How Teamwork Turned a Negative Situation into a Positive Experience
In life, we just never know what can come across our path. As we happen to go our way and stay our course with work and other responsibilities, life has a habit of surprising us with unavoidable circumstances. We were getting ready for next month’s purchased items. Therefore, since my company is mainly an ecommerce business and we are environmentally friendly , I wanted to move towards sustainability with respect to packaging and shipping. I had purchased my materials in which to pack ahead of time.
When they came and we had opened the individual boxes, many of the glass vials, bottles, and tubes had been broken. The vendor had not packed the glass items tightly and with the necessary packaging such that they individually were moving and hitting one another and thus breaking during the shipping process. I had purchased and expected multiple pallets with intact products. However, we ended up with a disaster of broken products. Although the vendors had mentioned that prior to the shipment, each layer would be covered by shrinkwrap to mitigate any broken glassware, this had not been done. The unbroken ones were filled with glass dust; thus, it was extremely difficult, dangerous, and time-consuming to distinguish between the broken and unbroken products.
Not only had the shipment of products been unusable, but it had taken quite a long time for my team to actually determine which, if any, glass products were safe to use. Plus, I was not comfortable filling the intact jars that were in the same box with the broken jars, for fear of our customers getting hurt. This unforeseen circumstance caused a giant pause in the company’s productivity.
Everyone was ‘bummed out’ about the turn of events, as all my team members are completely dedicated to the productive functioning of Lizush as much as possible. Although I felt the same, I knew I needed to lift their spirits. Oftentimes, they are able to bring themselves out of negative circumstances; however, this level of magnitude of loss had never been experienced by us before. There are times in life we have no control over a situation; consequently, we need to take charge of what we can control and do our best. So, part of the team worked immediately with what they had in stock. The others worked at determining how to resolve this situation and when to receive our products. We also spoke to our customers, explaining to them the degree of our extenuating circumstances. What really caught me by surprise was the kindness and compassion of our customers and how they felt enormous sympathy for us. I am not only proud of my team for staying positive, but also extremely grateful to our customers for their loyalty and understanding.
This act of sympathy and understanding by our customers only encourages me to repeat the good deeds that I have experienced myself – contributing to a more positive community. Initially, I felt so heartbroken that I could not get the products ordered by my customers on time to them. But to hear their reaction just turned my attitude around, where I was just so eager and happy to give them their orders, as soon as possible. Acts of kindness only boosts feelings of happiness and optimism.