An Analysis of My Performance Challenge

Dylan Emerson

INOV 4010 - Sec 002

Dr. Harmon and Dr. Stiles

Spring 2021

2536 Words

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 I have never considered myself a very handy person. Growing up, I was more interested

in technology and the arts, like music, and I have never pictured myself in an environment where

I would have to use my hands a lot. This is why when I applied for my job at Lowe’s, a big-box

hardware retail store, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I first started at Lowe’s

shortly after I graduated from high school back in July of 2018. I was hired for a customer

service associate position in the paint department. Working at Lowe’s was initially a challenge

for me because, as someone who has no experience doing any kind of handiwork, it was a long

process learning about paint. I had to learn things such as what tools and accessories one requires

to paint, what rollers or brushes are best for different kinds of jobs, as well as how to paint in

general. I have worked at Lowe’s for three years now in the paint department, and because I have

worked there for so long, my managers have grown to trust me with running other departments

and will often put me in other areas around the store to help customers. After learning paint, I

have caught on pretty quickly with learning how other departments work and how I can sound

confident to help customers, even if I have no idea what I am talking about. Generally, I can

appear confident in a department I am unfamiliar with by using context clues from the product

around me and past ideas I have been told by my coworkers. But there is one department I

always dread, and that department is the plumbing department. This brings me to my

performance challenge: I cannot learn or understand plumbing to help other people.

Plumbing is a daunting field because one small piece of misinformation can cause

hundreds to thousands of dollars in damages. Whenever I get pulled into the plumbing

department to help a customer, whether that be by a customer or another associate seeking help, I

always give them the same forewarning: “I do not know how to fix your faucet, but I do know

how to flood your house.” The first time I sputtered this out, I kind of surprised myself. Did I
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really just warn a customer that I could flood their house if they attempted to get plumbing help

from me? I believe this was my first time venturing into the unsaid when I first began attempting

to learn plumbing, to no avail. A customer pulled me into plumbing, and the unsaid began

leaking out with every moment I was in plumbing. I would stare at hundreds of different parts for

pipes and my mind would draw blanks. The customer told me what size and component they

needed, but the numbers just blended together, and I had not the slightest idea what the

component they were looking for even looked like. Fifteen minutes go by, I page for help. Thirty

minutes go by, I am still lost, and we have made no progress in finding this part for the customer.

After forty minutes, I give up and try to make an excuse to go back to the paint department; it is

comforting returning to a department I am familiar with. That is how a typical trip to plumbing

goes for me.

That is not to say that I do not make an effort to learn about plumbing and how the

plumbing department operates. I have gone out of my way to seek guidance from and learn about

plumbing from other associates around the store more times than I can count in the last three

years of working for Lowe’s. One coworker has even told me that plumbing is actually a very

simple department and that I am overthinking it. Rather than worrying so much about the many

pieces and parts and how I could cause damage to a customer’s home if I gave them the wrong

information, I should think of plumbing as LEGOs for adults; if it fits together, it should be fine.

But no matter how many times I have asked for help and tried learning the department, I cannot

wrap my head around the department, and it feels like I will never be good at helping others in

plumbing. Any time I visit the plumbing department, my mind gets cluttered with pipes and

components of different materials and uses, and I struggle to clear a path that will allow me to

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improve in plumbing. Thinking about the overwhelming nature of plumbing leads me to my first

racket which is that plumbing is too confusing.

My first racket is a simple one I recently discovered when I encountered a customer with

a very specific pipe adapter that we could not locate for nearly an hour because of all of the other

similar adapters around it with different applications. My realization was that plumbing is simply

too confusing. The more I think about it, the more I realize how much I have complained about

plumbing being too confusing to my coworkers. The pattern of behavior that typically follows

my confusion about plumbing is finding an excuse to escape the department. When I get

confused looking at these mysterious brass compression fittings and copper pipe fittings that I do

not understand the purpose of, I will often seek out another associate, hopefully one more

capable in plumbing than I am, and leave the department to return to the paint department where

I am most comfortable. Fleeing the department after I get confused has the payout that I get to

return to the paint department, an area of the store I have become very familiar with over the

years. This makes my job easier because I know what I am talking about and I know how to give

great customer service after escaping plumbing. I could teach someone who has painted for years

new painting techniques that they had never considered before because of all of the experience I

have with other professional painters and representatives of companies that manufacture paint

products and accessories. But I cannot flee every situation in plumbing, nor should I flee to begin

with, because it has the hefty cost of negative customer service. Between my coworkers and I, it

makes sense why I do not want to be in plumbing because I feel I lack the necessary skill set to

succeed in plumbing and give people the right information. To the customers, however, I am just

another retail associate that needs to help them find what they are looking for and tell them how

to make the proper connections to their plumbing. So, when I flee from plumbing, I am
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effectively giving bad customer service, which leaves a lasting impression on customers and can

get me in trouble with my management. It is a common notion in retail that customers forget the

good experiences but remember the bad, so by running away from plumbing, so to speak, a

customer will remember how poorly I helped them and may choose not to shop at Lowe’s

anymore because of my incompetency. I am losing customers, losing customer satisfaction, and

making customers feel like they cannot rely on me.

Not only is plumbing confusing to me, but I also feel that it is too risky. My second

racket is another common complaint I share with some of my coworkers, and that is that

plumbing is a dangerous, risky area that can put liability on me if I give a customer the wrong

information and accidentally flood their house, costing them hundreds to thousands of dollars

that may come back to bite me if they hold me responsible for giving them misinformation.

