Mary Liz Curtin
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You’re Hired
Editor’s Note: This column is taken from Mary Liz’s forthcoming book on retailing, and refers to a time when she and her husband, alias Steve, had first opened their new store. The book is expected out later this fall. Watch this pace for more information. Everyone knows that finding and keeping good employ- ees is one of the greatest challenges in retail. We were very lucky when we opened our store. Lots of people applied for jobs and we built a nice staff of part-time mployees, including two women who had worked for my husband in his previous store. We covered the hours, more or less, it was a good crew and we could both leave for High Point on a buying trip with few worries. will be gone for several months. Our sole male employee (the one who could move heavy things and hang pictures) is a Marine Reserv- ist and has been deployed to the Ukraine. A third has had a family emergency and will be gone for at least two weeks. So here we are, short staffed, working too many hours and glad the kids are old enough to be forced into service at the store. We’ve xplained to our teenagers that shopkeeping is very good for them, that the cash register is better fun than computer games, and that all the other kids are envious, but we haven’t really sold them on it. This is clearly a temporary fix and we have to find some employees who are not related to us. what we need and that the posi- tions we offer are what they really want to be doing. Lots of people are out of work and are apply- ing with us, but they have no experience and are clearly using this job as a stop gap until something in their field comes along. We do feel that it is possible to bring some- one into our business from another field and convert hem to the retail world, but we need to feel that he person is not planning to bolt at the first op- portunity. We need, first and foremost, good
Murphy’s Law
Naturally, this being retail, it is all
falling apart at once. Our number
one employee, the one we trust
with a key, is out for surgery and
Finding Ms./Mr. Right
But we are moving a little slowly.
Both of us firmly believe that the
wrong person is worse than no
body at all. We want to be sure that
the next people we hire are exactly
Gift & Home Interactive
August 2010
