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How to lose a retail customer

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  • How to lose a retail customer

    Take over a business that has operated successfully for decades. Let the sales reps go "to save money."
    Don't have anyone do the work that sales reps do. Insist you can do it yourself in your spare time while managing the factory (even though you have no experience in either task.
    When a "Meet the Makers" event is held to promote various products, don't bother showing up on Day One, at all. Call around noon with your regrets, and say you'll be there tomorrow. (Hint: if you hadn't fired all the sales reps, this is what one would have done. You could have stayed home)

    On Day Two of "Meet the Makers" arrive two hours after the store opens. A little later, inform the store staff you're going out to a restaurant for lunch. Store manager informs you that you're here to promote your product, and competing businesses weren't invited so as to give you an advantage. You reluctantly stay.

    A little while later, your wife arrives, with your four children. They don't just drop in, say 'hi' and leave, they mill around for an hour visiting Dad.

    We provided beer and wine for the customers. Around 4 in the afternoon you start chugging beer. Store closes in late afternoon.

    Bonus points: Walk out the door at closing. Call the next workday and ask the store staff to collect and box up your merchandise and ship it back to you.

    Be so apathetic about answering emails and returning phone calls that eventually, your retail customer has to say to one of his/her customers, "I know you loved the last ___ we got you from ___. They've become so unreliable that I'm just not ordering merchandise from them any more."
    Last edited by workerbee222; 11-28-2019, 09:33 PM.

  • #2
    The level of ineptitude there ... I am no business manager but even I have more smarts than that.

    Sometimes I think something like this must be what happens with some new businesses around here. You see the store, the sign, everything ... but you never actually see the business RUNNING.

    Holy crap; I just looked up one of "those" businesses on Google. Here's what I found:

    Monday: Open 10 a.m. to 12 a.m.
    Tuesday: Closed
    Wednesday: Closed
    Thursday: Closed
    Friday: Closed
    Saturday: Closed
    Sunday: Closed

    Customer service: More efficient than a Dementor's kiss
    ~ Mr Hero

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    • #3
      Quoth Pixelated View Post
      Holy crap; I just looked up one of "those" businesses on Google. Here's what I found:

      Monday: Open 10 a.m. to 12 a.m.

      Is that a typo? I mean 12AM is midnight, so that's a 14 hour day.
      Seph
      Taur10
      "You're supposed to be the head of covert intelligence. Right now, I'm not seeing a hell of a lot of intelligence. Covert, overt, or otherwise!"-Lochley, B5, A View from the Gallery

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      • #4
        Quoth Javarod View Post
        Is that a typo? I mean 12AM is midnight, so that's a 14 hour day.
        That explains why they were closed the rest of the week.
        "I don't have to be petty. The Universe does that for me."

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        • #5
          Quoth Ironclad Alibi View Post
          That explains why they were closed the rest of the week.
          I swung by a twenty-four hour convenience store, and was surprised to find the owner locking it up. When I said 'I thought you were open twenty-four hours', he replied, 'Yeah, but not in a row.'
          Seph
          Taur10
          "You're supposed to be the head of covert intelligence. Right now, I'm not seeing a hell of a lot of intelligence. Covert, overt, or otherwise!"-Lochley, B5, A View from the Gallery

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          • #6
            Quoth Javarod View Post
            I swung by a twenty-four hour convenience store, and was surprised to find the owner locking it up. When I said 'I thought you were open twenty-four hours', he replied, 'Yeah, but not in a row.'
            There's that old joke: If 7-11 is open 24 hours, why are there locks on the doors?

            But re: the OP, back in the day in NYC, the survival of that sort of completely-incompetent business was usually a hint that the store had been taken over (or founded) as a Mafia front for money laundering.

