I worked at a retail start-up from Nov 2013 to Sep 2014. The start-up opened for business in 2011. My primary responsibilities were researching products, creating purchase orders, updating the webpage, and maintaining the inventory. My secondary responsibilities were providing customer service and ringing up customer purchases. The first day of training I noticed there were no barcode scanners. I asked, "How do I enter new inventory in the database? I don't scan barcodes?" My manager said no barcodes. I said inside the back of my head, "Are you kidding." I play the to-be-fair card. 99% of all inventory received there are no barcodes. The producers and importers don't provide barcodes on their products.
I connected the dots starting from Nov 2013. The back-end of the store was disorganized. Finding products took too much time. The front-end of the store was inefficient finding products for customers. Ownership never did monthly inventory audits. Computers were outdated. Ownership played the cheap card. Ownership solved problems the easy way. Life goes full circle. One day ignoring problems comes back.
Today's blog reminds me and reminds my readers make changes now when problems are clear and present. Not tomorrow. Not after breakfast. Now. Solve problems today. Ignore problems hoping they go away can happen. On the other hand, ignoring problems can become bigger problems requiring bigger solutions. Fix problems now when they're small.
Ownership made the business decision to invest in a barcode system in Jun 2014. I wasn't around to see if the store went 100% bar codes to ring up customers and to maintain inventory.
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