I call foul. If a person is truly an entrepreneur they’re starting up a business. They have a stake in it and they are trying to get it off the ground. I would think if they were engaging in a social network they would want to advertise their business, you never know when you’ll find someone interested in helping a fledgeling business take off. These people aren’t talking about a business though. They’re talking about a mindset and that mind set isn’t a job.

There are entrepreneurs I look up to. Myspace Tom is one. He was Myspace for a lot of years. He didn’t say he was an entrepreneur. He said he was Myspace. Today he says he’s retired but he continues to look for an idea he’s passionate about that he’ll do next. He doesn’t call himself an entrepreneur. He recognizes that it’s not a job to be an entrepreneur. It’s a calling. It’s a way of life. It’s the way you’re wired. It’d be like saying you’re a Libra (well… except that Libra isn’t all that real but you get my meaning.)

Imagine you’re an entrepreneur starting up a new business selling widgets and you’ve got three employees in your start-up. You’ve invested all your money in it. Mortgaged your house, cashed in your 401k and your wife’s 401k and you’re making a go at it with all cylinders. Would your business card say “Entrepreneur” or would it say “Widgetopia!” My guess is it would say “Widgetopia!” And that’d be in 20 point type.

What’s it mean to your employees, those three people you stay up all night with working with to get things done by a deadline, what’s it mean to them if your business card says “Entrepreneur?” It means to them as soon as you can get the business off the ground and sold for a profit you’re going to hit the road. You’re not in it for the long haul. You’re in it until you can monetize them and run. It’s one thing to have the entrepreneurial spirit or to think like an entrepreneur. It’s another to claim to be one all the time.

I wonder if they’re really entrepreneurs or if they’re dilettantes? If they don’t have the attention span or commitment to do the running of a business. Or maybe they’ve got an idea that’s good enough to sell during a bubble, but not sustainable and they hope to get out before anybody notices? Or maybe they’re unemployed and don’t want to say that. I don’t know what it is. But I don’t know if “entrepreneur” as it’s used today by those people calling themselves “entrepreneurs” means what they think it means.

I get that it’s today’s go-to buzzword way for a person to indicate they’re creative, think outside the box, and are able to do a wide variety of tasks to get things done. But it’s not at all indicative in it’s spirit of sticking to a project. It doesn’t portray to an employer, a person who is in it for the long haul. If you want to be thought of as creative just use that word, and then show it. BE creative. BE thoughtful. BE civil. BE polite. BE the person you’d want other people to think you are.* Don’t just say it. And, if you DO say it, use the word correctly.

At shift change today my clerk that’s been there six months and the new girl were talking and the six month employee said, “Rich is the best manager I’ve ever had. You know some places have like good cop assistant manager and bad cop manager? Well Rich is totally good cop and he’s the best manager I ever worked for. He really cares about his employees and it’s awesome.” The new girl said, “Whose the bad cop?” The six monther said, “You don’t need a bad cop when everybody looks out for each other. The assistant is more gruff or short or rough around the edges, but he’s not a bad cop. Rich likes to think he is but he’s totally not.” I was counting my drawer down while they “girl-talked.”

I interrupted from my counting, “Don’t believe her, I’m a jerk if you mess up.”

Six-monther said, “You won’t want to mess up. It’s like you let him down and he doesn’t yell at you at all, he just goes all quiet and talks about how he knows you can do better and how did he mess up in the training or the communication of what he wanted and by the end of it I’m all, ‘Just yell at me! I’m sorry!‘ He’s great. I don’t ever want to work for anybody else. I wish I could have trained you one day, but I’m not management though.”

I interrupted again, “If the schedule had worked out I’d have totally let you train her. You’ve got an excellent work ethic, you do your cleaning really well, the customers really like you. I’ve got total confidence in your ability to be an excellent example to anybody I hire.”  That’s true too. I wasn’t just saying that. She’d have done an excellent job.

