I was a creative type and completely focused on my work, so thinking about something as mundane as saving was not at the forefront of my brain -- though it should have been. The computer would shut off so often, I'd lose a lot of work and find myself playing catch-up. Once I was in such a hurry that I printed the wrong 800 number on the back of a catalog. I don't know how much we lost in sales because of that. I've pretty much blocked the episode out of my mind.
We moved the business five times in the first few years -- at one point we were even in a trailer -- because we kept outgrowing our space. Eventually, we set up shop in town and "went on the grid," meaning we started using traditional forms of energy. It was one of those sellouts -- though I still use only alternative energy in my home. Now, after losing so many hours of work, saving has become second nature to me.
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Reid Litwack
President of $34-million Action Steel Supply, a steel distributor in Indianapolis
My biggest blunder was putting cellular phones in all our delivery vehicles. We bought the phones so our truck drivers could keep in touch with the home office without having to pull off the road to make a call. I set things up so the drivers could call only the company and no one else. Suddenly one driver's bills jumped from the company average of $30 a month to $100 a month. I started making inquiries and found out that he was dating our receptionist. Everyone seemed to know about the relationship but me. I had to confront him. At first he hemmed and hawed, telling me that he just happened to have made a lot more calls to the office than most of the drivers. I told him that from then on he'd have to pay for any amount billed to his phone over the average $30 a month. Surprise. The next month his bill fell right in line with the $30 average. There have been other romances in the company, but they didn't cost me any money.
Judith Jacobsen
CEO of Madison Park Greetings, a $3-million greeting-card company in Seattle
When my employees and I first decided we needed to automate, we hired a woman full-time to help us with our new system and to train us. We particularly needed her to work with our software package, which we'd purchased to do tasks like order taking and invoicing. The woman said she was an expert. I checked her references, and her previous employer told me she was a good worker. She turned out to be the first person I've ever had to fire.
That "expert" practically ruined our computer system. She mixed order entries with inventory information and with financials. All the information in our database ended up as one big jumbled mess. She worked on the system for about three months, telling me that she was making it easier to use and more versatile. Because I don't know anything about computers, I left her to her own devices, while I concentrated on aspects of the business that I know better, like marketing.
I first realized that something was wrong when a person I had hired to do invoicing told me that the files seemed mixed up and that reports he was running weren't making sense. I hired Dexter & Chaney Inc., a software-development company in Seattle, to help us figure out the problem. The representative took a look and immediately said, "This system has been sabotaged." I was shocked. I knew that things hadn't been working right, but I had no idea they were so bad. It took Dexter & Chaney a week and a half to put the system in order.
I don't think the woman ruined our system on purpose. I think she was just incompetent. I learned that thoroughly checking a candidate's background is crucial. I should have asked her previous employer how good she was with computers instead of what kind of a person she was. When I talked to that employer later and mentioned my trouble with her, he said, "Well, she gave the impression that she knew a lot, but now that I think about it, she was a disaster."
To which I replied, "Thanks a lot."
SAD, SAD, SORROW, SORROW
Technologically speaking, Billy West -- the voice of Nickelodeon's Ren and Stimpy and other cartoon characters -- was caught with his pants down
I made one of my biggest mistakes in the early 1980s when I worked at WBCN radio station, in Boston. I got caught Xeroxing my rear end. You know how you think that you're really funny and you're the first person to do that ever, and then you find out that every person at every drunken office party across the United States has done it? Well, two people walked in on me, and it took quite a bit of maneuvering to get my underwear back on.
In these more modern times, I worry about cellular and cordless phones. Most people forget that scanners are available that allow people to eavesdrop on cordless- and cellular-phone conversations. A good example is Forrest Gump. I came up with the idea for that movie and told a friend of mine about it over a cordless phone. The next day the movie got produced by someone else. I'm glad, though, because the movie lost tons of money.
But seriously, getting caught talking about private information could be a major blunder, though I don't think it's happened to me. It's part of the human condition to wonder what goes on in the world. A friend of mine had a scanner, and I heard enough during all the time I spent listening to other people's conversations to write a book. I heard dating negotiations, deals going down, fights, and worse. The material would be great for writing scripts. What's better than real life? I stopped using the scanner because I felt so low listening in on people, and it really was just the thrill of the month for me.
