Getting a Bad Reputation

Here in Western Washington a local grocery several months ago bought quite a few other grocery stores from a couple different grocery chains to become much larger. The thought that expanding really was a very good idea; however, like some other companies that have expanded it may have not been a good idea. There could be reasons behind why the business did not work in the manner they thought it would. We have seen over the last couple decades or so that expansion does work sometimes and other times it does not. It is a risky business to expand especially if you are acquiring much larger chain than what your chain had been before. We did have a telephone that did the same thing a few years back, and they have been successful in doing so.

Right now there is a law suit between this chain and the one that they purchased many stores from. Actually the one who was the seller sued the buyer over the inventory. At this point it is hard to know who will win the suit; however, buyer has a counter suit feeling the seller hurt them because they feel wrongfully were given a bad reputation by the seller to the public through social media. A week later they filed chapter eleven under bankruptcy laws, and were looking to sell off many of the stores they had acquired several months; however, they have now decided to close many those stores including the one here in Gig Harbor. Another part of the story is another store in Gig Harbor has closed down temporarily for about five months to do a remodel so in the area that had three stores running now will have one store until the remodel store reopens. So the store that continues to be open has had more customers because of the remodel store but will now even have more customers because of being the only store in the area opened.

So you may ask about the store closing why the bad reputation? They accuse the seller telling the public the prices at the buyer stores are higher than at the other grocery stores in the area. Before the buyer bought the store I seldom ever shopped at the store because I thought the prices were higher than the other two stores; however, it was where I went for the pharmacy so sometimes I bought a few groceries there when needed so when the grocery stores were sold the buyers kept the prices about the same as before so there comes the bad reputation. I am sure there are other reasons some people stopped shopping at the buyers store; however, the reputation of increasing prices was the biggest reason of the downfall of the store.

The reason I am bringing this all up because I am sure many people may not really care what happens with a grocery chain in the western part of the United States beyond the loss of jobs of employees is that at any time any of us can be given a bad reputation. Sometimes one person can say something about us that are totally untrue, and can hurt our reputation. Those close to us know the honest truth but the untruths and bad reputation could hurt us so much so that we may never recover from it. Also, there is a possibility that the untruths were put out there from someone that once was close to us so it hurts even more so.

I believe we all should be careful what we say about another person that could hurt their reputation. This is really true for someone who may have hurt us enough that we want to hurt them back, and we maybe even justified to do so; however, revenge is never a good idea. How we hurt another person could come back and hurt us as well. So what happens in business can happen in our personal lives as well. I feel we should never tell lies about another person; however, we need to watch telling the truth sometimes because it can hurt others as well. I prefer to live a life of peace.