“See! Isn’t he great? Now how awful will I feel if I mess something up tonight?” Six-monther laughed, “I won’t though. He makes it easy to do good.”

Now, I’m not saying this because it makes me look good or makes me look like a push-over. I’m not… but there are a LOT of ways to manage and expecting good things, encouraging good things, and rewarding good behavior works for me, a LOT better than just punishing bad behavior. Which I DO do when it needs it. But it’s nice when an employee is bragging about how great it is to work at a place. I’m super excited for my crew and for the new employee being excited to join a crew that’s excited to have her and doesn’t see her as a threat to their hours.

That was a note that greeted me recently when I came to work. I was confused. In the whole time I’ve worked with this employee I’d never been mad at them. I couldn’t think of a time I’d been mad at another employee in front of the one who left the note and drew a complete blank. I’m not saying I never get upset or angry with employees. I do. But it’s NOT for doing an assigned task. I also almost never get angry with an employee for breaking a rule (unless it’s one of the fatal four that’ll get you fired at once).

What I get is disappointed. If someone doesn’t meet my expectations I’m disappointed in them. They let me down and the rest of the crew and themselves. That’s often what they mean when they say “Don’t be mad.” Which is strange. How is it that they confuse those two things? I’m not going to go all philosophical or anything, but anger and disappointment aren’t the same at all in me. It’s possible there are people out there who, when they’re disappointed, they lash out… angrily at those around them but I don’t think that’s something I’ve seen in a good manager and I fancy myself at least somewhat in that camp.

If you’re curious what WILL make me mad it’s when an employee tells me they’ll do something and they don’t. If they say they’ll take on a job and they don’t. If they say they will work X hours and then they back out of it… That irritates me because it’s a lie and a violation of trust and it does more that disappoint me it undermines my trust in the individual.

I guess the only other thing is if you call in five minutes before your shift and say something like “I’ve been throwing up since Thursday…” Then why the heck didn’t you call before now?!? I’d have had time to find someone to work. ARGH! That’s pretty rare though.

When I’m training a new employee part of the conversation I have with them is about volunteering for things and offering to do things and how important it is for me if they say they’re going to do something that they do it. If they want to impress me with almost no risk of it back-firing if they wind up unable to do it… do something without telling me ahead of time they’re going to do it. But don’t, oh my… DON’T!!! tell me you’re going to alphabetize the widgets in descending date order and then not do it. That’ll make my hair stand on end. I won’t yell. I won’t rant. I won’t shake my fist at the heavens… OK. I might do that, but not when there’s anybody here. But I will be upset. Telling me you’ll do something and not doing it makes me mad. Failing to meet expectations doesn’t make me mad. It disappoints.

I’ve been asked if I’m mad if I have to fire someone and I’m mostly not. Mostly I’m disappointed they chose to not do the job. One of the things they used to go over at supervisor meetings was that we needed to hire better people and I always looked around the table wondering who out there was intentionally hiring turds. None of us do that. All the background checks in the world won’t tell us if an employee is a good one or not. The calibre of employee isn’t decided by whether or not they’ve passed a background check. Adding the background checks hasn’t decreased turn-over or employee theft. It’s added an expense and delay in the hiring process but that’s it. So when it comes to hiring I tend to hire people I think are capable of doing well. When they don’t and they wind up being let go… I’m more disappointed than angry.  Again… unless they’ve done one of the fatal 4 things… that irritates me because I tell them what those are every day of training and I tell them every day what will happen if they do them so it’s just STUPID of them to do those things… and the part where they obviously think I’m stupid and won’t catch them… that’s the part that makes me mad. I hate being treated like I’m stupid.

So… if you don’t do your cleaning list I won’t be mad. I might take disciplinary action if I think it’s warranted, but I won’t be mad when I do it.

Hey all,

Last trip for a while, honest! I’ve been called back to that store I just left. Evidently they can’t find the pencils or something.

