The complexity of implementing such policies and procedures is why working at my store is wickedly complex. I personally would have a difficult time learning all the tasks we're expecting new staff to master. There is a tremendous amount of detail involved in sales, special orders, receiving, and day to day operations of the store. Change exceptions occur on a daily basis, usually communicated through Facebook. Some of our tasks are now specialized with a division of labor for things like online sales and technical tasks, like iPad content updates.
The game trade doesn't help either, as we have no uniformity amongst suppliers, meaning it takes a holistic understanding of the trade in order to function well within it. Yesterday we had to adjust our cost of goods on Magic boxes, because Wizards of the Coast sells product by the pack, while everyone else sells it by the box. Our point of sale system had Magic boxes with $2.11 cost of goods. As an employee, you inherently understand this and know how to manage this in the POS, how exactly?
Special orders are looked up on one distributors online system, but might be set to be sourced from another. The employee will need to know which product code to use based on distributor, as one insists on a space between their alphanumeric code, while another might just make them up as they go. Oh and margins on items? Yeah, they're all the same with our primary, our secondary changes on a quarterly basis, and they're always the same with Games Workshop, unless it's a web item, in which case it's not. You all should know that, right?
This is all fine with a single owner-operator, but with nine people on staff, it means there's a competency curve, often based on time in service. Institutional knowledge takes a long time to develop. This means there's always confusion. Always. It also means we're insulated from a lot of big competitors because the game trade is such a shitshow.
It takes about six weeks to train up a new employee. Acquiring competency takes even longer, perhaps six months. I still consider an employee new within the first two years. Mastery? That's probably at the four year mark. Mastery really means they've internalized store culture and behavior, good and bad. If it's hard to train a new person, it's even harder to change behavior in a veteran. There's the Zen saying, "In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's, there are few."
As an IT professional, my longest job was two years, yet I'm expecting my own employees to stay for far longer than that, and in fact need them to stay far longer to acquire the institutional knowledge necessary to make the business function. Could it be simpler? I think the answer is no. I really do. I think the level of service needed to survive as a brick and mortar store is now at the level of "exceptional." It's a big reason why we're all so obsessed with our trade, why we write blogs and talk incessantly on Facebook within a half dozen groups. Survival requires tricks, customer delighting exceptions turned procedure, and the goal of perfection, which will always fall short. We'll do it with a staff that isn't paid nearly enough for the years of service required to learn the skills necessary to maintain such quality.
As I've said many times, achieve mastery working for me, and you can go anywhere, do anything. I thought getting into this trade would simplify my life. The complexity is enormous. I'm extremely lucky to have such dedicated staff making it look easy.
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