I Own a Small Business. I Should Have Known Better.
I own a small business.
I know how hard it is to compete with the big-box stores. I know what it means when someone chooses to spend their money with a locally owned business. I know that every purchase matters.
I tell people to shop local.
And recently, I got a pretty good reminder that I need to do a better job of practicing what I preach.
It all started with a dishwasher.
Ours needed to be replaced, and my first instinct actually was to buy one locally. I went to a small, locally owned business and tried to do exactly what I encourage other people to do.
Unfortunately, I didn't have a good experience with the salesperson.
So I left.
There was nothing wrong with that decision. Shopping local doesn't mean you have to accept poor service simply because a business is locally owned.
My mistake was what I did next.
Instead of trying another locally owned business, I went to a big-box store.
And that's where I learned a lesson I probably should have already known.
"I Just Have to Do What the Screen Says"
I found the dishwasher I wanted at Menards. According to the information I was given, it was available. I ordered it and received an email telling me it was ready for pickup.
So I drove to Paducah to get it.
It wasn't there.
I was told it wouldn't be there until later.
At that point, I simply wanted to cancel the order and buy a dishwasher somewhere else.
That should have been a fairly simple problem for two reasonable human beings to solve.
It wasn't.
I was told there could be a 25% restocking fee. I was told the dishwasher was a special-order item. None of that made much sense to me considering I hadn't received the dishwasher, it wasn't there for me to pick up, and nothing I could see in my account indicated that I had purchased a special-order item.
But what stuck with me most wasn't even the policy.
It was how little ability the people standing in front of me seemed to have to actually solve the problem.
At one point, one of the employees essentially told me:
"I just have to do what the screen says."
That sentence has stayed with me.
The screen said it, so that was the answer.
It didn't matter whether the answer made sense for this particular situation.
It didn't matter that there was an actual customer standing there with an actual problem.
The system had decided.
And the employees were expected to follow the system.
Two People Standing There—and the Computer Has the Final Say
I don't really blame the employees for that.
They didn't create the policies. They didn't program the computer. They didn't create the corporate bureaucracy they were working under.
And I'm sure they weren't interested in risking their jobs by ignoring what they had been told they could and couldn't do.
But think about how strange that really is.
Two reasonable adults can be standing face-to-face, both capable of understanding a situation, and yet neither one may have the authority to simply say:
"This doesn't make sense. Let's figure out a way to make it right."
The bureaucracy has more authority than the human being.
Technology is supposed to help us do business better.
I use technology in my own businesses every single day.
But there's a big difference between using technology to help people do their jobs and allowing technology and corporate policy to replace people's ability to think, reason and solve problems.
Sometimes a situation doesn't fit neatly into a box on a screen.
Sometimes you need a human being.
And that got me thinking about what we're losing as small businesses disappear.
You Can Still Look a Small-Business Owner in the Eye
Can a small business give you bad service?
Absolutely.
That's how this whole story started.
Being locally owned doesn't automatically make a business good, and it doesn't mean customers should tolerate poor service.
But there is something fundamentally different about dealing with an independent business.
There is usually a person somewhere who can make a decision.
You can talk to the owner.
You can explain what happened.
You can ask questions.
Sometimes you can negotiate.
The owner can look at the circumstances instead of only looking at a policy.
They can make an exception when an exception makes sense.
They can say:
"Okay. How can we work this out?"
They're not just doing what a screen tells them to do.
And there's another difference.
A small-business owner understands something that I think can get lost inside a giant corporation:
We need our customers more than our customers need us.
I own businesses. I know that's true.
Nobody has to shop with me.
Nobody has to come to our auctions.
Nobody has to spend a dollar in our store.
There are other places they can go.
So when somebody chooses my business, I need to appreciate that.
I need to earn the next visit.
And if I mess something up, I need to do everything reasonably possible to make it right.
That's not just good customer service.
That's survival for a small business.
Then It Hit Me: I Had Done Exactly What I Tell People Not to Do
Here's the part where I have to point the finger at myself.
