Workin' Man - Part XVI - New York Block Party

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 Office space for managers varied from store to store within the company. At 48th & O the Store Director and Assistant Store Director each had fairly large private offices; the HR Coordinator had a smaller one. The Grocery Manager and a few others shared a shelf and some filing cabinets in the "bullpen" area. At Cornhusker the old Assistant Manager's office had been converted to a security camera room, so the ASD had to share an office with the Grocery Manager. When I first arrived, the Grocery Manager's desk was a plank of wood resting atop some milk crates. The office itself was quite cramped, with several filing cabinets full of papers of various sorts. One afternoon I decided to clear out any old and outdated documents. I found schedules that were 10 years old, ads that were almost as old, memos to and from people who were no longer with the company—some whom had died. We dragged a trash bin up the stairs and filled it and emptied it multiple times. Apparently my predecessor never threw anything out!

One advantage to being at a new store was that we weren't right next door to the corporate offices. Before B&R built what we called The Taj Mahal over near 45th & W their corporate headquarters was in the strip mall next to the 48th & O Super Saver, where the Dollar Tree was until recently. (Interesting fact about the B&R headquarters, it's not owned by B&R, it's owned separately by the Raybould family who collect rent from B&R). With the corporate overlords so close, we had frequent unscheduled visits; lunch time stops to the Deli, after work grocery shopping and more. We could always count on Richard, the VP of Operations, coming in at 5:00 to buy a six pack of beer, so we made sure the path from the front door to the beer case always had full shelves. 

Russ was still active in the company then. I could always expect him to come in early on Friday evening and rudely yell at the top of his lungs that we needed more checkers. Every Monday morning Russ would gather in the conference room at 48th & O with some of his old cronies to drink coffee and eat doughnuts. This coffee klatch was so sacrosanct that he once kicked out the HR Coordinator who was conducting an orientation for new employees. I always thought it was funny how people thought Russ's abrasive manner was considered a positive trait, good ol' plain speaking, while my own was looked at as a problem. A lot of people idolized Russ. I thought he was a bully and an asshole. Though for good or bad, you always knew where you stood with Russ. If he yelled at you, as long as you fixed the problem you never heard about it again. 

The 27th and Cornhusker Highway area is in a mostly a lower income part of Lincoln. We served an eclectic mix of working class people, poor people, and immigrants from Central America and the Middle East who spoke little English, as well as students from the University of Nebraska. We also had quite a few homeless people panhandling in the parking lot. The UNL students were constantly attempting to use fake or altered ID's to purchase alcohol. Not a week went by where we didn't confiscate several fake driver's licenses. When the store was built Lincoln had only recently allowed grocery stores to sell alcoholic beverages. However, the stores were required to sell it from a separate, walled off, area with a separate entrance. By the time I started, city ordinance allowed traffic to move between the main store to the Spirits department, but there was still a separate entrance, and since alcohol couldn't be sold before noon on Sunday, there was a floor-to-ceiling gate separating Spirits from the main store, which was opened at noon. On any day, there would be people lined up outside waiting for the door to the Spirits department to be unlocked. On one particular Saturday night the key to the door broke off in the lock. No one told me about it, so when I came in on Sunday morning I went about my day until it was time to unlock the door at noon and couldn't open the door. You could enter the wine & liquor area through the main store, but not through the separate entrance. The level of whining from customers about having to walk around and through the store to pick up their Old English or MD 20/20 was unreal. You would've thought you were asking them to walk to Omaha. 

One of my favorite Spirits department tales involves a run-in with "Jesus". 

One otherwise quiet morning I was called over to the Spirits Department to help eject a customer. This customer had been banned from the store because he had thrown a can of beer at one of the Spirits clerks. He was was a giant of a man. At least 6' 5" with a linebackers physique. When I asked him to leave he began to declaim in a thunderous voice that he was Jesus and that I had no authority over him. He ranted about the FBI and the ATF and then he threatened me. Not with physical violence (although I was worried that I was about to get beaten up) but with thunder and lightning! When no lightning bolts were forthcoming, I asked him to leave, which he did. A few days later I got a call from the Spirits Manager: "Jesus is here". As I arrive "Jesus" took a deep breath, ready to begin his harangue; I cut him off "Yeah, I know, ATF and lightning and thunder...you still have to leave, Jesus" and off he went, never to be seen again.