Thank you for holding it together for me while I was gone last week and thanks in advance for doing it next week as well. I appreciate the work you all do to keep things going well in my absence.

It makes me proud as a manager to have a crew that steps up and allows me to take a week off TWICE in a month to go do special projects… not just to go, but to not worry about our store. I know y’all will take care of the store, the customers, and each other while I’m gone for another week.

Thank all of you. It really means a lot to me!

Rich

So, they’ll all step up. They’ll all get more hours and more work and I think… when I get back… I think we’ll have a crew meeting as an excuse to all have pizza together so I can tell them what we learned at the new store. We? Yeah.

The COO (Chief of Operations) asked me and my assistant manager to go out and help. He’s there now so he ran my store last week, is working there this week and is running my store again next week lol. It’s good to be wanted but I bet he’s going to want a nap soon. I was thrilled when the COO asked for him by name. It’s a pretty big deal when someone three levels up knows who you are and wants you to come help and then shows up and works with you, side by side… for days. Yah. My assistant was thrilled. My boss was there and said he did really well so I’m beaming like a proud dad. I couldn’t be happier for him, not threatened by a competent assistant manager at all. It’s why I picked him!

“How long have you worked with Mongo?” I asked the person who’d come up from our Connecticut store with Mongo (who was moving there to manage the new store we were opening.)

“He’s worked at the store as assistant manager for I think a year? Maybe a little over a year.”

“Were they a good assistant manager?” One of the people who’d come from our corporate office to help asked. At these store projects we try to bring a couple of people from corporate, get them out from behind their desk, let them help build a store from ground up (well, walls in), and meet and work with us field folks. It’s a morale thing… and important for them as well to know what we do and where we do it. We tend to get tunnel vision with our jobs.

My ears perked up as the person answered with alacrity, “Oh yes. I was thrilled when they promoted Mongo.” The speaker was the manager, we’ll call him Roy, who Mongo had worked for. So the speaker is the manager. Mongo is the assistant manager (Yes, we took the store’s entire management team to another store. There were other stores nearby and they were used to helping each other out.)

My eyebrow went up. “They promoted him? You didn’t get to pick your assistant?”

Roy looked at me like I’d burped out loud in a nice restaurant and then patted my belly and grinned. “No. I might only promote my friends. My supervisor picks who gets promoted.”

“Oh. That makes sense. So you tell him your choices and he picks then. I can see that.” I couldn’t, but I wasn’t about to say so.

“No. He picks.”

“Ah. But Mongo was good then.”

Roy nodded and lit another cigarette, “Way better than my last one. The last one was always after my job and out to prove something. Mongo’s not. He just does what he’s told and isn’t a threat at all.”

“What happened to the eager beaver go-getter so that you got Mongo?” I asked, morbidly fascinated.

“I finally ran him off. He’s running some store at the mall now.” He said with a slight grin.

I stared at the person from the office who quietly stared at a knothole in the table and licked her ice cream trying to catch her eye. I swear I could see her ears growing as she mentally tried to record all this for later. I died on the inside a little.

“Oh.”

“Well how would you like it if your employees were always after your job?” The manager asked, a little defensively.

“Well.” My boss shifted at the table and flicked her cigarette into the sand bucket. “I’m going to go to my room and we’ll meet here at 6:30 for dinner right?”

“I have two employees who want my job right now and I’m trying to find another one who wants it. The manager of one of my stores is sort of coasting and so is their store and I think it can grow more with someone with a little fire in their belly.”

“You want people who want your job?”

The office person was looking at me as I took a bite out of my ice cream cone… vanilla, from McDonalds. “Yes. If I’m not the best employee there they deserve it. If I don’t have someone pushing me from the bottom where’s my reason to get better? If I ever want to get a promotion or a transfer I have to be able to say I’ve got a line of replacements to choose from. If I only hire people worse than me I’m stuck… even worse… if they only hire worse than them it’s a spiral of death. It’ll kill a store. I want people who want my job because I might want my bosses job one day.” She was still there and heard it. Roy’s head snapped over to her for a reaction.

