Day 24: January 24 Proposal: Retail Snow Grace

January 24, 2016
Day 24  Proposal: Retail Snow Grace

To the brick and mortar retail venues in areas affected by snowfall I am making a proposal. Moving forward, I propose we institute a new concept: Retail Snow Grace. This is how it works, when a town is alerted of a significant snow fall, all retail venues go on Retail Snow Grace Alert. In the alert mode thought patterns change and switch from profit to safety. King Money is pushed aside and the employees and potential consumers take the lead in priority. Of course there will be mistakes made along the way due to the erroneous prediction of the weatherman. You try your hand at predications. Hence the word, grace. Remember, profit's sitting in the back seat, we are concerned about lives.

This is how it would play out, for all practical purposes, for four significant players: the owner, the manager, the employees, and the consumer. First, the owner, as soon as the alert would be issued, would begin to think -employees are better alive than dead. He would then issue an emergency text message to the manager - "Please, make sure you have your phone fully charged so that you can see all my texts. I, in the meantime, will be glued to the weather station in order to be able to make wise decisions for the good people who work for us. Safety first! We want the First Responders to be able to stay home."

The manager upon reading this text would go into full weather alert mode and over the intercom would encourage all personnel. It would sound something like this: "Dear wonderful workers. We care about you. We want you to be really safe. We might be closing early so that you can go home before it gets too dangerous. So, prepare to close and only do what needs to be done. We want you to be safe."

The employees, indebted to the focus on their safety, would graciously and most happily go above and beyond the call to duty before they left for home. Word of mouth would spread and the stores with Retail Snow Grace interwoven in their DNA would become known. The consumers would soon begin to know which stores incorporate Retail Snow Grace and would learn to prepare accordingly.   My proposal puts people first and putting people first always fills a town with grace, and wonder.