“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
- 4th of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous -
In With regard to REALITY,
I introduced you to my Pop’s filling station and one of the life lessons about seeing things as they really are.
That lesson centered on my Uncle Roy’s subterfuge with cars and ‘Detroit Cancer’. I don’t think that I mentioned
that Pop’s station was branded by Standard Oil. In addition to selling gasoline we carried all sorts of
auto parts and products such as fan belts, oil filters, batteries, tires, motor oil, wiper blades, additives and
fuels all under the brand Atlas. In addition to these auto related things we also had lots of candy bars, chewing
gums, moon pies, chips, soda pops and such.
One of my first jobs and first business lessons was to count all these auto
parts, products and other stuff at the end of each month to determine how many of each we had and how that count
‘stacked up to par’. Pop taught me that there were a couple of important
things that resulted from this count. The first was to determine how many we had (or didn’t have) of each item
and the second was to develop an order to restock. Later on he taught me other important lessons about inventory
such as... There was a lot of money tied up in all this stuff, that the counts help establish product turnover
during the month and how much money should have come in as a result of those sales, that there was a lot of places
that inventory could hide and that part of the job was to look in all those possible places otherwise the inventory
would not be complete. These lessons may have seemed simplistic at the time but they proved to be about much more
than the obvious.
Pop taught me that seeing a box on a high shelf was not sufficient evidence and that you had to actually pick
up the box and feel its weight or open it to actually determine if the contents were as advertised on the outside.
He said if you kept looking for things in the obvious places you would always miss some buried treasures hidden
away in drawers, closets, storage bins, and behind or under other stuff. But more importantly he established
‘par’ in my mind, meaning that I should know what I needed, how much of it I would need and keep count of
it so that when I needed it, I would have enough and afterward I could replenish my supply.
Inventory and the taking of inventory has always been an interesting part of my life. At one time in my
youth I worked on a Tug Boat that typically made runs pushing crude oil from New Orleans, Baton Rouge or
Mobile up the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers to Cincinnati. There were about 30 hands
on my boat and that’s a lot of mouths to feed 3-4 times a day. The cook and cook’s helper would take inventory
a few hours outside of Memphis and the Captain would radiophone the order into the commissary store and
as we passed Memphis the boat store would come along side our rig, tie off and all hands would lay to for
the unloading of the provisions. After that task was accomplished we could go onboard the boat store and purchase
the personal items such as books & magazines, candy, toothpaste and other necessities. The store boat also
acted as a mail boat delivering letters from home and taking our mail to be posted landside.
When I first started in management training at the Pick Congress Hotel in Chicago, part of that training
was working in the commissary. A great majority of that work was involved in managing the food and beverage inventory.
The importance of receiving and storage was emphasized with the rule of first in, first out always applying. At
the Pick I received my first training in Housekeeping and Laundry where (with respect to linen and terry
items) inventory and ‘pars’ were extremely important. Back then we maintained a 4-par of all linen items
that was 1 full set in the guest room or suite, one full set dirty and in the laundry, one full set on the shelf
allowing its memory to be restored and the final set having been disbursed to the guest room floor linen closets.
The need for replacement linen was determined during the inventory process that identified the items that were
below par resulting from normal wear and tear, damage or thief.
In the timeshare resort business the guest room inventory includes much more than the linen and terry items.
Because of the very nature of a fully furnished condominium all the housewares, utensils, dishes, silverware, etc,
etc., also have to be inventoried. For many years an inventory sheet was left in a conspicuous place in the villa
and the guest was asked to check off that the full supply of everything on the list was present. Many resorts have
now relieved its guest of that duty and have assigned it to the Inspectors whose duty is to insure that the villa
is ready for occupancy by the next guest.
These lessons have proved to be about much more than stuff for sale at a filling station, the grocery supplies
for a tug boat, food and beverage and linen at the Pick Congress or the extensive inventory list awaiting many
checking into a timeshare resort. Pop also taught me about taking personal inventories every once in a while.
By personal inventory he did not mean how many pair of gym shoes I had, how many tee shirts or pair of jeans. What
he meant was to take inventory of the various components that make up the sum of our unique existence. Pop wanted
to make sure that I stayed up to ‘par’ on those things that were essential to keep me well rounded and on
the right track.
In With regard to Motivation we introduced
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This theory establishes five (5) levels of need and operates on the premise
that until each level of need has been satisfied the next level will not come into play. Those levels are: 1.
Physiological Needs: Food, shelter, and clothing., 2. Security needs : Physical security and economic security.,
3. Social Needs: Acceptance, sympathy, understanding, direction, affiliation and friendship., 4.
Ego Needs: Self-esteem, status, recognition. and 5. Self-actualization needs: What's best for themselves,
creativity, and personal development.
In With regard to Self we took a look into the
mirror of self-appraisal and determined that ‘If I am what I was at the time of my birth, on that hot August night,
I am without growth! If I have become a grown-up without change, I am less than I could have been! If I am what
I envisioned I could be, I have achieved, however if I am resting on those laurels, I am without ambition!’
At the Pick Congress when I was taking F&B inventory it was made easy because we had a tool called
an inventory sheet. This sheet identified the various places that inventory was kept, identified the location and
type of product, provided a record of the amount found on the last inventory and a space to put down the current
count.
If I were to begin making an inventory sheet for a personal inventory these are some of the items I would
list: Achievement. Benevolence, Balance, Compassion, Conformity, Courage, Creativity, Dreams, Enthusiasm, Flexibility,
Health, Hedonism, Hopes, Integrity, Joy, Love, Mastery, Meaning, Money, Openness, Passion, Perseverance, Play,
Place, Power, Relationships, Responsibility, Risk, Security, Self-direction, Spirituality, Stimulation, Structure,
Tradition, Universalism, and Vision.
Final Thought
I was never involved in an inventory when we didn’t find some stuff that was long past its useful life because
of such things as freezer burn, contamination, or date expiration. These items were taking up valuable space and
unnecessarily slowing down the process. The same thing holds true when doing a personal inventory.
Have we been hanging on to old stuff like grievances? Is bitterness about
some past occurrence still occupying part of your being? Is that fear hiding behind some old pain? If you hang
on to that kind of stuff you simply will not have room for increasing the ‘Par’
for some of the good stuff.
It is you that has the opportunity to mold, shape and direct the life you
choose to live. That life is determined by your personal inventory. Our reservoir can only hold so much. We know what happens when it runs dry. Next
week (Part 2) we will look at keeping if filled to the max with powerful accessible tools like Balance.