She shrugged. “The day he’s better than me he can have it. I think I’m better than he is so far.” She turned and went inside with a shrug.

Roy shook his head, “I don’t think that’s any way to run a business. It sounds cut throat. People jockeying for positions instead of settling into their jobs and doing them.”

The lady from the office inhaled to say something, closed her mouth. Ate some ice cream and pushed herself away from the table. “I’ll be back down in a few. I’m going to freshen up.” I said I was going to do the same and followed her in.

As we climbed the stairs, “You know that’s not how we do things don’t you?”

She said, “I know it’s not how the midwest is doing things. But wow… just wow.” She could say that because it was the midwest district supervisor who’d been there when I said I wanted her job.

“Yeah.”

“His takeaway from all that was that being good at your job and wanting to grow with the company is destructive?”

“Some people are just comfortable. They’ll never be great managers, but the doors will open on time and whatever you tell them to do will mostly get done.”

“Would you want him working for you?”

I laughed as she slid her keycard into the door. “The one I’m working to replace is just like that. I can’t stand it. I don’t mean everybody has to want my job… but the idea that they’d only hire someone worse than them? Ugh.” I shuddered.

“No kidding. See you in a few.”

So we went to dinner and any time anything like that came up again I talked about basketball. I don’t know anything about basketball but I don’t care about it at all so people’s opinions on it didn’t make me want to scream and run out of the room. I was a young supervisor when that happened. I had 5 stores and had had them for about a year. I’m not sure how that conversation would go today. I might try and make it into a coaching opportunity… but maybe not. I had another week working closely with them. Maybe I’d just keep my mouth shut to keep the peace and make sure their bosses knew.

None of those people are still with the company except the lady from the office and my boss. We’re a stronger company for it.

(My blog software tells me that my use of the word “lady” here is bias language. It was a female human being who was there from the office and since she’s still with us I didn’t feel I should use her name… so, I didn’t. What should I have called her if not lady? She is and was a lady.)

Expectations:
ME: I think that all the widgets should be polished or the cleaning isn’t complete.
THEM: They think all the widgets in front should be polished or the cleaning isn’t complete.

ME: I think calling in as soon as you know you won’t be to work is best.
THEM: They think calling in at any point before their shift starts is fine.

ME: I think each customer should be greeted each time they enter the store.
THEM: They think they can greet a group or one customer once per day and be fine.

If I’m not clear on what I expect out of the employee they can be meeting their expectations and not meeting mind. That can cause friction when it comes time for that evaluation on which a raise may or may not be based. If the only time I let them know our expectations differ is right before I say in my Seinfeld-Soup-Nazi voice, “NO RAISE FOR YOU!” They’re not going to be terribly motivated to do it in a way that’s in line with my expectations. I think employees expect employers to let them know what the company’s expectations are and let them know right away if those expectations aren’t being met. I don’t care if the employee is told in person, with a note, fax, phone-call or carrier-pigeon. OK. I do care. I think that face to face is best. But if that’s not possible. Perhaps you observe the behavior on live surveillance  and aren’t right there. It’s incumbent on the employer to let the employee know right away that their behavior isn’t meeting expectations so that when the eval DOES come along everybody in the room is clear on what the expectations are on all sides.

Perceptions:
Perceptions is a harder one. It’s similar to expectations, but is more… subjective I think. I’m coming at this one as a District Manager who has seen it happen to others. I of course am unbiased at all times and have never made this mistake (I’m kidding, my point is it’s hard for us to see this one in ourselves.)

Manager: “Mongo is always late. He’s never on time, and he never does his cleaning.”
Me: “Really?”
Manager: “Yes. He’s a nightmare and I want to fire him.”
Me: “Really? Always?”
Manager: “Yes. It’s terrible.”
Me: “Last month you asked for a raise for Mongo because he was coming in extra shifts, doing other people’s cleaning for them when he noticed it wasn’t done, and had helped raise sales of niobium-widgets by 16% on his shift.”
Manager: “But since then he’s gone to hell in a hand-basket.”
Me: “Hunh.”

