Mind the Gap!

As the MBA class of 2008 barrels towards graduation in May some of us have elected to take a negotiations class with Dr. Lucian "Skip" Jones; a choice I confessed was made in fear. For many the word negotiation may conjure images of long mahogany tables, business suits, and set, square jaws or perhaps the smell of tar on a humid car lot while an earnest salesman sweats and grins and tries to keep his mental calculations a step ahead.

I think of the prairie.

Connor Prairie to be exact, a perfect family day trip and Indiana's answer to Williamsburg (this is a guess because I've never actually been to Williamsburg). In talking about the differences we might encounter there, my parents told us about the general store where people didn't use money but bartered for supplies and wouldn't it be a great idea if we could bring items to barter with the folks at the General Store?

Let me be honest here. I am somewhat of a romantic, which means only that my heart is often fully invested in my imagination and this was even more true when I was younger. So the idea of bartering at a General Store in much the same way as Laura Ingalls might have was near and dear to my heart. Still, I was at that tender age when one begins to see flashes of the world through adult eyes-- one moment eager to go out on a limb and the next moment comprehending embarrassment and fear. A delicate balance.

When the day came I was armed with some pretty calico fabric and my brother, Jude, with some scrap wood, both of us feeling bold, knowledgeable, and well-prepared. My memory of the general store was that it was dark and largely empty. One man stood at the counter and our parents encouraged us to go forward and "barter" although for what I'm not sure. Jude, who by now has embraced his Hueber birthright and is a stellar negotiator, was so young that my recollection is that I had to do the talking, which, it turned out, was very little. We brought our goods to the store clerk and he asked, "What do you want me to do with those?" proving that even in the 1800s rudeness was a job requirement. At that point, I realized how silly we looked with less than a yard of curtain fabric and a foot of scrap 2x4. What were our parents thinking? To a real store clerk it would have been insulting, but to a historical actor it should have been his cue to begin old fashioned negotiations with the Suburbanite children and thus delight his customers. Perhaps this man's dedication to historical realism was too great, however, because he refused to even consider our paltry offerings and, in my memory, we left having been laughed at and were then forced to carry our rejected items like scarlet letters for the rest of the day, or at least until we got back to the car. My first memory of a failed negotiation left me with a dread in my gut whenever the opportunity to haggle came up again.
Herb Cohen, author of "You Can Negotiate Anything" points out that people negotiate all the time, especially in families, so it's likely that the Connor Prairie experience wasn't truly my first taste of failure at the negotiation table (attempts at both wearing make-up and joining the Boy Scouts were summarily put to rest despite my best efforts). George Hollen, friend and MBA president (Get to know him!), recently asked how the negotiations go when Jason announces he will be going on yet another surf trip. Ah, how indeed. The more I think about my husband's unquenchable need for travel and my white-knuckled grip on foundation and security the more I am reminded of the Story of the Orange (or potato or banana, etc) in which it is discovered that the different needs of both parties can be addressed by divvying up the spoils creatively. That is to say, one person wants the fruit and the other wants the peel. While Jason and I have made attempts at addressing the satisfaction gap that exists we have not viewed our negotiations in terms of the ZOPA that exists. Most days, especially these past few years in school, my view is that if Jason has the fun money for trips to the Canary Islands, J-Bay, or (insert name of latest and greatest surf location here) then bon voyage! as long as he comes home safely. The empty house gives me ample quiet time to finish homework or get myself into trouble at craft parties. But sometimes I feel like the poor sucker who got stuck with the peel, not realizing that they wanted a slice of the orange until they watched the other negotiating party with juice dripping down their chin. Inarguably the peel owner got what they wanted even though in retrospect the stories they can tell about their side of the Win-Win won't be as exciting. I guess I need to decide what it is I really want and then come up with an equally satisfactory BATNA before the issues comes up again. True, I could use the orange peel, but does that make me practical and boring?

Poor Jason.

While he is exploring Madrid his studious wife is arming herself with lofty acronyms and fruity metaphors for the next time someone utters those immortal words, "Honey, I've been thinking...let's chat!". He's not going to know what hit him. ;)

Home is where the Depot is...

