Jodi Wallace

Special Contributor

We are gathered today to mourn the death of common sense. Once it was in abundant supply. But today it seems to have become a commodity high in demand and short on supply.       

How exactly did I come face to face with the reality that common sense truly has become an elusive creature on the brink of extinction? Ever have one of those weeks where if you hadn’t actually lived through it you would have thought it was a great plot for a bad movie? Let me share my tale of woe. 

I have a quick meeting with the guys at the shop every morning to go over the schedule for the day. I confirm what is going through the shop, what we are installing, who is going where, and any other items that may need attention.

One day last week as I was getting ready to leave and grab a quick shower before having to open the showroom, one of my guys nonchalantly strolled into the shop from the office where we keep several supply cabinets, holding up four small hot glue sticks.

“This is it,” he said waving the glue sticks in the air. “We are OUT!”

I looked at him curiously. My son had previously been the one handling inventory and ordering shop and job supplies we needed. When Shane started his new job I had talked to him about training John to take over handling inventory. 

I liked John. He always came to work with a smile on his face and was the one person none of the other guys had anything bad to say about. He got along with everyone. After a short time it became apparent we had hired a good fit. 

He was eager to learn and took it upon himself to help the guy hired after him become acclimated to the way we did things. He took the initiative and regardless of how slow things might be, always found something (productive I might add) to do to keep busy. 

John was organized and seemed to genuinely care about doing things the right way. He seemed the perfect person to take over inventory and he seemed pleased when asked. He and Shane had met one Saturday morning to go over things and the torch had been passed. 

I walked over to John and looked at the four small, forlorn-looking, hot melt sticks still in his hand. 

“How can we be out?” I asked. “I haven’t seen any notes left for me saying we were getting low. You guys are supposed to give me a heads-up when you hit half a box.”

 “I did,” he said. “A couple of times.”

I was slightly confused. I know I have a bad memory, but I make sure whatever supplies the guys need are purchased and in place for them. Although I keep pre-loaded credit cards available in the case they need to run to Home Depot for something on a job site, I make a run with someone anytime we need plywood, rags, template material or anything else. I count on the guys to let me know things that need to be ordered from vendors or online.  

John was regularly one of the guys going to Home Depot with me, so he obviously knew I purchased supplies whenever needed. 

“John,” I said, “you haven’t mentioned anything to me that we were running short on hot melt.”

“I put it on the inventory sheet,” he informed me.

“The inventory sheet? You’ve never shown me an inventory sheet,” I told him suddenly realizing I had never seen an inventory sheet from him or had a conversation about inventory. “When do you do inventory?” I asked.

He looked at me kind of funny. “On Mondays,” he said. Monday was the day we had agreed upon when things were originally set up.

“If you are running low on something, wouldn’t you tell me?” 

“You should see it on the inventory sheet,” he insisted. 

“John, I don’t even know where the inventory sheet is kept. Where exactly should I be looking?” 

He gave me another funny look, disappeared around the corner and returned with a plastic box I swear I had never seen before.  He opened the lid and pulled out a piece of paper. 

 “So…you fill the form out, you know what we are running low on, but it never dawned on you that you should review it with me or write a list so I know what to order?”

 “No,” he said. “Why would I?” 

I honestly had no clue how to respond.

Please note this is the way the week started and it didn’t get any better.

We fill the gas tanks on our install trucks every Monday morning to start the week off. Since I am at the shop every day and we do make some long distance drives, I ask every other day if either truck needs gas and if needed, we run to the gas station literally around the corner. 

Several days after my “inventory episode” my main installer called in sick, so we were scrambling to re-arrange jobs for the day. The guys at the shop were prepping jobs for installs and pulling tools to be loaded. Of course we were out of plywood again, so I grabbed John and we ran to Home Depot which is just down the street.

When we got back, I confirmed what we were doing for the day, asked if there were any questions, and left. I live about 7 miles from the shop. JUST as I pulled in my driveway the phone rang. It was John.

