Catherine and I went our separate ways yesterday morning. She dropped me off at a Family Dollar store around 9 a.m. and then headed downtown to Starbucks to do some work. I, on the other hand, had a much more exciting time! I spent the morning touring 3 Family Dollar stores, meeting some great FD Associates and having a great time with District Manager (DM) Pam Holmes!
Something that I've noticed about Salt Lake City is that everyone is extremely nice! It's like displaced Southern hospitality and not something we were expecting at all in the upper Midwest. I expect for people to go out of their way to be kind in the South, but was pleasantly surprised to have encountered it here. Along those lines, I met some fantastic FD Associates yesterday! They were all genuinly excited for me to be there. Not including Pam, who I rode around with for a couple of hours, I got to meet 3 Store Managers (SMs) and 3 Assistant Store Managers (ASMs). I could see from the minute that I walked into their stores how dedicated these ladies are to their stores and how much fun they were having! Each one had a very different store and a different customer base. Two of the stores were in Salt Lake and one was in Tooele, which is just over the mountain from Salt Lake. All 3 stores looked wonderful when I walked in, but they all looked a little different as well. Each SM had her own style of merchandising. SM Darla who is in one of the Salt Lakes stores mentioned to me that she never takes her Christmas display down. She just changes it to fit the season. She currently has a fabulous spring display up with lots of flowers that her customers seem to love! Lanette, the SM at the Tooele store, talked to me for a while about how loyal her customers are. She told me that they recover the store while they shop because they like to keep their Family Dollar looking fantastic! Her ASM loves decorating and has helped boost sales in Home Decor by creating displays against the walls and on top of the shelves. Bonnie, the SM at the other Salt Lake store, has a smaller store and isn't able to do as much in her store as the other 2, but she still runs a tight ship and her store stays looking great!
An interesting thing I learned about our Salt Lake stores is that they do a fantastic softlines business (for those of you who aren't retail nerds like me, softlines basically means apparel). Every one of the SMs mentioned to me that they have trouble keeping their stores stocked with apparel.
I had a great time riding around with Pam! On our way back into the city from Tooele, she took me by the Great Salt Lake and I got to take a picture! The lake is lovely, except for the fact that it smells! I have no idea why, but as soon as you approach the lake you also begin to smell it. According to Pam, yesterday was good day because it didn't smell as bad as it usually does!
All of the ladies I met were wonderful! Pam kept telling me how lucky she was to have such dedicated Associates working for her and I can certainly see what she was talking about. Each Associate I met had such a great attitude and energy about them, and I don't think I saw one of them without a smile on their face!
Pam dropped me off downtown around lunch time to meet back up with Catherine. She insisted that I needed to see some of the city before I left, which we did. We walked up to Temple square to see the Mormon Tabernacle. An interesting, but random fact about Salt Lake City is that it is laid out in a grid system that centers around the Tabernacle. Each street is a number and a direction. For example, one of the Family Dollar stores I visited today was at 3500 South and 7200 West. Below is the center point. When Pam first told me where the store was located, I though she was giving me longitude and latitude! But it actually does make things easier. If you have an address, you can find any place! Anyway, the Tabernacle is truly a glorious building. It has beautiful gardens surrounding it that, Pam told me, bloom even in the snow! There is also a lot of art pieces on display around the city. One of my favorites is a statue of a cow jumping over the moon! I wanted to take it home with me, but I suppose I'll have to settle for the picture!
Wyoming isn't anything like I thought it would be. It's much more flat and desolate than I though a place could ever be. I know that it has the lowest population in the United States, but I at least figured there would be a couple larger towns to stop for gas and food. There are not. We would see signs that said things like "No services for the next 20 miles." And they are serious! We almost ran out of gas at one point because we couldn't find a gas station. Luckily, Catherine's car appeared to be getting great gas mileage and we did make it safely to a station.
A large part of the landscape of Wyoming is the little strange fences that we saw everywhere. It took us a long time to figure out what they were. They are called snow fences, and they help keep large amounts of snow off the highway, which will close on occasion. In addition to the fences there were "Road Closed" signs and big fences that would close so that you couldn't pass. According to Kate Anderson (the person Catherine interviewed in Laramie), when they close, you have to turn around and go back to the nearest town and wait out the snow! I'm so glad that we don't have to deal with anything like that in NC!
After finally making it to our hotel, Catherine and I settled in our room and were getting ready to go to bed when she jumped on her bed and started shaking. Me, thinking that there was some sort of bug on her bed, started to walk over to see what the problem was and she yells at me to climb on my bed. I ask what the problem is and she tells me that there is a mouse under my bed! Of course, my first reaction is to also jump on the bed. When we finally calm down a little, we run downstairs and the person at the desk changes our room. It was a little hard to sleep at that point, but somehow we managed.
Overall, we had a pretty crazy Wednesday. We saw snow, almost ran out of gas and saw a mouse. Hopefully, today will not be quite as ridiculous! We're in Cheyenne for a little while for an interview and to see a store and then we head for Rapid City, SD. We have heard rumors of a snowstorm and are hoping to outrun it today and tomorrow! Wish us luck!
2 comments:
Snowstorm at the end of MAY!! that's crazy. Both of you girls take great pictures. I'm looking forward to seeing them all.
Kathryn, had a wonderful time showing you a sample of our great stores in the Salt Lake area. I hope I was able to leave you with a tiny bit of knowledge concerning our city and its history. I hope you both have a safe journey home.
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