Tammi's World: When "Sorry" Doesn't Cut It...

January 16, 2005

When "Sorry" Doesn't Cut It...

I'm not perfect. I know, most of you are pretty surprised to read that (/sarcasm) But seriously, I'm very careful to be sure and do the right thing, in my personal life as well as my business life.

Doesn't always work out that way. Let's face it, the past month has been NO picnic for me. Between Mom's heart attack and then that trip to Vegas it's been insane around here.

Let me explain. I have this new customer. There are 7 stores that I am directly responsible for. I have them all trained, except for one. I had to reschedule their first training class because it was scheduled for the day after Mom got sick. They were understanding. We set it for this past Friday. Due to the weather and traffic (3 accidents between here and downtown) what is normally a 45 min drive turned into a 2 hour drive. I left myself 1 1/2 hrs to get there....I was very late. We've rescheduled, but the damage is done. The sales people, many on their day off, showed up at 8:00am for a class that didn't happen. Ouch.

Also - because we were without computers in Vegas I couldn't get any paperwork done. I owe them all order forms. They were wiped out and I've been recreating to get them out. They have to be PDF'd. I just got the Adobe loaded on here yesterday. They have no stock in their stores. Ouch.

This is starting to look like I'm a bumbling idiot. I don't make excuses for myself. They know Mom was sick, they know I was in Vegas. However, they have a business to run. Sorry doesn't cut it.

Talk about stress. This is just not a good place to be. I don't make mistakes like this. I'm usually so far ahead that things like this just don't happen. How do you go about rebuilding your cediblity? I honestly don't know, as mine has never come into question before.

So....I'm taking in a very nice breakfast for this store (yes, bribing) and spending time hitting other stores to check on them. It's going to take about 3 months to gain back their trust. Ouch.