Now, it’s possible for a previously great employee to “go to hell in a hand-basket” in a month. But it’s not terribly  likely without some help. My guess in that situation is that at some point Manager asked Mongo to do something extra and Mongo wasn’t able to for whatever reason. From that point on Manager notices everything Mongo does NOT do while Mongo notices all the things that he IS doing. Manager takes it personally when it wasn’t meant personally. Perhaps that was Mongo’s weekend with his kids and he really couldn’t come in to work a double-turn-around shift with 4 minutes notice.

It’s also possible that a month ago Mongo was new and doing what he was supposed to be doing but another employee was doing things badly so Mongo seemed to shine by contrast and Manager noticed only what Mongo WAS doing. Now that Manager is used to it they’ve started noticing the things Mongo isn’t doing… Perhaps Mongo wasn’t doing them before either. But Manager never noticed and now, suddenly, those things are annoying Manager. (Uh oh… this is starting to sound like something I may have done in the past… time to change the paragraph before someone else catches on!)

Another perception thing is when Manager thinks they’ve told Mongo something before… a lot of times and Mongo just isn’t getting it. Obviously they’re not paying attention. But maybe Manager’s told OTHER people a lot of times, or maybe Manager has told the other 4 employees once each but never told Mongo so while it’s been said 4 times it really DOES need to be said one more time. Manager thinks Mongo’s not paying attention and Mongo thinks Manager’s flying off the handle for no reason.

Perception is harder and more varied… and should be, unsurprisingly, addressed as quickly as possible. Again, face to face is best. If that’s not an option for whatever reason do it some other way. Leave a note, use a bulletin board, fly it by on an airplane banner, SOMETHING… but get a conversation started. If you’re a District Manager seeing it happen between Manager and Mongo it needs to be fixed by the two of them, and you have to help fix it. You can’t just say “Fix it.” and walk off. By the time it gets to the point that Manager is saying “always” and “never” communication is going to be very difficult between the two of them alone.

So, next time you’re going to do an evaluation ask yourself well before the evaluation if the employee is going to be surprised by the stuff in the evaluation. If so… they shouldn’t be. If an employee is surprised by a bad evaluation that’s, to me, as one who has managed managers for a lot of years, that’s a sign of bad management.  It’s not fair to employees to blind-side them with your laziness or your lack of commitment to helping them get better.

I’ve been using the passdown log more assiduously primarily to remind myself to go over some of the things with the employees who are doing, or not doing the things that are making me crazy. That’s really working well.

I’ve got a notebook where we track ourselves on some of the areas we’re working on. I really do the tracking and counting, but they check it every time they work and I make sure to talk about each shift with each employee every shift change. What’s being done right and what could be done differently and see if they have any tips or pointers to pass on to the other employees on ways that can help get things going more smoothly. This part has been the most time-consuming as it’s in addition to any other stuff out there. But it’s paying off.

Overall there’s been great progress. Overall it’s hugely better. Overall. Which means that in specifics there’s at least one place where the ball’s being dropped, consistently. Whether on purpose or not I’m not sure. what I AM sure of is that they know they’re doing it. I know this because I’ve had people tell me this employee is afraid of me. The employee has said they’re afraid of how I’ll react to something they’ve done (whatever it is, it varies a lot.)

So here we are. I’ve got an employee who is afraid of me. An employee who knowingly engages in behavior that they believe will cause me to react in a way they should be afraid of… and they do it anyway. Fine. I need to know why. I don’t know why when I see it first thing in the morning because there’s never an explanation so I can sit and stew for hours… sometimes days, until I see the person to ask why. That’s not healthy. So, my solution?

