I woke up this morning and thought are you really going to write about being grateful for a negative experience. I was going to spin it as being grateful for my flexibility, which honestly I am getting tired of. I am tired of always having to be the one to bend. I told my friend the other day that because of everything with my father’s estate this feels like a world designed for dishonest people.
I am getting off track but let me stay there a moment. Let me explain why I was at Target yesterday. We had an appoint at the DMV to retitle a car that was in my father’s name. The biggest problem is my father had dementia so bad last year he probably didn’t remember purchasing the car and shouldn’t have been making big decisions like this anyway. I never thought about it, and as my wife tells me it isn’t worth it to relitigate the past. It happened. All we can do is deal with the present it created and not ruminate over a past we cannot change.
We had a DMV appointment to retitle his car, and because he never finished the process of getting his own updated title fully in his name when he bought out his lease we are unable to proceed without further documentation. Identity theft and title fraud are two things I’ve been seeing a lot of commercials about lately. Now we need another trip to the DMV to do what criminals can do on the dark web in probably 15 minutes, and they informed me they’re going to want me to pay the sales tax he paid for the car.
Isn’t that what the Bible teaches us though? Isn’t that what sin is? The easy way. And isn’t it humanity’s fault that the easy way is the dishonest way?
Those are questions without answers or at least not answers for this morning. We’re writing about Target. I have explained why I was there, killing time before a trip to the DMV. Now onto the experience, but first more backstory.
In other dealings with my father’s estate I had to look through his investments and decide how to reposition what was left after paying off some debt. With this they gave me a chart that had the dollar values of what the dividends paid as his investments are designed to earn income. In going over all this I ended up making my own spreadsheet to tell me the percentage dividends paid. My thought on the repositioning is to eliminate the bottom third lowest dividend earners and to take that and invest half in the existing top third and then to take the other half and to purchase new investments like Verizon, Ford, and Kohls that all have high dividends. Kohls currently has a whopping 26% dividend.
Why is Kohls so ungodly high when most high paying stocks are closer to 6%? It is because they have a new CEO and they need money to make the changes she wants to make. Those changes are to enhance the customer experience.
Now a story. I went into CVS the other day and there were no employees in sight. It was like the entire store was on the honor system. The kiosk was the only one working that day. Then there are the new Amazon stores that charge you based on facial recognition or some such.
I wanted new shoes to go with the khaki pants I’ve been wearing recently. I avoided DSW for a long long time because I miss the shoe store experience. There are times when I want to be left alone in a store to browse and there are other times when I want a guide. I want a salesperson to help me find what I am looking for, and at DSW I ended up purchasing shoes that didn’t work at first and had to return them, because no one was there to make me try them on and to help me find the right shoe for me.
Finally we get to Target. There I was in Target deciding I needed to smell better and seeing a display of men’s fragrances. I tested a couple and found the perfect one. It was out of stock. This being the modern world I went to the Target website and learned the store I was in had four in stock and I could schedule a Target pick-up. I could then leave the store and come back in a couple hours and get what I wanted, but I am old enough to remember a different time.
I remember my mother in the grocery store asking a sales associate if they had anymore in the back, and this was without a website telling her they definitely had more in the back. I knew what I wanted was in that store. So I asked a sales associate and I was told that the Target pick-up is a different division. They can’t have sales associates going in the back and helping the customers in the store right then.
My father used to tell me a story of a sandwich shop. One day they got a big phone order. This construction site called and wanted to order sandwiches for all the workers. The sandwich shop with the prospects of such a large order rushed to fill it. Every employee was pulled in to start making sandwiches and they ignored the customers in the store. When the sales associate got to the end of the phone call they were asked what the price would be, and when the potential customer heard that they hung up. The employees and owner looked up and noticed their shop, that had been full of customers, was now empty. The lesson is take care of the customer in front of you.
So many businesses these days ignore in person customers for drive-thru or online orders. The customer in front of them has taken a backseat. As wages and automation increase it is going to become worse and worse, but here is Kohls looking at a world of zigs and saying they are going to zag. To focus on the in person customer experience, and I do believe that is something that is going to resonate with a lot of people or I am just enamored with a 26% dividend.
What I am grateful today is my tenacity. For being a person flexible enough to not give up on the world when it feels like it has given up on me, and for being the type of person that would spend two hours making a spreadsheet to get the answers they want.
David Huzzard Writes 