Focus on your job and Avoid distractions.

My Journey in the Footwear Industry that lead me to Zappos #28

In Blog #27 I talked about Do your own research ahead of time. In this blog I want to talk about Focus on your job and Avoid distractions.

Homer calls me after I get a chance to settle in and informs me the store has a shrinkage problem. Usually problems with shrinkage are caused by poor bookkeeping, customer theft or employee theft. With my back ground in customer theft from Koby’s, I took a look at the store to see what could possibly be stolen.

Shrinkage problem

We had some handbags and accessory items but we were a full service store so I didn’t think the issue was with the customers. We had a pretty good team with one exception, so I kept an eye on the employee I thought might be the culprit. This employee called out sick a lot. He also liked to party frequently, so it might be him. Fortunately when he did call in sick, I had an employee named Vanessa. She was very reliable and I could always count on her to fill in.

Financial problem arises

Aside from the problems at the store, corporate called me to tell me I had to pay the 401k loan back right away. Funny I didn’t remember them telling me that at the time. So now an additional 300 bucks were going to…