Take time to care

Published October 11, 2012

Stockton Sentinel

Stockton, Kansas

The wholesale supplier for our office supplies at the Sentinel recently experienced a disaster of epic proportions, all caused by human error and negligence. Our supplier, Jhari, was on vacation, enjoying a cruise and some badly needed R & R. She usually has to clean up a few messed up orders after returning from a vacation, but nothing compares to the mess she came back to after her cruise a couple weeks ago.

We had ordered a multi-pocket portfolio for our inventory, quantity of one, order number SMD70863. While Jhari was away enjoying her cruise, her staff placed all the orders with their warehouses. When one of Jhari’s employees ordered our portfolio from their warehouse, she inadvertently keyed in a quantity of 70863, order number SMD70863.

Imagine Jhari’s shock when she returned to find her own place of business stacked full of boxes, each having a quantity of a hundred portfolios, to satisfy their order of 70,863 portfolios! I’m surprised we didn’t hear her scream from her place in Colorado!

If there was any good news in this mess, it’s that no single warehouse had enough to supply the full order, so Jhari was able to stop two other warehouses from shipping the remaining portfolios to make a total of 70,863. But even though she was able to stop some of the shipment, Jhari said boxes were stacked high, everywhere in her own building.

After a week-long vacation, it took less than a minute for the memory of a beautiful cruise to be obliterated by the unwelcome sight of boxes stacked everywhere. She spent the next several days dealing with the return of all these portfolios (except for the one that we ordered!). In addition to time consuming, the whole mess was also extremely costly because she was forced to pay shipping – both ways.

As if the careless mistake made by Jhari’s employee wasn’t bad enough, think about how many people along the way may have had the opportunity to question this order. Is everything so automated by computers that not one single person would take a moment to question whether a wholesaler really intended to order a quantity of 70,863 of any given item, especially when the quantity matched the order number?

There’s a lesson in this mess for everyone in a job situation, and I believe the lesson is simply to take time to care. All that it took to avert this costly mess was for one person—somewhere in the process of filling the order, billing the order, or shipping the order—to take time to care, to ask a question, or to make a phone call.

A personal rule I take to work with me each day is this:  “Do what you love, love what you do, and always strive to deliver more than is expected.” It’s a challenge that I’ll throw out to anyone and everyone; no pun intended on that part about delivering more than is expected.