You know, I really have a bad tendency to become inconsistent, particularly in writing on my blog. It's been a minute, and over the course of that minute there's been a multitude of things that I've wanted to write about, but I'll have to circle back to that as I'm writing about an interaction that was had today.
I don't believe I've shared this on here, but I work at a grocery store. What started off as me seeking a part time job to fill the gap created by my wife taking on being the sole financial contributor has turned into something quite, uh, more. I've become the assistant manager of my department, which has been chaotic since the lead up into Thanksgiving of last year. Our former department manager had bad habits and qualities role modeled by his previous manager, which set him up for some expectations that just weren't going to work at our store, he left and my then-assistant manager got bumped up and I got tagged along for the ride.
When I describe the department as being chaotic, I mean chaotic. Holiday orders were massive, the work felt like it was never ending and didn't just pile up, it snowballed, and the pressure to meet expectations despite all of that was unique in all of my working experience. My longest stint was as a shift manager at a popular fast food chain, so that's really saying something. And I say that without getting to experience all of the holiday madness, as I was visiting my dad and his family through Christmas and New Year. Right before Thanksgiving, our then-manager gives his notice (he's found his true calling as a salesman,) my assistant gets bumped up and they start making plans to get me moved up. Old manager went super heavy on the holiday orders on his way out, and our back of house was in complete disarray by the time I left for vacation.
I get back, we start chipping away at the huge ass mess known as our department, we get winter weather causing panic buying causing more massive orders. Being a three man department, that leaves us unable to get to running back stock, as we're taking two days to put up orders, granted there was definitely different ways to handle things that could've offered better results. It took us until last week, with the huge help of our night manager, to get our back of house looking straight, and our ordering system had just gotten back to normal after the couple weeks of crazy sales. I worked 12 hours yesterday and got our cooler looking as good as our night manager, who was my department manager when I started working there and is very possessive of our department, and our store director even gave me a good job about it this morning.
I get back in from lunch around 1 and one of the co-managers grabs me and my manager and says the store director wants to talk with the both of us around 2. Of course, as an autistic individual I've had to learn that when a superior says they want to talk with you, it's usually not good and it's not usually a two way conversation, and that was basically how it went. We were told that the craziness is behind us and that now we need to step up and show leadership, because if not there would be another conversation with a not-so-good outcome. Understandable, the state of our department and our inability to get it back under control was something I told one of the co-managers was personally embarrassing, I've never been one to be satisfied with the quality of work I put out and that's why I've never been fired, and why every business I have worked for has wanted to put me up into management.
What confuses me is that I thought I was showing leadership. My manager is coming to me to figure out solutions, I'm pushing myself to establish the example and expectations for the department, I'm constantly communicating and trying to figure out how to make things more efficient, I am doing all the things a leader would do. Am I perfect? No, my biggest flaw is clearly visible on the date stamps on this very blog: inconsistency. But I've been working on it and have gotten better, and continue to get better every day, so I don't believe that's what he meant by leadership. It makes me feel like he thinks we're too lax, or that he's expecting performative leadership like brow beating the only other person in our department. I've worked under managers like that, in fact those types of managers that were hyper critical and hell bent on enforcing expectations without coaching and helping and trying to establish a path to success are what drove me to quit, and there was only one who ever directed that towards me.
This associate is a teenager, first job he's ever had, and he didn't even start in our department. He's got a great personality, is great with customers and is someone you can rely on showing up, his only downside is his speed which has not only been improving, but was the only complaint levied against me the first few months I started working here. Does he take the job as seriously as my manager and I? Of course not, and brow beating him is going to drive him away. We talked with him afterwards to just clarify expectations, and after he had made a comment to me about how there's plenty of other jobs. That doesn't exactly bode well if performative leadership is what's expected, and if that's the expectation they're likely going to have an entire department to replace. Not what I want or what I'm hoping for, just what I see as the most likely outcome if that expectation is met.
I feel like the answer to our department woes is basically retraining everyone to have good habits. I'm horrible about getting on the computer to check communications and what have you, I often allow myself to feel like I don't have the time instead of just simply making the time. My manager is really good at ordering and running product, but when it comes to things like tossing damaged/bad goods, dating back stock, or even taking his own trash to the back, he's very inconsistent. And that's setting an example of "oh well it's okay if it waits a day or if someone else does it." These are things that take just a few minutes, but when left undone will take half an hour or more to get caught up on, so if we're going to be efficient then everyone has to have better habits, and everyone needs to be staying on top of everything.
Part of that is establishing routines and schedules. Like for example, every third non-truck day cleaning is priority, or date checking, or what have you. Establishing a routine that everyone is dating and putting up their back stock as soon as they bring it off the floor. A habit of at the end of your shift, if there's damaged goods to scan out and get rid of just going ahead and doing it instead of letting it sit and build. It doesn't take long for it to build, our tub will be full, get dumped, and a couple hours later get filled again, we handle at least a thousand different SKUs and despite checking dates while running some get past us on top of our warehouse giving fuck all about damaged product. Just relatively small things that will make it so much easier to run our department and not just meet, but exceed expectations.
That's my leadership style: not walking around like a peacock with my feathers all rustled and demanding my subordinate speed up. In my experience, which should hold value considering I was responsible for training damn near everybody at that fast food joint I worked at, communicating, problem solving and focusing on common goals was the way. If the expectation on me is to divert from that, then I'll gladly hand back the title and remind them that this all started as a part time job for me, that this promotion in the first place was me helping them in a time of need. Otherwise, they need to stop applying pressure and provide some actual god damn insight instead of "you gotta figure it out," otherwise leave us the hell alone and let us cook. How's that for leadership?
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd I'm done venting. Thanks for reading, I'll have a less venty post up soon. Until next time.