Because of my complaint that plumbing is risky, I often tell customers “I am not sure I can help

you find the right fittings for your plumbing, but I am sure that I can help you flood your house.”

As a customer, that is the last thing you want to hear from somebody who gets paid to help you

find parts and fix problems. There have been moments where after giving plumbing customers

this forewarning, they will often ask me to find someone else who can help them. Other times, I

will still attempt to help the customer find the parts they are looking for, but my forewarning

comforts me with the fact that I have essentially removed liability from myself and I know the

customer probably will not take any plumbing advice I give them. Giving customers a warning

about my ineptitude provides me with the payoff that I may not have to try as hard to help them

because the customer understands that I do not have any semblance of skill when it comes to

plumbing. While it is nice not having to worry as much about the consequences of finding the

wrong part for a customer, it does leave room for the unsaid to surface. On the outside, I may
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feel content with warning customers about my ignorance in plumbing, but the deeper I explore

that feeling and why I warn them in the first place, I realize that I am insecure about looking

dumb at my job. I want customers to feel confident in my recommendations, and by warning

customers that I cannot guarantee I can help them, I am also warning them that I am not good at

my job. Therefore, this pattern of warning customers comes with the cost of insecurity and low

confidence. I pride myself at work as being one of the better associates that creates better

customer interactions than my average coworker by taking the time to understand what I am

talking about to give the customer the best service possible, but when I am in plumbing, my

pride diminishes and I get uncomfortable.

As mentioned before, I knew nothing about paint when I was hired for my position in the

paint department at Lowe’s. But, I took the time to learn about paint, watched videos about do-it-

yourself (DIY) painting techniques, listened to anecdotes from coworkers, and asked questions to

the sales representatives of the popular paint and paint accessories manufacturers that come to

my store. Now, I would say I am an above average painter and could successfully paint houses

for a living because I am that confident in my knowledge and ability in the paint department.

Clearly, I am willing to put in the effort to learn about subjects I am unfamiliar with, especially if

those subjects will help me succeed. Plumbing, on the other hand, is a completely different

animal altogether. I have tried repeating the actions I took to learn paint to learn plumbing, but

with no success. After trying to learn plumbing to no avail, I have decided that I just do not have

the time to commit to learning such a complex field. After all, most plumbers only become

successful plumbers after going to a trade school where they are taught all of the ins and outs of

water systems.

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 Plumbing is a very complicated field where one small mistake can lead to several big

consequences. There is so much to learn about plumbing, with so many different parts and codes

to keep in mind, that I do not have time to learn about it. This is my third racket for my

performance challenge. It comes with the payoff that I can leave plumbing to the professionals

and not have to worry about it. After all, why should I, a college kid who has never done a day of

handiwork in my life, tell someone how to pipe their house, when we have a couple of associates

who used to be plumbers before retiring? There are plenty of much more qualified people to help

in plumbing, so I do not have the time to go out of my way to learn more about such a complex

field. But, by complaining about my lack of time to learn plumbing and passing people off to the

professionals, I am costing myself the opportunity to learn about a trade that will benefit me for

years, even after I eventually leave Lowe’s. As a homeowner, plumbing is very important to

understand, because learning how to fix a simple leak can save me thousands of dollars on a

plumber. For example, about a year ago, the valve on our toilet broke off in the middle of the

night and began spraying water everywhere. I am not a plumber, nor do I have any meaningful

experience with plumbing, so I had no idea what to do to fix it other than turn the water off to

our house to prevent any more water from creating water damage. My dad ended up calling a

plumber to come out and fix the line and valve for us, when we could have simply replaced it

ourselves had I known what parts I needed for a simple replacement. Therefore, I can keep

complaining about not having time to learn plumbing and let others handle the plumbing

problems for me, but I am inhibiting myself from learning about something that will greatly

impact me when I start buying real estate.

After opening up about my performance challenge, learning and understanding plumbing,

and looking deep within myself to discover why I am suffering from this challenge, I have
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gained the insight to what steps I can take to overcome it, or work around it at the very least.

Plumbing, while a complex field that will take time to learn, is a useful field to understand as I

get older. Not only will it significantly benefit me in my job to understand how plumbing works

to help others and be a more reliable associate, it will also benefit me in the long term when I

eventually move out of my parent’s house and become a homeowner myself. I have also gained

some insight about myself that, while I am great at appearing confident on the outside, if I look

deep enough into my unsaid character, I am actually quite insecure about the advice I give to

those around me. I want to look and sound confident, but even if I am certain I know what I am

talking about, there is always that voice in the back of my head that says just maybe I am wrong

about this one. This voice only gets louder when I venture into plumbing because I am not as

certain, nor am I as confident, thus there is much more room for error. When working with paint,

this error is as simple as a mismatched color on a wall. But with plumbing, one simple error can

become a large consequence that will cost a lot of money. Although my rackets reveal to me that

I believe plumbing is confusing, risky, and I do not have enough time to learn it, I can embrace

those rackets to reveal their opposites. In the future, I am looking forward to trying to make a

change and becoming more confident whenever I visit the plumbing department, even if it may

be seemingly impossible.

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 Works Cited

Zaffron, S., & Logan, D. (2019). The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the future of your

organization and your life. Newick: Read How You Want.

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