I’m introducing a book. it’s a college composition notebook titled, “I’m making Rich crazy and here’s why.” Seriously. That’s written on the cover.

There will be times when employees will do something that I don’t want them to do. It’s going to happen. I do it to my boss sometimes. Things come up and there’s no way around it. I have to break a rule for some reason. This book is where they’re going to write what they did and why. They know when they do something wrong I think. I want to know why they ‘re doing it wrong. We can discuss their reasons and if I’m willing to accept them afterwards but this way they don’t need to fear my reaction because I’ve had 3 days to stew about it. I don’t need to write notes to remind myself of the thing they’ve done so when they come in I jump them about something three days old. (I don’t jump, honest… but I know they feel ambushed by it… the person who is always afraid of me all the time.)

My thinking is they’ll write what they did that they think is going to make me nuts. They’ll write down their rationale, and I’ll use it at the unemployment hearing to fire everybody until morale improves and I’ll use their admission in this book as evidence that they were willingly disobeying company polic… what? Oh, yeah. I’m kidding there. My thinking is they’ll write down what they did and why. We’ll talk about it, and it’ll take some of the ambush out of it. It’ll help clear up gray areas for everybody because we’ll all see what each other did and what worked (didn’t make me crazy) and what didn’t work (did make me crazy.)

Since they’ll be doing this early on we’ll be closer to the incident…. and maybe they’ll get to the point where they’re thinking about it BEFORE they do it because, honestly, some of the things don’t have to be done. There’s a feeling of, “No matter what I do it’s going to be wrong.”  (Unsurprisingly, very much a self-fulfilling policy at this point.) But for now… for now I want them to at least think about it on the same day/shift as they do it. Backing up their thinking about it one step at a time… and moving my reaction back too.

I’m curious to see how it goes.

It’s management and I’ve been at it for a while. Sometimes I feel like I’m saying the same things over and over to the same people and I just want to scream! Or it seems like the higher-ups are making insane decisions without even talking to any of us front-liners. Or it seems like politics are what are driving decisions instead of the good of the stores, company, whatever. It’s been like that in almost all the places I’ve worked and under everybody I’ve worked for. Some things are just perceived that way sometimes. (For all you co-workers out there reading this wondering if I’m violating our don’t talk about work under pain of termination brand new shiny social media Internet policy I’m not. I’ve had bouts where I felt like this in every job I’ve ever been a member of management in, so get over yourselves. This song isn’t about you!)

So, to all you white-collar whiners out there talking about how this is terrible and you don’t know how much longer you can do it blah blah blah. Find one of your blue-collar friends who actually WORKS for a living and go work with them for a day or two. Seriously. On your next vacation or day off see if you can go to work with someone who works with their hands and back for a while. I’ve made a point of doing this through the years. I’ve walked beans, worked construction, and most recently, worked installing hardwood floors and carpet. (Oh, and if you don’t have any blue-collar friends, you should go find some. Broaden your horizons a bit. Diversity isn’t just about race or ethnicity or any of that. Diversity is about diversity.

It was two days before I could make a fist or pick up my coffee cup without thinking I was going to drop it. Tack strip, the stuff that goes along the edges of a room so the carpet can be attached to it and stretched into place, is a demonic thing. It’s a strip of wood about an inch wide and quarter-inch thick that has nails going out both sides. It’s alive, hates me, and is out to get me, not kidding here. Some nails hold the strip to the floor and others hold the carpet to the strip. It’s nailed into the ground, sometimes concrete… BY HAND… right next to sheet rock. Care to guess what happens if the hammer slips and slams into the sheet rock of this person’s brand spanking new house? Yeah… nothing good.  What happens if you’ve cut yourself on the tack strip or one of the dozen knives used to cut the carpet, pad, whatever? Yeah… you’re bleeding all over brand new carpet in this person’s brand new house. You want stress? Forget getting your TPS reports done on time and CC’d to the right people. Install carpet for a day in new construction.

