Crazy rumors.
The vice president of produce walked into our buyer pod early one morning. We were focused on our usual regiment of writing P.O.’s, making calls and retrieving passings (confirmed, priced purchase orders en route).
However, there was an underlying uneasiness that morning; the days before all we heard about was how our jobs were somehow, mysteriously on the line.
“Uh, everyone listen up for a sec,” the VP began. “Just go back to do what you’re doing. Don’t worry about anything. Uh, you’re doing a great job.” He looked down with an unbelievable look on his face as he held a plastic bag with some produce within. He shook his head in disbelief. “Everything is OK, yeah.”
We all glanced at each other with a what-was-all-that-about-look on our faces.
We’d spend the last week or so listening to rumors all right. The company had recently appointed a different vice president of our national chain to be in charge of all perishable departments, including produce. However, this two-fisted veep was determined to flex his newfound muscle by walking stores and (with no produce experience) lower the boom on the produce buyers.
You know, clean house. Kick some hiney and take names. New-sheriff-in-town kind of talk.
The new sheriff veep had a litany of contrived complaints for our produce director. He produced the aforementioned bag and complained. “Just look at these pears! They have a funny-looking brownish splotchy skin! (bosc pears). And just look at these oranges, who would ever buy these things; why, they have this odd knotty part protruding out of one side (minneola tangelo). He had a few other, quite normal produce examples that he was personally unfamiliar with, yet also very opinionated about: red bananas he thought should have been yellow and radicchio he swore was small cabbage. All normal fare.
In short, the guy in charge of all perishables could not have been more lost in the produce aisle, but by golly, he was. And he was going to fix things once and for all.
That’s what happens when an organization puts someone in charge that should not be in charge; you hear stories like this. It is proof that if you hang around in this crazy game long enough, you live to see things like this happen. And it did.
The perishable veep may have had an extensive education and background in economics. He may have held high-ranking positions elsewhere. However, sometimes a chain inadvertently places someone in command. The fool who thinks they know, but knows not, but knows not that they know not — to quote part of an old Arabian proverb.
Ringo Starr once sang about it: You’ve got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues / And you know it don’t come easy.
I lived and worked long enough to see another example. At another chain I worked for, the powers that be appointed one of our district managers as produce director. It’s not that we didn’t have other, more qualified candidates in the wings — we did — but this district manager had zero produce experience. Nada. El-zippo.
It didn’t take long for the cracks in the foundation to occur. She didn’t understand seasons, varieties, vendors, transportation or any other retail pillars that she thought she knew. It was soon exposed in some crucial marketing and pricing snafus, and well, after a short 18 months or so this person’s reign was done.
But not before a profound amount of deterioration and lack of confidence happened.
This isn’t to say that some people won’t thrive in a new environment. I knew one person who managed people so well that as he moved through the new produce world as a supervisor, he picked up the business part quite well but succeeded because managing people was foremost. And succeed he did.
However, for the most part, nothing can take the place of experience.
Especially in the fresh produce world. It’s a business where a person really has to know what it’s like to bust down 1,100-piece loads, day after day, or experience what it’s like to schedule shifts, train people, deal with a multitude of issues, plan merchandising and to go through normal days all the way through multimillion-dollar new store openings or remodels. Even under ideal circumstances, wisdom comes not only from experience but also by paying close attention. Learning from mistakes, over and over again.
“We learned from everybody else’s book and added a few pages of our own.” — Sam Walton, Walmart founder (from “The Hot Ticket in Retailing”)
Armand Lobato’s more than 50 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions. He has written a weekly retail column for nearly two decades.
