We’re now in to day two of the discussions on appropriate compensation for the absolute debacle of a refrigerator install last Saturday thanks to the policy of Lowe’s to strip the power to make the situation right from their store manager to the officiously named “Appeasement Department” which is in desperate need of being disbanded or at the very least re-branded.
This is the department Ms Kayla was forced to “partner” with (that term comes up again repeatedly in the hour-long conversation to come) who are supposed to come to some sort of agreement with a customer to resolve a dispute prior to it ending up on a civil court’s docket.
Adding more bureaucracy to a situation that’s already dogged by breathtaking stupidity and incompetence is hardly the recipe for success unless the goal is to frustrate the customer in hopes that they will just go away and leave the bureaucracy to do whatever it is they do in their “working” day.
They apparently rang the phone last night but as it came up “Unknown”, the built-in twit filter in iOS dumped them straight to voicemail. That’s probably just as well because I just wasn’t in the mood after already telling the story to Ms Kayla in the morning who should be trusted and empowered by her management to solve this on her own but apparently isn’t with their sacrosanct policies.
So I ring them up this afternoon and get Julie who listens to me re-tell the story I’ve written about in gory detail over the past few posts in this category. She’s reasonably polite throughout the call which is definitely welcome but even though she should have been empowered by her management to do what Ms Kayla isn’t permitted to do, I started getting those grody feelings of dread when she used the word “partner” a couple of times.
She started that out with the notion of “partnering with others” to research something (though I could never get her to admit to exactly what she needed to research that hadn’t already been made readily available and testified to).
The facts of the matter are not in dispute. The entire blame for the failure of the original installation started with a supposedly trained and professional installer failing to shut off a water line prior to disconnecting the metal hose connecting it to the refrigerator that was being removed. Pretty much everything that happened after that point and the days worth of delays until the second installers actually completed the installation is entirely the fault of Lowe’s and the outsourced companies that are doing them no favours.
Full stop.
So I was genuinely mystified as to what in the world needed more “research”. What defence can Lowe’s possibly offer to mitigate against their culpability for everything that happened between the start of the failed installation until the refrigerator was finally successfully delivered three days later?
What possible argument can anyone at Lowe’s make with a straight face that Lowe’s deserves any sort of reward or credit especially considering that nearly everyone I have put the original installation scenario to has correctly identified the critical step of shutting off the water supply prior to disconnecting the hose that the first installer failed to perform which would have likely ensured what has transpired since never would have happened at all?
And only two of the at least ten people I’ve spoken to these past couple of days could be considered professionals who are expected to and actually did know better…Miguel of Prestige Home Renovations and my absolute favourite general contractor in the world and the second installer who actually passed that quiz before proceeding down the hall to the kitchen!
If anything, the number I offered them is dramatically lower than it would be had the kitchen actually suffered damage and/or civil litigation is required if this “Appeasement Department” can’t be bothered to make the absolute easiest decision they will make all week to try to salvage Lowe’s reputation which is currently in tatters other than the second installation team and Ms Kayla being genuinely decent and pleasant to interact with!
He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I’ll chase him ’round the moons of Nibia and ’round the Antares Maelstrom and ’round Perdition’s flames before I give him up!
Khan Noonien Singh — “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”
So I go on hold at the 40 minute mark for her to confer with presumably higher authority and she comes back four minutes later insisting that she’s been instructed by her manager that she must partner with “upper management” to actually make the decision.
That’s the moment for me that the whole purpose for her department’s existence went from being an annoying bureaucratic obstacle to truly being well past it’s sell-by date in terms of usefulness.
Are you seriously suggesting to me that a corporation whose 2023 numbers indicated that they had $86.38B in revenue leading to net income of $7.726B really needs to kick this absolutely gift of a settlement offer that is dramatically cheaper than the potential loss of future business (which in the age of social media is actually considerable) up to some “upper management” so they can justify their existence on the payroll as opposed to the dole queue they ought to be inhabiting?
Oh, I’ve given you no word to keep, Admiral. In my judgment, you simply have no alternative.
Khan Noonien Singh — “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”
I even tell her that which she ought to have already known: this is not only a decision that should take all of one second for Lowe’s to accept, they’ve got two outsourced companies (the installers in Clayton and the overseas call centre) they can assign the settlement to against their billings and neither of them would *DARE* challenge Lowe’s charging off half of the settlement against each of them.
Julie goes away for a couple more minutes but still no dice…we’re stuck with yet another useless layer of bureaucracy and more delay in settling the affair in their vain hopes I’ll just give up and go away.
The story of the refrigerator that left this house in favour of the new one ought to be all the reminder they need that I will not give up and in the end I *WILL* prevail. How much effort I have to put into something that they should have agreed in a matter of minutes directly influences how much further the number rises.
And that puts me to mind of an old adage I first heard whilst Dad was attending the US Army’s Command and General Staff College.
They’ll teach you that the difference between a good commanding officer and a bad one is about the time it takes for one to snap their fingers.
A bad commander is one that diddles about and asks for any number of reports or wants more materiel and men to do the job they’ve been assigned. These are the ones that can’t make anything other than the simplest of decisions to save their life and often that’s the point, saving their own ass when the lives of those in their command are on the line.
If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.
President Abraham Lincoln
One rather infamous example of this is General George B McClellan who spent months upon months building up a massive army as Confederate forces were bracketing Washington DC. This army that was larger than most that had ever walked the face of the earth was supremely well-organised but President Lincoln was of the mind that this grand army might be put to better use actually marching upon and engaging the enemy.
McClellan diddled about some more, was summoned to the White House and told point-blank he needed to get his army moving in spite of his insistence on “partnering” with pretty much anyone else amassing this huge military force rather than make a command decision and stick with it, and get on with the mission he had been ordered to do for months.
His failure to do so is what would ultimately see him be relieved of his duties as General-in-Chief of the Union Army.
Good commanders can make decisions on the authority they’ve been entrusted without necessarily running to higher authority every time one must make the hard call to cover their own ass (thus, they tend to make the tough decisions seemingly in the time it takes to snap their fingers).
Their decisions can generally be made to work as intended and if things do go off the tracks as is customary during the fog of war, they’re not paralysed by indecision and trying to deflect responsibility but rather are ready to respond as need be and look for opportunities to gain the initiative and turn the situation in their favour.
They make the decisions and take the responsibility. That’s what having the stars or stripes on the shoulder boards is for, after all!
Those are the sorts of commanders that subordinates love working under because more often than not they’re not only good decision makers, they’re also usually intensely focused on the four things that make an army successful: keeping the soldiers well-fed, well-armed, well-protected and focused on the mission at hand.
Bad commanders usually spend so much of their time trying to cover their six they often forget the reason they’re in the command in the first place…effectuating the military policy of the civilian government in such a way that the enemy suffers a crushing defeat at the least amount of cost in materiel and the lives of the members of the armed forces to get the job done.
So I get to wait another day to find out if someone has any sense of the art of being a good commanding officer over there amongst their “upper management” or not.
Once again, an opportunity for us to put this sorry affair in the rear view mirror has been lost. 🙁