What’s that? It’s “just” manual labor? Until you’ve done it I don’t think you’re entitled to say “just” in that context. It’s like waiting tables or working behind a counter at a fast food restaurant. Until you’ve done it I don’t think it’s a good thing for you to look down your nose at those people. “But I went to school so I wouldn’t have to do those kinds of jobs.” Ah. I see… and yet, you need them. You need those people you’re better than. You need them because regardless of how much education you have… they have skills you don’t have, skills I don’t have and I’m a pretty smart guy! I’m also smart enough to know that while I play at carpet installer there’s no way I’ll ever get higher than assistant flunky. Perhaps one day I’ll be a full-fledged flunky… one day years from now. But those people holding jobs other people went to school so they wouldn’t have to do… I’m glad they’re there because I can’t do what they do and I’m really glad they’re there to help me when I need it.

The person I worked for is picky. He’s a perfectionist. If I were getting flooring done I’d want him to do it because I know it’d be done right. Working for someone like that is sort of like working for me. I’m picky at my work. I want things done right as well. It’s HIS name on the side of the van and it’s his reputation on the line with every nail I drive and every cut I made. I asked for him to check my work probably more than he wanted to, but his confidence in my ability was higher than mine. Funny thing that… I’ve had employees say the same thing to me. He, without knowing it, was doing to me what I do to my employees. He showed me how, he let me do it while he watched, and he trusted me to do things that he knew he could fix if I botched… and he got out-of-the-way to let me get the experience and confidence I would need to do other things.

You know what I’m most confident about? My hands are almost fully recovered. My back isn’t hurting too bad today, and my knees… you have any idea how much time you spend on your knees when working on floors? A LOT! They should put floors higher!!!… my knees will one day recover I’m sure. Would I do it again? Yep. It’s kind of fun in a way. Part of the fun is I know I don’t have to do it a lot. I’m choosing to do it and it really looks good to leave work at the end of the day and see what you’ve done in a very real, tangible way.

PS: I didn’t do any of those accidents yet. The worst I’ve done was an accident involving a saw, a board kicking back, the back metal plate breaking off, and the palm of hand being smashed to pulp and bursting so blood oozed out onto the floor and continued to seep out most of the day. No bones were broken so I’m happy. I feel bad for wrecking the saw though. No clue what happened, just glad I still have all my fingers since it happened so fast it was over before I knew anything was happening. It made the most spectacular bruise on front and back of my hand. In the story I told there was me defending a bus load of nuns and orphans from terrorist hijacker ninjas. Please don’t tell anybody the truth. The ninja thing sounded way cooler.

I’m a quiet manager. I don’t yell. I don’t scream. I don’t throw things. I’ve known managers like that. But that’s not me. Usually that works well for me. Well, it works for me. I hope it works for my employees. I’ve had employees say to me, “I wish you’d just yell at me. You make me feel like a jerk when you do that.” Mission accomplished then. If I yelled I’d feel like a jerk. That’s not true. I don’t want them to feel like a jerk. I just don’t want them to do it again… whatever “it” was.

The problem comes up when I run into an employee that wants to be yelled at and believes if I’m not yelling I’m not serious. Even if I say words like, “I’m serious” or “this is serious.” They think, since I’m not yelling I must not mean it yet. Just good old Rich giving me a hard time about something I’ve done. And off they go and do it again. I’ve said before I don’t believe someone should be surprised when they’re fired. I believe they should know why and should have been told about it several times before, not just what they did wrong, but what they should do in the future to avoid being in that position. Explain the bad behavior. Explain the expected behavior, and ask them if they understand. That’s the pattern. None of it requires a change in volume. Yes… even if I use words like “Failure to improve will result in termination,” not “could result” or “can result” but “WILL result in termination” there have been those who stared at me slack-jawed asking, “Seriously?” when it came time to finally fire them for something I’d talked to them about many times.

