Delivering Excellence in Every Moment
January 2019

Tanya Larson

Inside Sales Representative

Communicates with potential Rapids Wholesale customers by phone or through our website chat service, answering questions and selling products.

Nominator: John Collison

For: Being Personally Accountable

“We had a rough stretch with weather from January 22 through January 31. Schools were canceled along with daycares causing huge headaches for working parents. Tanya and I knew this was going to be a problem for her personal life and it would impact her working hours. She approached me about having her desk phone forwarded over to one of the roll-over cell phones. Josh and I worked on getting this set-up for her so she could work from home. So, when the snow, wind, and cold started, she was prepared to still work and contribute to the sales team. In the 6 days she worked from home: She handled 100+ chats and helped our department maintain a 100% approval rating; answered over 42 phone calls, and produced $8000+ in sales. Family is important but so is your career. The balancing act displayed by Tanya is both rare and impressive. “

Words from our Vice President, Eric Schmitt:

Weather has been brutal for the first part of the year and it has been particularly brutal on working parents who have had to juggle the unknown school calendar with delivering excellence in every moment to our customers. Given we are still not out of the woods on winter (that groundhog is a liar!) it is great to have an example of personal accountability and problem solving related to helping our peers at work and most importantly, our customers. Tanya has been wearing a great number of hats as of late that include inside sales rep, mother, and student. She has always been proactive at working with her manager, John Collison, on finding ways to still deliver at work even as she works to manage this busy schedule. It is always a point of Rapids to have our team at work with their peers so they can deliver incredible customer service as a whole. Missing one person from a great team can be rough on the group. However, life isn’t always going to make that easy and when times arise its not possible to be in, it is so great to hear about examples like Tanya’s. This theme of being “Personally Accountable” has shown up in a number of nominations. It means so many things but in the end it boils down to what we had all intended when we created it over a year ago. It is all about not living behind excuses for why something wasn’t done or why something cannot be done when it is assigned to us. If we have a responsibility to ourselves and our peers, we need to honor that. The moment we do not, we risk the quality of the work of our teammates who have to pick up the slack. Great work by Tanya in finding a way to to continue to deliver excellence even in this outrageous winter!

Prize:

For her win, Tanya will be receiving a “Mind Your Ping” t-shirt and entered into our Year End Employee of the Year voting. Thanks again, Tanya, and all of the incredible Rapids & Affiliates team for the work you do every day to Deliver Excellence in Every Moment!