It's more than just a job. For example, when Hurricane Andrew went through southern Florida, lumber, plywood and other building materials were in incredible demand. Many of our competitors decided to raise prices. Within 30 hours, we had a tent operation going. We rerouted materials from other parts of the country and kept our prices the same.
Most companies have a one-brain, centralizedoffice mentality.
We don't operate that way. We have a very decentralized business and push the decision making out as close to the customers as possible. We focus on the customer and give our employees a sense of ownership of the ideas. One of the reasons we are successful is that we don't have six guys sitting in a home office looking at a bunch of computer reports trying to figure out what to do in the stores. We've got roughly 130,000 associates in the aisles of the stores who have a sense of ownership of the business.