Service Failure at a Supermarket

Supermarket shelves should always be full stocked (source)

While grocery shopping recently, my wife Tina experienced an inexplicable service

failures at one of the largest supermarket chains in Singapore.

The story went like this.

My wife was looking for ingredients to prepare a clam-based pasta with white-wine
sauce. To give it a nice finishing touch, it was recommended that fresh parsley should be
added to enhance the taste.

Off she went to this major supermarket, looking for the particular item. Unfortunately,
when she arrived there in the afternoon, she saw that the herb was missing from the fresh
produce section.

Apparently, this wasn't the first time that this popular cooking ingredient went out of
stock, as astutely observed by my wife. On several occasions, the same vacant space
greeted her from the vegetable shelves.

Being the never-say-die person that she is, my wife went on to ask a retail assistant why
that particular produce was (and still is) always one of the first to go. Shouldn't the
supermarket replenish it quickly to cater to popular consumer demand?

To her bewilderment, the staff agreed that parsley has always been a popular item and
was always 'sold out' by a certain time of the day. This wasn't surprising as it occurred
fairly frequently. The other culinary culprit was lemongrass. The response was given in
quite a nonchalant, matter-of-fact manner.

When my wife next enquired how she can be assured of getting it the next time she visits,
the retail staff shrugged her shoulders. Another customer told her that she should visit a
different supermarket (a more upmarket 'rival' chain) as they're bound to have the item in
stock.

My wife was so flabbergasted by her experience that she went on to fill up a feedback
form to be directed to the management of the branch. Apparently, this was the only action
that the staff can take.

It is surprising in this day and age of pinpoint accurate Point-Of-Sale (POS) systems,
Supply Chain Management strategies, and wholly integrated ERP systems that such
omissions still occur at sprawling supermarkets. What's especially ironical is when the
service award winning staff informs you about this fact in a smiling and friendly manner!

Hmmm.... I wonder if this is a case of system failure, human failure, or process failure?
Aaron Koh said...

You are talking about fresh produce so there are scheduled time for the delivery to
appear.

Fresh produces are usually delivered in a group and batches.

Unless your POS is linked to a teleportation device, it would be quite difficult for
the lemongrass to appear once stock has run out.

If you have worked in a supermarket environment, you would understand the

constraints.

Daniel Goh said...

Aaron,

I think Walter's point is that if you're the supermarket and you know that you're
always out of stock in on a certain item at a particular time of the day, it's not
difficult to place a larger order to ensure you're always in stock.

Because of the razor thin margins for produce, assuring timely deliveries of
sufficient quantities mean profits. Retailer wins, customer wins.

Name: Walter Lim

Location: Singapore

I'm a corporate professional with more than 15 years of experience in marketing, public
relations, social media, events management, strategic planning and corporate
development.

Lost In the Supermarket

Looking for design in the Supermarket (as opposed to a specialty retailer like Whole
Foods or Trader Joe’s) is a bit like bird-watching indoors. To end up here, Design ideas
need to trickle down well past the middle-brow and survive extreme pressures of low
margins and fast turn. But it is precisely because the environment is so unforgiving that it
has so much to tell us about the meaning of Design in our culture as opposed to the
culture of design.
Supermarkets’ failure to retain video surveillance
footage of periods preceding and following slip
and fall incident…

In this case, plaintiff alleged that she slipped on drops of "a thick, pink liquid" while
shopping at defendant supermarket, sustaining injuries to her left leg and ankle. She sued
for negligence, bodily injury, medical expenses, lost income and lost future earning
capacity. Defendant moved for summary judgment contending that it did not have notice
of the spill which may have caused plaintiff’s injuries. The trial court granted the
motion, holding that, because plaintiff failed to provide any evidence that defendant knew
or should have known about the substance on the floor, no reasonable jury could find that
defendant had breached its duty to plaintiff as a matter of law. Plaintiff appealed, and the
Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands reversed and remanded, finding that there was a
genuine issue of material fact as to constructive notice.

Plaintiff’s fall was captured on defendant’s closed-circuit video surveillance system,

which was comprised of both a digital hard drive that records only a finite amount of data
before reusing itself and a video recorder. The digital footage was automatically
recorded over every few weeks unless it is manually copied from the digital hard drive to
the video recorder. The supermarket’s manager testified that he examined the footage of
plaintiff’s fall immediately after being notified of her fall, and the video failed to show
anything visible on the floor at the time of the fall. Concluding that plaintiff "probably
tripped on herself," the manager testified that he elected not to review or copy any of the
footage prior to or after the fall. He also testified that the store had no set procedure for
retaining video footage of slip and fall accidents and that the store simply retained the
footage of the actual fall in plaintiff’s particular circumstance.

Plaintiff had contended that she was entitled to a spoliation inference because defendant
had intentionally erased the video footage depicting what had transpired prior to and after
her fall. The Supreme Court agreed:

After reviewing the footage, Plaza's manager retained only the portion of the footage
which he believed to be relevant, purportedly in accordance with the store's routine
practice. It is clear, however, that Plaza's routine practice regarding the destruction of
surveillance footage capturing slip and fall accidents is flawed. Store managers should
retain recorded footage of the area in which an accident occurred both prior to and
following the accident. Obviously, such footage is likely to provide relevant and
valuable evidence regarding the cause or timing of a spill resulting in a slip and fall
accident. It is certainly not within the discretion of a store manager to determine what
portion of the available recorded surveillance footage is relevant to anticipated
litigation. . . . To allow store managers unbridled discretion to determine what footage to
retain would encourage the destruction of relevant evidence by allowing managers to
destroy unfavorable footage under the pretext of routine practice. While this Court does
not find any statutory or case law indicating precisely what portion of surveillance
footage capturing a slip and fall accident should be retained, common sense dictates the
retention of comprehensive surveillance footage of any accident, including a reasonable
period of time preceding and following the accident.

(Citations and footnote omitted.) The Supreme Court found that defendant's destruction
of the recorded surveillance footage prior to and after the fall indicated its “bad faith and
fraudulent intent to suppress the truth.” It continued:

Given the importance of determining how and when a foreign substance causing a slip
and fall originated, it is unlikely that any reasonable business manager would fail to
evaluate the portion of the video surveillance preceding the slip and fall. Therefore, this
Court finds that the failure of the Plaza's manager to retain the recorded surveillance
footage prior to and after Bright's fall shocks the conscience of the court and creates a
presumption of fraud.

The court thus concluded that defendant “both intentionally and fraudulently destroyed
relevant evidence.” It also found that plaintiff had been severely prejudiced, since the
destroyed footage was perhaps the only evidence upon which she could rely to prove that
defendant had notice of the spill. Accordingly, it held that the trier of fact should be
permitted, although not required, to apply an inference of spoliation in the case. It
explained: “This Court can conceive no other sanction that would avoid substantial
unfairness to Bright. Moreover, the spoliation inference is particularly appropriate in
order to deter similar conduct by Plaza and other businesses in the future.”

The court noted that there was circumstantial evidence that the liquid had been on the
floor long enough for defendant to have had constructive notice of it. Specifically, when
asked if anything indicated how long the substance had been there, plaintiff had testified
that there was a little dust on the drops which indicated to her that it had to be there "for a
little while."

Thus, viewing the record before the trial court when ruling on the summary judgment
motion, the Supreme Court found sufficient circumstantial evidence, when combined
with an inference of spoliation, to permit a reasonable trier to fact to conclude that
defendant had constructive notice of the alleged pink liquid. The Supreme Court thus
vacated the lower court’s order and remanded the matter for reinstatement on the trial
calendar.