 “Hey, John, what’s up?” I had the phone in the crook of my neck as I was grabbing stuff out of the back seat.

 “The truck needs gas,” he said.

 “What?” I said as I reached for the bag I had just dropped. 

 “The gas light just went on when I went to leave for the job.”

I put down the bag and removed the phone from my shoulder, gripping it firmly in my hand as I put it against my ear.

“What?” I repeated.

 “The truck needs gas,” he said again.

 “Didn’t we just go to Home Depot?” I asked (not too nicely I admit.)

 “Yes.”

 “And you didn’t think to mention it at the time I was in the truck with you and we could have stopped and gotten gas?”

“Well, the gauge showed I had a quarter tank, so I figured it was fine. The guys always said it was OK with a quarter tank of gas.”

Please note our Ford F-150 is an 8-cylinder extended cab with an 8 foot bed. This translates into not great on gas mileage! The first install was an hour away, and an hour back to San Jose. Actually, the rule is to say something when you get DOWN to a ¼ tank of gas! So we can fill it back up and no one runs out!

“So…you knew we had no gas but didn’t think to say anything while I was there? In the truck? With you?”

My hand was gripping the phone pretty ferociously by now. I did my best to remain calm. “How exactly did you plan to get to San Francisco and back on a quarter tank of gas?” By now I was stripping off my sweatshirt one handedly because I was starting to have hot flashes from my blood pressure rising. 

“It was fine,” John told me. “But it isn’t now because the gas light just went on. What do you want me to do? Are you coming back or do you want me to put money in the tank and you can repay me?”

“You do know San Francisco is 60 miles each way right?” I said gritting my teeth. “No…I will come back. And meet you at the gas station – to put gas in the truck. Because obviously I have nothing else I am supposed to be doing right now.” 

I shoved my bag and sweatshirt into the back seat and slammed the car door – loudly. And headed back. To the gas station. Which I had passed both going, and leaving the shop no more then 15 minutes prior!

Unbelievable. Could this week get any better? I sarcastically asked myself out loud. Ah…, be careful what you wish for.

Since my installer was out for several days, I had rescheduled to deliver a ½ slab of material left over to a past customer who we also needed to redo some silicone for. The customer lived 45 minutes away and was on the high maintenance side, so I knew it was important to send the right guy to be in charge, so we needed to wait for Matt to return.

The stone countertop was a large “L” shaped piece and weighed approximately 200 – 250 pounds. The macho talk in the shop was that two guys could offload and carry the stone to the back of the shop to free up the truck, but I was taking no chances with anyone getting hurt. 

Since I knew the truck wasn’t needed for any major jobs for several days, I figured it was just as easy to leave it loaded on the truck than to struggle getting it off. We strapped it to an A-frame on the truck so we wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of loading it back on in a couple days, for delivery. 

To ensure the local vandals wouldn’t have the chance to use the beautiful white quartz as their newest graffiti canvas, at night the truck was backed into the shop and in the morning pulled back out. 

That Friday the Pineapple Express blew through Northern California with a vengeance. I remember thinking at one point I should call to make sure they had covered our $750.00 wooden A-frame my husband and son had built, but the phone rang, customers were walking in and I knew in the past we had covered it when it rained and the truck was parked outside, so I decided I was being a slight bit paranoid and didn’t make the call. (BIG mistake!)

Saturday morning I received a call from my husband who had gone by the shop while I was working at the showroom. Anyone married for a certain length of time knows from the voice on the other end of the phone when something is definitely not right.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. 

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said through what sounded like gritted teeth…. Definitely not a good sign.

An hour later my husband walked in the showroom and directly into the office. Which is unusual because he always greets customers when he walks in. I followed him back as soon as my customer left.

“The shop is flooded,” he said. “And the office.” The words came out calmly, but oh, I could tell the wrath behind them. “I walked in the office and the floor squished from all the water!” 

“Are you serious?” I asked. I have a bad habit of using that phrase, one he despises although he has never said it.