Salt Creek ran behind the store, wound around and crossed Cornhusker Highway just west of the store. There was a small encampment of homeless people who lived under the bridge, who would wander up to the store to panhandle. Once they collected enough they'd pop into the Spirits Department for something to drink, or over to the Deli Department for some chicken. I'd usually run them off if they were bothering people too close to the store, but never got the police involved unless they were shoplifting. One exception I made was a guy with a guitar, who I let hang out at the picnic table near the exit door, he was entertainment for the customers that we didn't have to pay for! 

There were always colorful characters in a grocery store. Patrick and Nick were the Grocery Manager and Assistant Grocery Manager. They were both young guys who were good at their jobs, but were always screwing around. One afternoon they both ran past me, yelling at the top of their lungs, Nick was swinging a rubber hose and Patrick had a long handled ice scraper. It turns out that someone had trapped the rat. I'm not speaking figuratively. A large rat had gotten in from Salt Creek out back and had been spotted wandering around the store. Somehow it had gotten trapped in the Produce back room where the boys had blocked off the entrances with plywood and pallets. There was a lot of running back and forth until Mike, the Meat Department Manager and former Army Ranger decapitated the rat with the ice scraper. Mike's previous claim to fame had been dressing up in a cow costume and standing on top of a giant pile of snow advertising our Meat Department specials! 

One of the funniest conversations that I had with Nick came after he had been promoted to Grocery Manager at another store. My ex-wife was the Night Manager there. Nick came over one afternoon to ask me (seriously) what he could do to get along with my ex-wife. I told him that if I knew how to do that she wouldn't be my ex-wife!

Wildlife, in addition to the ill-fated rat, made an appearance in the form of a couple of birds who somehow had flown in but couldn't figure out how to fly out. These birds had been in the store so long that they had acquired names: Guido and Terrence.  They weren't dive bombing customers, and wherever they were crapping, we didn't see it, so after a while we just ignored them. Customers would inform us that there were birds in the store and we'd simply respond "Oh yeah, that Guido and Terrance". The Store Director put out a bounty for their capture, dead or alive. One of our overnight delivery guys shot them one night. Rest in peace Guido and Terrence. 

Speaking of colorful charters, our Human Resources Coordinator was going through a nasty divorce, and to put it mildly, wasn't making good decisions. She and a few of the single women from the store had a standing girls' night out to the Council Bluffs casinos every Tuesday. One week a few of the single boys joined them. On the way home the two cars got separated and the guys', taking what they thought was a shortcut, ended up driving down a gravel road. They didn't realize that they were heading toward a "T" intersection and drove into a field of corn at high speed. There was no cell phone signal, so they wandered off. They eventually met up with the women, but were covered in mud. Since everyone involved had been drinking, they couldn't remember where the car was. They were up all night searching for the car and they all called in "sick" to work the next morning. Now technically this wasn't the HR Coordinator's fault, yet she was supposedly the responsible adult in the group. Another incident, where she definitely was the problem came shortly thereafter. 

A lot of the younger employees, including managers, spent time together after work. The home of one employee became a "party house", whose participants included underage employees. I heard a lot of stories and not only did I stay away, but I didn't want to hear about it! One Friday evening I did hear about it. Patrick, our grocery manager stopped into the store after leaving the party. He reported to me that a strip poker game was in process and that our HR Coordinator was participating. By the time he left she was almost naked. The Store Director had a discussion with her about it. She didn't understand why getting drunk and naked with a bunch of teenagers was a bad idea!

The store put out a weekly newsletter, Nine's News (9 was the store number), where Brian the Store Director was supposed to write a weekly column, which he did inconsistently. I volunteered to fill in and little by little took over the newsletter's production. In one early edition I reported on the apprehension of a group of kids who were stealing school supplies and referred to their "ill-gotten booty". Someone suggested that "Ill-Gotten Booty" sounded like it could be the name of the bassist for Parliament-Funkadelic, and the weekly column "Words of Wisdom by Ill-Gotten Booty" was born. (Some time later the company HR Director decreed that the control of the newsletter was to be taken out of my hands. In response I published my own competing newsletter: Words of Wisdom by Ill-Gotten Booty (of course) . The "official" newsletter was pretty dry, while I couldn't print enough copies of mine. When I was transferred to another store I started an online version which was popular throughout the company, but got me in trouble more than once). 

