Conflict in the Workplace

            Conflicts are fairly common in the work place and in settings where individuals are required to work in groups. As I mentioned in earlier blog posts, it is extremely important to understand the key components of an organizational structure to avoid conflict, and in some cases, conflict may be unavoidable. Miscommunication, personal differences, difference of opinion and many other factors contribute to the break down of group structures, causing conflict. I’ve described several situations, in which I’ve worked in a group setting to achieve a common goal, successfully, and now I would like to illustrate an example of a conflict, and how it was handled.

            Back in high school I worked at Carson’s as a shoe salesman. This was the first job I ever held and each day I learned something new about customer service, handling money and sales. Although the job wasn’t group orientated by nature, all the sales people helped each other out whenever possible. This may seem counter intuitive, because each person was paid on commission and it is in everyone’s best financial interest to only focus on his or her sales. One day while I was working a customer requested that I help her sort though some shoes on the shoe rack. Each time she found a shoe she liked I went in the back storage room to find and retrieve the shoe’s mate. On one instance I could not find the shoe that matched the mate the customer was interested in finding. I went to the costumer to deliver the bad news at which point she began to yell and demand that I bring her the shoe. I tried my best to calm to customer down, but at one point I said, “ I don’t know what else to tell you, the shoe was lost – I am sorry”. She continued to yell and demanded to speak with my manager.  After yelling and explaining the situation to my manager she simply ran off and left the store.

            Fortunately for me, my manager was not upset and completely understood the situation. This conflict stemmed from lack of communication and was my fault. My manager was able to look at both sides of the situation and pinpoint exactly what went wrong and what could have been done to improve the situation. From my perspective, I could not understand why the woman didn’t simply accept that the shoe lost. However, what I failed to do what share the information that I had with her. I should have told her that the back storage room is extremely disorganized in regards to sale items. The sale items are often older models, returns or defective and it extremely common for shoes to inadvertently get thrown away  - this is why we offer those shoes at such low prices. I strongly believe that if I explained that portion of the situation she would have understood and stopped yelling. Secondly, having a weak background in sales and customer service I should have offered her a discount on another pair she liked, or given her some other gift for her inconvenience.  For whatever reason, giving her a gift next crossed my mind.

            From the shopper’s perspective, I imagine she held the mentality of “ the customer is always right.” From the outside looking in, stores often look like tightly run corporate entities, but often they are mismanaged and operate only as well as the workers who run them. The woman clearly held one of the shoes in her hand and could not possible image that the other shoe was not located somewhere in the back. It simply made no sense to her. I am sure the woman had many other things on her mind and didn’t take the time to realize that losing a shoe isn’t that big of a deal in the perspective of an billion dollar business.  Overall, this was a valuable learning experience. It is important in the work place, group setting etc. to share all the information you have with the other person to make sure you are both on the same page.  In a customer service setting you need to make sure the customer is happy and if they do not have what they wanted, a good employee will try to compensate in some other fashion.