So, in Blog #40 I talked about how  the grass isn’t always greener…In this blog I want to talk about when to jump ship if it’s sinking

Frank treated everyone poorly. He loved “being the boss”. People started quitting in droves. My friend Tim, another store manager from another store said “I’m done, Fuck Frank”. He got a job at Nordstrom, in San Francisco as a salesperson. 

I toughed it out for 6 more months then Tim called me. “There’s an opening in Salon Shoes, I can put in a good word for you, I’m loving it here!”. 

Steve’s vision was to make the stores cater to the masses instead of being more specialty. It wasn’t working, the sales numbers were dropping dramatically and customers were not happy. “Where am I going to find my size now?”, might as well go to Nordstrom they’d say. “Maybe “I” should go to Nordstrom” I thought.

Frank getting heat too

Apparently Frank was getting heat on the business, he would come to the store and walk very methodically. He acted like a Sargent, “what’s this?” “Or this?”, “Or this?” He’d bark. A handbag was slightly crooked, most likely moved by a customer. My salespeople would jump to correct it. The tension was so high everyone was complaining. I decided to see if Tim could hook me up…

My gut was wrong this time

So here’s the thing, I left Jim because I thought there was a good opportunity to start at the beginnings of a new company turning around the business. After being there for 6 months I could tell it was going in the wrong direction. I always said Know when to jump ship if it’s sinking and this was the Titanic…

Plus I personally felt to walk away from a customer base that put the name on the building so abruptly, was a recipe for disaster. I felt this place was going to shut down completely and I needed to make sure my family was ok.

A week later I get a call from a guy at Nordstrom. His name was Michael and he wanted to meet me. We set something up for my day off. I decided to really “study” for this interview. First stop I went to Barnes and Noble and bought several books on interviewing. Then I hired a professional resume writer and updated my resume. Next I bought a suit and got my hair styled and a manicure. I was looking for perfection on this one as I wanted out bad…

Know when to jump ship if it’s sinking

Know when to jump ship. Unless you truly believe “the Captain goes down with the ship” you could get pulled down with it. If it’s your own business, of course that’s a different story, but if a company is making bad choices and is failing because of it, you have to make the choice…