If I’d yelled they may have gotten it… but that’s not how I do things. It’s not how I’ve ever done things. It’s not a good way to do things I don’t think. But, when those people I’ve had to fire that I’ve warned over and over, with paperwork and everything… when they’re staring at me surprised… I wonder then if maybe my clinging to my management style is as effective as I’d like it to be. Somebody, my mom I think, said a good communicator wasn’t the one who could use the biggest words, but that could convey an idea to the broadest range of people effectively. I’m almost sure this was while I was learning all the vocabulary I could find studying for the SAT and was prone to using the longest word I could find for any situation. Maybe yelling is a valid way of doing things in management. It isn’t for me. Overall the number of people who have been surprised when I’ve had to let them go is pretty small. I guess I’ll stick with what I’ve been doing so far. I don’t like the yelling. I’m serial. I’m super serial!

I never saw myself as a hatchet man. I was more of a fixit guy. I got to take part in store take overs when we’d buy some stores and go in and turn them from a mom and pop store into one of our stores in a couple of weeks, switching out the inventory, point of sale system, and train the crew all without closing the store. It was definitely a hit the ground running kind of thing in both situations. Our primary concern was always to make the transition as smooth as possible for the customer and to try to retain (in most cases) as many of the people as would stay and do things the new way. Sometimes it was part of a fire everybody and start over thing. I didn’t like those as much. Sometimes it was a fire the manager and see who in the crew should stay. Those were harder. The only one of those I didn’t like was when it was a manager who had no idea they were in trouble. That one felt bad. He should have known it was a possibility. But, he didn’t and I didn’t know it until after it’d happened. He handled it better than I did. I felt like a shmuck.

I got to do that for years and without even thinking about it I wound up getting a reputation as a hatchet man. It was NEVER my idea to do this to stores. I was just the person that got called to do it after someone else made the decision it needed doing. I saw it as I was keeping as many as could be kept and making things better. From the outside it looked like I went in, took out the opposition, replaced them, and then went home to wash my hands and rest up to do it again, and never lost a moment’s sleep. Mostly that’s true. I didn’t lose sleep except when I was working the long days, in one store there were some 24s. That was a takeover and we didn’t get the computers when they were supposed to show up. I didn’t care. It was New Orleans and I was eating on an expense account. Any amount of hours is worth that!

Fast forward to last year when I stepped down and became manager of a store that opened up. Do you want to guess how the crew felt when I showed up to be manager? They were all scared to death of me. I couldn’t figure out why. I hadn’t done anything to the previous manager. I took his position when it opened up, but I didn’t open it up. Didn’t matter. My reputation had preceded me. Nothing I could say would change their mind. It didn’t help that customers knew of me from when I’d done it at other stores… turns out I was sort of KNOWN for going in and cleaning house and then wandering off whistling and drinking a cup of coffee with a smile on my face. The rumors were impossible to deal with. “Oh, he’s just being nice until he gets your replacement. He’s like that. Seriously. You have to watch him. He’s good at what he does, and what he does is clean out stores.” Wow.

So… It’s been six months now. I’m still here and haven’t wandered off with a cup of coffee and a smile. But today, this morning, the janitor asked me, “So, you going to X to clean out the store? I heard they needed it and that’s what you did. You’ve been here a while.” *sigh* What’s it take to convince them that I’m done with that part of my job? Not because I’m glad to be. I miss the travel. But because I want to be home more? I dunno. You’d think six months of me and they’d know I was settled down and happy here. Maybe I should fire them all and start over. *grin* KIDDING! But seriously… how long does it take for them to stop thinking I’m an ogre? I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. But I can see how they’d think so. In my defense, most of the time the stores where I went, they liked me and wanted me back after I left. THEY didn’t see me as an ogre. It’s just all how it looked from outside. (You want a hatchet man, that’s MY boss… he’s the one that made the decisions. I just implemented them as humanely and kindly as possible and saved as many of them as I could.)