Qwest made Edward Mueller its choice for the CEO job because he's a veteran of the regulated phone business and a CEO from the retail industry.

It's like Shimmer, the product in a classic 1976 Saturday Night Live sketch, that was both a floor wax and a dessert topping!

Surely, phone companies today face unprecedented competition and need to act more like retailers. But just as Shimmer probably couldn't shine the floor and garnish butterscotch pudding, there are similar concerns whether Mueller really has both skill sets.

That's because Mueller's time at upscale kitchen retailer Williams-Sonoma ended abruptly just as the company's fortunes began to turn south.

It marked a disappointing career change after Mueller's 34 years in telecom, mostly with SBC Communications (now AT&T). For most of that time, the phone business was a quaint monopoly where the companies connected calls and collected regulator-approved profits.

His final task there, before retiring at age 56, was to quell the customer revolt over Ameritech's shoddy service. That likely gave him enough customer-relations experience to gain the CEO job at Williams-Sonoma, where he'd been a board member since 1999.

For most of Mueller's tenure, the retailer had a tale as shiny as a stainless-steel All-Clad: Revenue gained between 12 percent and 17 percent from 2003 to 2005, operating margins expanded and profits grew by 70 percent over the three years. The stock price followed, gaining 60 percent in the first three years of Mueller's tenure.

Then came 2006. In March, Williams-Sonoma told investors it expected another year of double-digit revenue growth. Earnings would grow in the high single digits.

In July, however, the company said sales at its Pottery Barn chain, which represented about one-third of the company's stores, came in below expectations. The company reiterated its earnings guidance, but it also said Mueller was "retiring," at age 59, in three days. There was no planned successor. Former CEO Howard Lester, the company's 70-year-old chairman, returned to the job.

By the end of the year, Williams-Sonoma had not met those earnings expectations. Revenue growth was 5 percent, same-store sales were up just 0.3 percent, and profits dropped, not grew. The company blamed "significant softening in the home-centered macro-economic environment," while also noting "operational issues" at Pottery Barn.

An article in The Wall Street Journal the day after Mueller's departure, however, raised questions as to just how much the chain's rapidly declining performance was behind the CEO change.

Noting that Mueller's departure was the second time that one of Lester's successors had been removed, the Journal said Lester had "remained chairman and a powerful force in running the company."

Mueller "thought that he was going to be the real CEO, but he wasn't," the Journal quoted an acquaintance of Lester's. Former CEO Dale Hilpert and Mueller "were both shadow CEOs," this person told the Journal.

"I left there because it was time for me to move on," Mueller told analysts Monday morning as he was introduced as Qwest's chairman and CEO.

As for what he learned in the job, he said, in retail "we had to earn our way every day. In the retail market, there are no recurring revenues. . . . I think that's a great lesson for all of us that are transitioning from the old telephone business - which I grew up with - to the new telephone business, is that you better be quick and nimble and provide the services required."

With the chairman's role as well as the CEO job, he won't have anyone more powerful inside Qwest second-guessing him. And if Qwest is really transitioning from an old-line telco to a modern-day retailer, he'll have a second chance to prove that he can operate in a competitive and cutthroat business.

And maybe "phone-company executive" and "retail CEO" won't sound so contradictory after he's done.

David Milstead and James Paton take turns writing Up and Down 17th Street. Contact Milstead at 303-954-2648 or milstead@RockyMountainNews.com.