The wise Connollys warned us that upon buying a house we would change so that the idea of spending our weekends in the aisles of a big box home improvement store wouldn't seem so silly anymore. As with most things, they were right. Even pulling into the parking lot of a Home Depot or Lowes gives me butterflies these days (although 1) we don't really have the money to buy anything and 2) my conscious knows I should be shopping locally. Sorry, Ace!). This Saturday is a beautiful anomaly for February-- warm, sunny, and, well, warm. I had set the day aside for studying, but when Jason called from Home Depot early this morning to ask if we needed anything, I knew my Professional Services notes would have to wait. By the way, that's foreshadowing...
Suddenly various gardening tasks became very important and so I asked Jason to look for something natural that would kill the bugs in my dwarf lemon tree in unnatural ways. As usual, he did not disappoint. When we opened the bottle, however, we saw that the silver foil top had been mostly peeled back already and the liquid had spilled out and dried all around the top and in the lid. Just as I would have done if it were something I'd purchased at the grocery, I got the receipt from Jason and hopped in the car to take it back.
There were balloons in the parking lot of Home Depot. Balloons and a man selling popcorn, and another man setting up a hot dog stand. All this combined with the sweet warm air and racks and racks of blooming annuals made for a veritable festival of domestic improvement. They should consider making it a one-stop shop and put in an office for couple's counseling in the same way that Costco now has an optometrist. Couples would be there anyway, why not spend 30 more minutes to work on marital bliss? My joy was compounded when I walked through the door and saw there was no line at the returns desk. Glory! The chorus of heavenly hosts was cut short, however, when the young man at the counter (yes, I referred to him as a young man. Later on I will refer to myself as a young lady just to make myself feel better) began the process for returning Jason's purchase. Not wanting the bottle to go back on the shelf for some other poor shopper, I explained that my husband had just purchased the item, but when we opened it we found it was already open and that apparently some of it had spilled out. His response was, "Okay, go get me another one."

I'm sorry. "Go get me another one?"

So I explained that I didn't know where to find it as my husband had been the one to purchase it. He gestured towards the lawn and garden section. "It's over in that area somewhere."

Ah. Over there somewhere. Of course.

"Can I just get my money back and then I'll go find something else to buy?" Well, no, he explained to me, because it was open and well, you can't open something and then return it, and it looks like it's been used and all I can do is give you a new one.

Let me stop here to say that folks that work in the returns department must be faced with this issue all the time. Someone comes in, eats a steak dinner, and then complains that it tasted funny and they'd like it taken off their bill. This is sadly common and unfair to businesses trying both please you and make a buck.

But I did not appreciate having my Home Depot High ruined by someone who wasn't even polite about it, so I pressed on where I usually would not. I explained again that my husband had bought the item less than an hour earlier and that, as he could see, the spillage on the top was dried which indicated that it was old, which means maybe whoever returned it the first time was not as honest as I was. Okay, I didn't say that last part. That would have been really rude, but I did my best to convince him of my honesty with deductions Holmes might have been proud of. Thankfully, the young man made it clear that this one time he would do me a favor and return my money to me, but really they're not supposed to do that. Please refer back to the earlier part where I explain that on some level I empathized with the guy. I imagined myself at the counter at the Loveland Greenhouse when folks would bring dead plants in and complain that it didn't survive the summer in the trunk of their car.

The other side of that is that I am the all-holy, all-knowing Customer, darn it, and I want to return this $20 bottle of product so that I can take the $20 I get back and move further into the belly of the beast so I can purchase more Stuff. Obey my whims, minion!

This was an uncommon opportunity for Home Depot. In one day they got not one, but two shoppers from the same household to cruise their store at different times. If we had been together we may have shopped in our favorite sections, but upon meeting at the register would have weeded out the items the other didn't think we needed or couldn't afford. Twenty dollars here and there is much more palatable than one large expense. This was a chance for Home Depot to set me loose in the lawn and garden section with 20 bucks burning a hole in my pocket so that I might spend an extra $40 on camellias without Jason there to talk me down. Instead, I felt like I had narrowly escaped with my $20, so I sought out a cheaper item, browsed without interest, and then left. Once home I told Jason my story, and now, hours later I am still so flustered by it that I am blogging about it.

Home Depot's servicescape was impeccable - remember the balloons? The store layout fit my needs exactly as the returns desk was less than 5 feet from the entrance. But the moment of truth was when the employee at the desk spoke to me so rudely and then insinuated that I was less than honest. I would have been mollified if he had offered store credit, so perhaps the true failure was that of Home Depot in training/empowering their employees. Regardless, I experienced and survived (and then blogged about) a true Professional Services failure on the part of a mammoth corporation. Perhaps all this could be called studying for my exam after all.