps it was through my various “Skippys*” that I learned that husbands are much like dogs – if one runs away or is hit by a car you can always get another. Just keep giving them the same name and move on with your life. But I digress…..

I loved those dogs. My parents were trying to teach me responsibility (they were always trying to teach me something – the key word there was “trying”). Anyway, we had a fenced-in yard and we would let Skippy-du-jour out the back door to do his business. It was my job to pick up the poop in the yard because, supposedly, Skippy was my dog. Never mind the fact that my father chose the dogs and purposely picked a duck-hunting breed as my own personal pet-of-choice. Nonetheless, my dog – my responsibility.

One year I got a bit lax about the dog poop and I learned a valuable lesson that has served as a personal parable for life. Here’s what I learned:

If you, or in this case – your dog(s), make a boo-boo in the yard, it helps to clean it up right away. You can try to ignore it but chances are somebody will step in it and track it through the house and there will be BIG TROUBLE. Or if you’re lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) you will be able to continue to pretend it never happened and it will just lie there endlessly with the sun's rays pouring down, heating things up until the whole backyard smells to the high heaven. Keep ignoring it and eventually winter frost will come and the snow will cover it up. By then you will have conveniently forgotten that it ever existed in the first place. Happy, blissful snowy winter!

Alas, Spring inevitably arrives and with it, the thaw. The dog poop has, regrettably, not disappeared during the winter as you had hoped; it was just covered up. But now it reappears with the crocus and, guess what? You still have to clean it up. Only now it’s all soggy and mushy and it falls apart when you try to lift it. Now it’s twenty times harder to get rid of and more likely to leave behind residue. BTW, if you think that dog poop loses its odor by being frozen you are sadly mistaken. I am saying this from experience. You can Fabreze the crap out of it (little pun there!) but it will take a long time before the vague scent of eau du dogie leaves the air.

I have never forgotten the dog poop story of my youth. We all have messes that we have to clean up in life. Some of them are of our own making, some are accidents and some are messes that others made but become our responsibility to handle. No matter how the mess started or with whom, it’s always better to go right out and clean it up immediately. It may be an unpleasant task, but the longer it lies festering in the hot sun, the more unpleasant it will be to get rid of in the end.

Even when we are trying to do the right thing all of the time, it sometimes seems as though cleaning up our own messes is a full time job. How can someone with such good intentions unintentionally step on so many people’s toes? I am not perfect, but I try to do my best. My attitude is:

1. Recognize your mistakes and own up to them;

2. Clean up your own messes without being asked; and

3. Don’t go away mad. But do go away.

Are we having fun yet?

*Is the plural of Skippy, Skippys? Or Skippies? I struggled with this.

“Ya gotta dance with them what brung ya.” (A Treatise on Loyalty in Business.)

It’s cheaper to get your printing done in China or Hong Kong. Even non-union shops can’t compete with Asian prices. So in a tough economy such as this, doesn’t it make sense to go for the lowest bid? I don’t think so, but I am in the minority. And that worries me.

I happen to live in Hawaii. I have been surprised to learn that this blog is read by people all over the country. Maybe not a lot of people, but still…. The concept of loyalty in business applies anywhere, it is just that in Hawaii we are so isolated and insular that the obvious often seems easier to recognize.

I am careful to bank at one of the few financial institutions that is 100% locally owned. My bank is not a wholly owned subsidiary of an international financial conglomerate. There are no absentee shareholders screaming for dividends. A Chinese family that understands the unique needs of the neighborhood and has a deep investment in the community’s future has owned it for generations. They have no plans to move their customer service department to Indonesia.

I try to buy my fruit and vegetables at the local farmers’ market. Not only do I get to choose exactly how many tomatoes I want (no prepackaged 5 lb. quotas) but I support a hometown family who will take my money and put it right back into the community through neighborhood purchases and state taxes. We grow avocados right here in the islands; why do I need to buy avocados from California? Furthermore, by buying locally, I reduce the environmental impact caused by fuel to ship fruit across the ocean.

I purchase my office supplies exclusively at Fisher Hawaii. Their décor is not as pretty as Office Max (boy, that’s an understatement!) but the money stays right here in Hawaii, and that’s important to our economy. Also, it must be a pretty good place to work because the employee turnover is zilch and whatever you’re looking for, they can quickly find it. It may be coated with five years of dust (both the employee and the item) but you name it and they’ve got it.

Sometimes I have to shop at Home Depot, but only if City Mill doesn’t carry what I need. Not that there is anything wrong with Home Depot; they seem to be a conscientious company that provides a lot of local jobs. It’s just that their profits (which were up in both the first and second quarter of 2009, by the way) get shipped to the home office in Atlanta. Now there is nothing wrong with Atlanta. It’s a swell town if you’re not trying to find an address on Peachtree Street (there are 71 streets in Atlanta with a variant of Peachtree in their name). But those profits aren’t helping build the infrastructure of Hawaii, and I live in Hawaii.