I own a small business.
I ask people to shop local.
I ask people to give businesses like mine a chance.
And I had tried.
I went local first.
But after one bad experience with one salesperson at one locally owned business, I didn't try another local business.
I went straight to a big-box retailer.
I should have known better.
One disappointing experience with one local business didn't mean every locally owned business would give me the same experience.
There were other independent businesses I could have tried.
I should have tried one of them.
Because I've realized we sometimes hold small businesses and giant corporations to completely different standards.
When a national retailer disappoints us, we blame that company.
When a small business disappoints us, it's awfully easy to decide that shopping local is too much trouble.
That's not really fair.
Small Businesses Have to Earn It, Too
I don't want this to turn into one of those "shop local no matter what" speeches.
That's not what I believe.
Small businesses have responsibilities, too.
If we want customers to choose us instead of Amazon, Walmart, Menards, Lowe's, Home Depot or any other giant retailer, we have to give them a reason.
We may not always be able to beat their prices.
We certainly can't always beat their buying power.
We may not have 100,000 products sitting in a warehouse.
But we have something they have a much harder time duplicating.
We can still be human.
We can listen.
We can think.
We can use common sense.
We can look somebody in the eye.
And when something goes wrong, we can try to make it right.
So if someone makes the effort to shop with us, we'd better remember what an opportunity they've given us.
Don't waste it.
Because This Is Bigger Than a Dishwasher
This is the part I've really been thinking about.
What happens if we don't support small businesses?
They disappear.
One closes. Then another. Then another.
And eventually, we have fewer choices about where we spend our money.
The more independent businesses disappear, the more power gets concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of huge corporations.
And once our choices are gone, the relationship changes.
If there are plenty of places competing for our business, businesses have to work to keep us.
But what happens when there aren't?
What happens when the big-box stores and giant corporations have us in a chokehold because they're the only practical choices left?
Where are we going to go?
That's when it starts feeling like we need them more than they need us.
And I think that's a dangerous place for consumers to end up.
Not because every corporation is bad.
Not because every small business is good.
But because competition and choice matter.
Having somewhere else to go matters.
Having somebody across the counter who has the authority to say, "This isn't right. Let me fix it," matters.
Doing business with actual people matters.
Shopping Local Isn't Charity
Maybe that's another mistake we make when we talk about supporting small businesses.
Shopping local isn't supposed to be charity.
You aren't doing me a favor just because I own a small business.
I still have to earn your money.
But when you spend money with a locally owned business, that transaction is different.
You're helping someone make a living.
You're helping pay an employee.
You're helping keep a storefront open in your community.
You're helping the business that sponsors the ball team, donates to the fundraiser, buys from another local business and pays taxes where you live.
There's a person behind it.
And when there's a problem, there's a person you can look in the eye.
That matters more than I think we've realized.
So I'm Talking to Myself, Too
I can't write this from a soapbox.
I did the very thing I'm talking about.
I gave one local business a chance, had a bad experience and went straight to a big-box store.
Next time, I want to do better.
If one small business doesn't treat me right, I'll take my money somewhere else.
But before I automatically give it to a giant corporation, I'm going to try another small business.
I'm going to give another owner the opportunity to earn it.
Because supporting small business isn't only about helping small-business owners survive.
It's also about protecting our own choices.
It's about making sure we don't wake up one day and realize that the businesses where someone can still think, negotiate, reason and make things right have disappeared.
And those of us who own small businesses need to hold up our end of the bargain.
When someone chooses us, treat them like they matter.
Listen.
Think.
Use some common sense.
Fix the problem when you can.
Remember that we need our customers more than they need us.
Because if small businesses want people to fight for us, we'd better be worth fighting for.
I started out trying to buy a dishwasher.
I ended up being reminded why the choices we make about where we spend our money matter a whole lot more than I sometimes remember.
And next time one small business disappoints me, I'm going to do a better job of practicing what I preach.
I'm going to try another one.
0 comments