On a recent trip to my neighborhood Home Depot, I bought about 40 strips of white trim in both 12′ and 16′ lengths.  That’s a lot of trim.  Even with their handy large-item transport carriage that hasn’t been redesigned since 1850, I almost killed myself and several others dragging them up to the register.  It was a busy day, with long lines typical of this area, and I was particularly focused on getting through quickly.

At the register, I informed the check-out person that I had 15 strips of 16′ trim and 26 strips of the 12′ trim, and that at $0.32 per linear foot, I should owe them $176.64.  She still needed to scan one piece of trim to verify the price/lf — makes sense to me.  Scan … scan … scan …

Check.  It was indeed $0.32.

Then she needed to count to be sure I had 41 total. Okay, I guess.  That shouldn’t take too long.  1 … 2 … 3 …

Verified. 41 it was exactly.

Then she wanted to segment the trim to confirm my 15/26 ratio, thereby ensuring that I had exactly 552 linear feet of trim.  Segmenting it like this would have taken 10 clumsy minutes of manual labor at the front of a long and frustrated line of customers.  It was easy to eyeball that the ratio was close, so what was the point?  Would I really go into a store I frequent and lie about how much trim I’d picked out to save $3-4?  Even if it were an honest mistake, would it be worth it to Home Depot to hold up that line for that extra $3.50?

What held up that line was a bad policy of mistrust.  Not of me, the customer, but of the Home Depot staff.  My check-out person was just following protocol.  She wasn’t authorized to eyeball anything or make any logical judgment based on the situation.  She wasn’t entrusted with any decision making, or any freedom to solve small problems as they come up in a way that benefits both customer and company.  She was just doing her job, and it was pissing everyone off.

When a manager finally helped solve the problem, he did it in an equally inane way: ignorance.  He didn’t want to know anything about the situation, he just keyed in what I told him the cost should be without looking to see whether I was buying trim or a tractor.  He was such an escalation bottleneck that the best he could do was resolve every issue as quickly as possible and move on to the next one.  The result is that some decisions are likely bad, and the staff he should be mentoring is learning nothing but bad habits.

Trust your staff — especially those on the front lines with the customers — to make lots of smart little decisions, then put metrics is place to make sure it’s working.  If you have the right culture and hire good people, everyone will be happier.