"Last year, I was called early in the morning by a report of mine that had showed up to work on a Saturday morning to see that a water main had broken within our office, and the customer lobby was flooded. I got dressed quickly and flew to the building to assess the situation. After calling in a plumber, I had to decide how to act, as we were scheduled to open in less than an hour from when I arrived to the building. Knowing that closing for the day wasn't an option, I had to think of a plan that kept communications open to our customers while also ensuring that our building was safe for entry to anyone. I contacted our IT staff to ask them to forward our main phone line to both my cell phone and my employee's cell phone for that particular day. I then had them make an update to our website to let customers know that the store would be closed for a day, and that we'd be taking orders by email, phone, and on our website. That day, I stayed with the plumber onsite to help clean and called in a few others as well to help out. We kept a watch on the door to ensure that no customers came into the building because the risk of injury on wet floors was too great. In the end, I'm very happy with the way I determined we would handle our business that day."