The Night Crew was always a source of surprises. One evening one of the stockers was flirting with a woman stocker who was married to another guy on the crew. The husband confronted the would-be Don Juan back by the trash compactors and beat him up. Minutes later the one who had been beaten up came out of the back room and started throwing jars of pickles at his tormentor. Both of the them were fired. 

The corporate office decided that we weren't doing enough to promote our ads. They came up with a competition called "Big 8 Events", where each store would compete in various categories, earning points in a quest to beat all the other stores. One of the main parts of this competition was building themed displays. The first of these events was a Seafood Sale. Brian wanted to win this event, so he put me in charge and convened a meeting with the Meat Department Manager and Assistant Manager. A lot of the ideas were pretty easy to execute, like fish-themed signage and fish-shaped balloons. Sampling various seafoods was also part of the plan. (If I remember correctly I did a demo of tilapia with sautéed vegetables). It was during this event when I formulated my theory of operational feasibility.  

Operational feasibility is my name for the idea that some things may sound like good ideas, but the effort required to pull them off isn't worth the benefits derived from executing the idea. This theory was argued in managers' meetings periodically for the rest of my career with B&R. Often it involved an "event" that required extra staffing, i.e. scheduling people over and above the normal schedule. When corporate was asked how this was to be done, they would usually fall back on their stock response, that we should just schedule some "extra" grocery clerks. The corporate office was still living in the past where we would have 4 - 6 grocery clerks on hand at any given time. Reduced labor budgets had done away with this luxury. Somehow we were supposed to find several people to do product demonstrations (or in the case of the infamous tent sales, employees to sit outside all night and guard the tent!). 

The planning meeting for the Seafood Sale involved such crazy ideas as "let's turn the meat bunker into a whale!" or "let's turn the other meat bunker into a pirate ship!". As we brainstormed all these ideas, I, the guy who had to turn all these ideas into reality, kept asking how we would actually make it happen. The answer was that I could just figure it out. Nice. Someone suggested that Emily, one of our cashiers, was a talented artist and could design something. It was true, she was talented and did design something. We had an amazing blueprint for a beautiful transformation of our meat bunkers into a whale and a pirate ship. Unfortunately the professional level blueprint was translated into something that a kindergarten teacher might consider substandard, complete with paper plates for the whale's eyes. The full-size statue of Captain Morgan set amidst the meat display helped out somewhat though. 

During my third year at Cornhusker, and Brian's last year as Store Director, Brian had another promotional idea. The Pine Lake store had done a "Hawaiian Days" promotion, complete with a fake waterfall and aloha shirts. Brian challenged me to come up with a similar big idea. At the time I was hanging out at Duggan's Pub on Monday nights where another ASD, Dan, was the MC for the weekly open stage. After several beers I came up with the idea of a New York Block Party promotion. We would turn the front of the store, the "Wall of Values" into a facsimile of a New York street corner. I ran my idea past Dan, who suggested that I talk to Sean Benjamin, a local musical giant who usually played keyboards with the house band. Sean promised to put together a band for the event. 

Looking back, it seems like a miracle that we were able to pull this off. We set the weekend of 9-11 for the blowout, which was around three weeks away. The key was to only plan to do things that we could reasonably pull off and to delegate tasks so that no one was doing too much. We ordered a giant New York Block Party outdoor banner. We worked with the local Coca-Cola distributor to create a "stoop" made out of cases of Coke. "Doors" were made by our banner maker and one of our cashiers created lifelike stuffed dummies who would be lounging on the steps. Our Smokehouse contributed sausage and peppers that we sold from a street cart. The Bakery supplied bagels at breakfast time that we gave away. We set up a boxball court and gave away prizes to anyone who could beat me. A local signage company donated a 20-foot long panorama of the New York City skyline. Tables decorated to look like taxis were scattered around for people to enjoy their food. Décor included flyers featuring New York sports teams, and posters with the iconic New Yorker magazine cover of New York as the center of the universe and the New York subway system. We had t-shirts made that featured the New York skyline. Sean provided a band that included himself on guitar, Brian "Pickle" Gerkensmeyer on bass, Josh Hoyer on keyboards and saxophone, Leniece Micek singing and Dan Caulkins on drums. I had asked my friend Kevin to help me put together some music for the event to be played over the PA system when the band wasn't playing. I had envisioned a collection of New York themed songs: Billy Joel's New York State of Mind, Frank Sinatra's New York, New York, and songs by New York artists. What I got was a collection of what Kevin's friend thought was popular in the cooler New York clubs. Oh well. 

