| Random retail story - rounding figures |
[Oct. 4th, 2007|03:53 pm] |
I used to have this manager, let's call her "Linda." She was my first manager when I worked for Cargo Furniture. Linda had some issues. One of the issues I recall was "rounding by 3."
"In this company," she said, "we round by 3." This made no sense to me. Every other rounding I had ever done in my whole life was by 5. No, Linda wanted to do it by 3. She said the entire company did it, and was very upset I was questioning it.
One of the jobs I had was to call in the figures to the district manager. I would tell her the sales, and she would tell me what number to put in its place. Like I'd say, "Dining Room Pieces: 12,300" and she'd say, "erase that and put down 12,220." One day I asked her why she did this. "Because store figures are always off."
I was there barely a month when my store manager was demoted to a "penalty store." The new manager was going over how SHE wanted things done. I asked, "do you round by threes?" She was stunned and confused at the question. "NO! Who rounds by threes?" "The former manager..."
Apparently, this woman's sales had been off for the several years she had been a manager. The more money she made in something, the farther off the figures were. When I explained this was most likely because it was rounded by threes, the district manager gasped. "That explains everything!" So then I asked, "Why do we have to call in figures if you already have them?" I was told to shut up, that's just how it was. "How come no one stopped her?" I was told that's what just happened, wasn't it?
Later, when I was promoted and the DM because my direct boss, she confided in me that so many managers fudged their sales figures, it was a way of checking honesty. Linda's were just so constantly bad, however, that the DM would correct her, HOPING she would stop doing whatever she was doing.
The retail world is weird. |
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| Comments: |
I am having such a hard time wrapping my brain around the concept of "rounding by threes."
The closest thing I can come up with to a rational explanation is that she'd somehow absorbed the concepts that 1)everybody expected the figures to be off, 2)that somebody up the food chain was doing honesty checks, and came to the conclusion 3)that her figures should be off in some unusual way that would somehow throw the hounds off the scent.
Reminds me of my time in a restaurant, doing food inventory and the figures forever being off when a certain manager was running them, and 'rounding off'. Got to the point where he used this to boost his sales numbers, the DM did a spot audit. Lo and behold, massive discrepancies and a GM without a job any longer... | |
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