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            • #7
              Quoth Mental_Mouse View Post
              There's that old joke: If 7-11 is open 24 hours, why are there locks on the doors?
              The follow-on to that (not sure if it's meant to be a joke or not) --

              To keep the armed robbery crime scene "clean" until the cops get there.
              Last edited by Nunavut Pants; 12-02-2019, 06:38 PM.
              “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
              One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
              The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers

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              • #8
                Quoth Mental_Mouse View Post
                There's that old joke: If 7-11 is open 24 hours, why are there locks on the doors?

                .
                actually it did not start out to be a joke. back in the day say 1960's and early 1970's 7 = 11 was ONLY open 7am to 11pm. So yes there was a need for locks on the doors. I can't remember when they went 24/7
                I'm lost without a paddle and headed up SH*T creek.
                -- Life Sucks Then You Die.


                "I'll believe corp. are people when Texas executes one."

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                • #9
                  Speaking of odd business hours:

                  I grew up in a rural town in northeast Connecticut. One of the many services the town would provide is that you could go to the office of the Town Manager and get a map of the town. (just black lines on white paper showing the roads.)

                  In the 70s as my brothers got into bicycling, they got maps and used highlighters to mark what roads they had ridden on, and in the 80's I did the same.
                  So when I started driving, I got a new map and marked the roads I had driven on.

                  Then I went to get maps from adjoining towns.

                  Now, I always thought the town I was from was a small one (I used to tell folks "most of my neighbors are cows"), but for the town east of us the Town Manager's office was open 9am to noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

                  BEING THE GOVERNMENT isn't a full-time job?

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                  • #10
                    Quoth SpyOne View Post
                    BEING THE GOVERNMENT isn't a full-time job?
                    Isn't that the best type of government?
                    "I don't have to be petty. The Universe does that for me."

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                    • #11
                      Quoth SpyOne View Post
                      BEING THE GOVERNMENT isn't a full-time job?
                      I have heard of some small towns were the offices were open by appointment (if the actually had an office). The Mayor and town council worked a couple of hours, a couple of days each week. They had their day jobs to attend to.
                      Life is too short to not eat popcorn.
                      Save the Ales!
                      Toys for Tots at Rooster's Cafe

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                      • #12
                        Quoth Pixelated View Post
                        The level of ineptitude there ... I am no business manager but even I have more smarts than that.

                        Sometimes I think something like this must be what happens with some new businesses around here. You see the store, the sign, everything ... but you never actually see the business RUNNING.

                        Holy crap; I just looked up one of "those" businesses on Google. Here's what I found:

                        Monday: Open 10 a.m. to 12 a.m.
                        Tuesday: Closed
                        Wednesday: Closed
                        Thursday: Closed
                        Friday: Closed
                        Saturday: Closed
                        Sunday: Closed

                        There was a family-owned sports store next to the cat shelter. They were moving and I went in one day and one guy said, "the cat shelter today doesn't smell as bad as yesterday." The guy assumed I was just a customer, not his retail neighbor. So I understood that the shops next to us can smell us. I thought the dress store next to us for a few months was just being assholes.

                        Some months before a woman opened a dress shop next door, a little boutique with sofas and comfy chairs and a few dresses. And she complained to the building owner and the sports store that we stink. Um, didn't notice that when you checked out the place before renting it? But her store had her hours of operation, something like 10am to 7pm. Never saw her there once she stocked up.

                        Then after the sports store left, in Nov. of 2019 an appliance store was opening up in the same space. Open 11 am to 7 pm. We had a cat tree by our door and the appliance store owner came in and asked me to move it, it's in her way, she was expecting a shipment. The way she asked was in a rude way. Her shipment didn't show up. Either the next day or day after they show up but she isn't there and the delivery guy had to wait 2 hours. But anyway, the appliance store owner was at her store for a week then never more. We figured she was a front for something illegal. Probably an easy way to launder money. Don't know about the dress store woman. Anyway, I quit in Dec. but talking to the manager of the cat shelter the woman didn't seem to open really, and when I went to visit in early June the woman had moved out; no appliances.
                        Time! Time! Time is what turns kittens into cats.

                        Don't teach me a lesson; all I learn is that you are an asshole.

                        I wish porn had subtitles.

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