I walked up to a FedEx Office location late this afternoon and this is what I saw:

Good promotional poster, but wait, it expired 12/31/2010 and today is 1/2/11.

Seeing expired promo material in a store is a real pet peeve of mine. If the store team doesn’t notice out-of-date merchandising, will they pay attention to my job?

I mentioned the issue to an associate and the reply was ‘they’ don’t do a good job of paying attention to take down dates.

This contrasts with a similar experience I had at Costco last Friday. When checking out, I noticed I was overcharged $20 for an item. I went back to the store display to double check. A manager walked passed and asked if she could help.

When told of the issue, she immediately apologized, accepted responsibility, and refunded the amount. She said her and her team members were responsible for double checking price displays every morning before opening and the issue would be addressed.

In an earlier post, I discuss how I try to keep my surroundings from being too familiar.

Mistakes happen. How we and our team responds speaks volumes about our business.

Am I too particular? I welcome your thoughts.

– Don Kincaid