He glared at me. “I was freaking out. There’s water EVERYWHERE. I was getting ready to call the landlord because I thought the roof had a leak. Water is everywhere. All over the shop, the office, the floor is ruined. It’s all going to have to come up.” He could barely contain his anger. 

I waited for the other shoe to drop, which it did. After searching high and low he discovered the water leaking from the back of the pick up truck. The truck had been put away with all the standing water accumulated from 8 hours’ worth of major thunderstorms that had filled up a good portion of the truck bed. And it had leaked – ALL over the entire shop floor, seeping in and saturating the laminate flooring in the office, spreading to the linoleum in the bathroom. 

Monday morning everything had to be emptied out and the entire floor pulled up and thrown away. We set out whatever fans and heaters we could round up from around the shop. It was not a pretty picture. 

One of the guys said he told the shop foreman water was leaking out of the truck bed. The shop foreman told him don’t worry about it, it’s just a little water. 

As a business owner it is difficult to understand that things that seem so simple to us are not viewed the same way by employees. We know decisions made on the spur of the moment without much thought have a way to come back and bite you.  

When you run a business you stress about where every penny goes and how to stretch that penny. We all know there are times the bills coming in far outweighed the money coming in, but as owners it is our responsibility and priority to ensure the business bills and employees paychecks are taken care of, even if during some months we struggle a bit to pay our own personal bills. 

As business owners we take everything personally, because it is personal. Our business is our lifeblood. Our decisions are weighed and made on what will provide the best positive and long-term results that will benefit the company and in return, benefit our employees as well. But for employees, it’s just a job. It’s not viewed the same way we do, and the choices they make may not be made in the best interest of the company, but perhaps what is easier, quickest and requires the least amount of effort. 

That isn’t saying bad decisions are intentional. I have one guy who messes up more than anyone I know and at times I seriously have wanted to throttle him. Customers love him and when he is “on,” he is amazing. But when he’s “off”, he just needs to be sent to the corner and not allowed to touch anything! 

When I have asked him why he did, or didn’t do something a certain way as requested, or took a shortcut instead of doing it the right way, or didn’t pick up the phone and ask me before installing something he knew was incorrect, he has looked me right in the eye without any trace of sarcasm and responded, “I don’t know, I didn’t think of it.” 

What employees forget is that careless and avoidable mistakes have costly consequences associated with them.

Running out of hot melt sticks which are used on a daily basis may require costly express delivery charges. Having to run back to fill up a gas tank consumes additional gasoline as well as jeopardizes a potential job and new customer relationship.

Filling up the dumpster after having ripped out the floor caused the amount of dumpster space available for tile tear outs to be reduced. If we had had several large kitchen tile tear outs we would have been forced to pay to dispose of our debris at the landfill because the dumpster was full.

We are still not sure how our $750.00 wood A-frame is going to fare after being water saturated. It will depend on how much the wood shrinks and if we feel the integrity of the frame has been compromised. 

Having to replace and rebuild that would be a big hurt. Not only would the new materials run $750.00 to rebuild, but the time and labor required to build a new one would have costs associated with it as well.

Moving everything out of the flooded area, ripping out the floor, mopping up the mess, and hunting down heaters and fans to dry out the area and then having to move everything back in, all required wages being paid to employees. 

And while money was going out to clean up the totally avoidable mess, the time spent doing this took away from the work and jobs that create cash flow, which in turn pays their paychecks and our bills.

As a small business owner I try hard to lead by example, to let our employees know what is important to us and why. I always emphasize why it is important to do things the “right” way, not the quickest way. Quality over quantity (and call backs.) 

I keep hoping they will, in turn, look at a situation and evaluate what they should do based on past circumstances, common sense, and “What would Jodi want us to do?” 

Unfortunately, that is usually not the case, but one must try to remain optimistic. Give thought to something before you do it – or as my husband says, measure twice, cut once. 

Jodi Wallace is co-owner of Monarch Solid Surface Designs in San Jose, California. She may be reached at monarchssdesigns@aol.com.