A number of years ago, I was the speaker at the local Ad Federation luncheon. I used to produce television advertising and I took advantage of my speaking opportunity to annoy several ad agency executives by publicly noting that while a recent Hollywood-based film was shooting on Oahu, a number of no-name imported California actors had been cast in local commercials. These were not actors with special talents. They brought no “star quality” to the spots. In fact, the parts they took were minor roles with a minimum of one or two lines, any of which could have been handled nicely by at least 10 competent local actors who weren’t working enough to be overexposed; but the clients paid a premium for out-of-town talent.

“What’s the problem?” someone in the audience challenged me. Well, here’s the problem: Those actors were already drawing a paycheck from the film. Shooting a spot on the side was just “gravy” to them. The residual checks were sent to their homes where they paid their rent (in Los Angeles), bought some groceries (probably at Ralph’s) and gassed up their cars at the Slauson Avenue 76 station. In other words, it generated absolutely no economic impact in Hawaii.

Furthermore, each job that went to one of these out-of-towners deprived a local working actor of his livelihood. Who knows? That might have been the month that the local actor couldn’t make his rent and was forced to quit acting to sell Hondas at Pflueger Auto. Why should the client care? Because next month he will need to shoot another spot, and that California hottie will be long gone. By the way, so will the local actor. The talent pool just got smaller and the client will have no one to blame but himself (or herself). Either way, everybody lost.

Investing in your community is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity. Frankly, we need the tax base. Tourism is down even worse than it was last month. The Lord helps those who help themselves. Encouraging local prosperity is just good business. Think about that next time you reach for those raspberries grown in Peru. Papaya tastes better anyway.

The Death Wish Café

“I’m sorry, Brad, but I can’t serve you the grilled focaccia for breakfast any more. We have it in the kitchen, ready for lunch hour, but the chef won’t let me sell it to you at breakfast.”

Now my husband has been a good customer since they opened their doors for business. The whole staff knows him by name. He often brings in friends at lunch, which helps to increase their exposure to new clientele.

Brad doesn’t eat red meat, fast food, milk, visible eggs or cheese. He’s weird that way. He also gets sick of oatmeal every day for breakfast so when his favorite restaurant added focaccia to their menu, he began ordering it grilled and was in seventh heaven. I don’t know why, because to me it’s just wads o’ starch, but he likes it. He’s weird that way.

So after months of this treat, he objected to getting it snatched from his jaws. “Why can’t I get the grilled focaccia?” he asked.

“I don’t know. The chef just won’t do it.”

“Go try again. Tell him Brad is asking politely.” So off she goes, into the open kitchen. Brad can see her in discussion with the chef. The manager of the restaurant eventually joins the group. Frankly, it’s a long conversation for one lousy piece of focaccia.

“I’m sorry, Brad. But he says, no. We’re trying to cut down on food costs.”

Now how refusing to sell focaccia to a waiting customer cuts down on food costs is a mystery. Brad thought that maybe it is a time factor: maybe the chef is too busy to be stopping to grill a special focaccia order. But he looked around the restaurant. It’s after 9:00 a.m. and there’s only one other couple in the joint. He can see into the open kitchen and the chef is just standing there, chatting with a waitperson. Frankly, I’m a multi-tasker: I can chat and grill focaccia at the VERY SAME TIME. But maybe that’s just me.

So Brad tells the waitress, “Go back and tell the manager that I’m willing to pay extra. I don’t care how much it costs. I want a piece of grilled focaccia.”

More three-way huddling in the kitchen. The Geneva Convention took less time to negotiate. Finally the waitress emerges beaming, “The chef says that he will serve you a piece of ungrilled focaccia and the manager gave me permission to toast it in the toaster.”

Brad’s response: “Are you f***ing kidding me?” OK, no that wasn’t his response – at least not out loud. He sure was thinking it. But he’s a nice guy and so he merely said, “Never mind. I’ll just drink my coffee and leave.” When he went to the cash register the manager told him, “The coffee is on the house, Brad. I’m sorry about your breakfast.”

Brad tipped the waitress generously, walked out the door and has never returned.

In a lousy economy you’ve got to get creative in order to stay alive. And one surefire way is to increase your customer service. Sure, you’re constantly trying to find new customers, but your number one priority is keeping the customers that you already have – keeping them happy and comin’ back for more.

By the way, back in February, the manager of this same restaurant was complaining to Brad that business was way down and they were worried about making it through to the other end of this recession. Their answer: They increased the prices on some of their most popular dishes. They INCREASED their prices at a time when people were watching their money.

I notice that when Downtown restaurant in the State Art Museum began seeing customer numbers drop they countered by adding a $9.95 combo dish to their sit-down menu. You can pick any three items from a daily list of five or six selections. They made sure that you could still have lunch with your client at Downtown and guarantee keeping your expenditure under $10. Now that’s smart thinking.

Raising your prices and lowering your customer service. That’s a death wish. Gee, but I miss that place…..