Competition (part II)

Good morning… What can I get for you?

Some of you may remember the “bar” craze at Starbucks. Starbucks had its’ own version of a “healthy” breakfast bar. They were O.K…. nothing great, but not bad… which is why we had to mark them down to $.25 each.

I had a colleague named Angela. Angela and I were the equivalent of a brother and sister being managers in the same district. I always tried to stay 1 volume level above Angela… that’s how competitive I am. It drove her crazy.

Every Monday I’d do the same thing… 5am…

Angela: Starbucks, Mill Creek this is Angela.

Pat (in a woman’s voice): Yes… I’d like a blueberry bran muffin to pick up in about 10 minutes. Can you hold that for me?

Angela: I’m sorry ma’am, I have just Blueberry Muffins, but they’re not bran… just so you know.

Pat (woman’s voice still): OK then, I’ll take a strawberry bran muffin then…

Angela: Ma’am, I’m sorry… we don’t carry any bran muffins currently.

Pat (still a woman’s voice): Can you make one for me? I can give you some extra time…?

Angela: PAT!!! You turd!

Pat (regular voice now): HAAA! HAAA! Are you on your break?

Angela: Yep… counting some tills from yesterday and checking sales from last week.

Pat: Yep… me too. We had a horrible week last week. What’d you do?

Angela: Really?? We had a great week… $18,623… 11% comps. What’d you do?

Pat: That’s good… We only comp’d 13% and had a $26,980 week… HAA! HAA!

Ok… so you get the picture… I was a bit of a jackass, but you’ll see what this competitive nature can do when you’re trying to get rid of severely marked down crappy granola bars.

When the markdown of the bars started, I sent out a district voice mail letting the other managers know that I’d buy dinner for the manager whose total number of bars sold beat mine… a place of their choice. Needless to say, this set off alarms… some managers got into it… others got pissed and then got into it.

Every hour I left a district VM letting them know where my numbers were. Of course what I didn’t tell them was that I was calling the local office buildings to pedal these things at “8 for 2 bucks” and I’ll drop them off at your office on my way home. The managers in my district worked inside of their stores only to sell one bar at a time… EXCEPT for Angela… She knew me too well. She too was doing what I did… and she was being quiet about it…

Fast forward to the end of the day… I get a call from Angela…

Angela: Geeze… I don’t think we sold as many as you.

Pat: Well… we sold 690 of those bars… which is a good number I think.

Angela: WOW! That is good… Not as good as 765 though. I’ll check my calendar for a good day to go to dinner. It’s gonna cost you too.

HA! Yes, Pat got his butt kicked… but that wasn’t the important part. I think you can see the real victory here.

Angela went on to manage an even busier store than Pat ever got to manage. A few years ago she was promoted to customer for some reason and I’ve never gotten the scoop. One of these days we’ll catch up with each other again… and I’ll remind her of the granola bars.

We’ll see you tomorrow for your usual…

Pat Nerr…