The one idea that I had to turn down was the suggestion that we turn the forklifts into taxi cabs. My response of "how are we going to do that?" killed the idea. 

I thought the whole event was well received. Store Director Brian thought it was great. Everyone in the store was excited to put it on. The customers thought it was amazing, we certainly brought a lot of them into the store. We certainly understood the assignment! But of course, the downer was the corporate response. Not one director from headquarters showed up. When I sent the company president photos of the set up, his only comment was that it must not have been successful since the store looked so empty (I took the photos at 6:00am) and wanted to know how many extra sales we brought in. Par for the course—the top dogs were always critical of ideas that they didn't think up themselves or projects that they didn't initiate. We didn't let the bastards get us down and did it again the following year!

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XVI - Agreeing to Disagree...Or Not

One of the problems in looking to the Bible as a rulebook on how to live life is that it's not arranged in any easy-to-access order. There's no index, it's not arranged by subject matter and there seems to be a lot of areas that simply aren't covered. The true believers will tell you that's because it's not supposed to be accessible to the disbelievers, but that if you have the Holy Spirit within you, understanding will flow naturally.

How convenient. 

Of course, I'm one of those disbelievers, and this series is about how I, an agnostic, look at the Bible. I don't believe that it was dictated, or even inspired, by God, or any other permutation of the idea that it's "The Truth". I'm just looking at it like I'd look at any other piece of literature. Viewed in that light, it's confusing. 

One of the sources of confusion is the dichotomy between the "Old Testament", aka The Hebrew or Jewish scriptures, and the "New Testament", aka the Gospels and the Epistles. The Old Testament is without question written for the Jewish people. The New Testament is more universal in who it's intended for. The Old Testament describes God in starkly different terms than does most of the New Testament. Most Christians ignore this difference, pretending that it's not there. Although there is a subset of Christian theology called dispensationalism which explains the difference by theorizing that God has different "dispensations", or administrations, where the rules of the game change. It's obvious that the institution of the Law of Moses changed the ground rules that existed before, and that Jesus' life, death and resurrection represented a further change. The Book of Revelation is without question a different milieu than the world as we know it, ending with a still different new Heaven and Earth. Dispensationalists can be thanked (or blamed) for the popular belief in "the rapture". An early Christian movement, founded by Marcion, believed that the differences were so great that the Old Testament God was a different God than the God of Jesus. So it comes down to either explaining away the differences in a pretzel-like manner, or just ignoring them. 

Another dichotomy in the New Testament is between the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul. Jesus was primarily concerned with action, while Paul was mainly concerned with belief. Even though each of the four Gospels has a different emphasis, and even contradict each other, Jesus isn't telling people to simply believe, he's always talking about how one should behave oneself. Paul on the other hand, while he does touch on a few things to do and not do, it's all in the head—it's believing in Jesus, believing that he was raised from the dead and so on. 

The epistles of Paul are not an instruction manual on how to be a Christian, they're mostly in the form of letters addressing specific problems that various church communities were having. There's not a lot of internal inconsistency within the Pauline letters, but there's no definitive listing of doctrine and practice. The Catholic/Orthodox traditions tell their people to not worry about it, the leaders will tell you how to act and think. The Protestant traditions do that too, while maintaining the illusion that their people can see what the Bible teaches for themselves...as long as it agrees with what the leaders say it means. For any doctrinal position it's typical to jump from section to section and book to book putting together a supposedly coherent position, because you won't find it clearly delineated in any one place. 

What about the Ten Commandments? Isn't that a list telling us how to act? Yes and no. Yes, in that it's a list in the Bible. No—for several reasons. If we're taking the dispensationalist position that the Old Testament was for the Jews and not written to The Church, why would we pay it any attention? If we are supposed to heed the "Ten Commandments", why not the other hundreds of commandments? Like the ones involving dietary and grooming rules. Or the ones that allow slavery or that a woman marry her rapist. Quite a quandary. But what most people do not realize that no matter what position you take, there are two contradictory versions of the Ten Commandments (or Ten Words) in the Book of Exodus:

https://contradictionsinthebible.com/2-ten-commandments/

Ten Commandments (Ex 20:1-17)

1. I am Yahweh your god; you shall not have other gods before my face!

2. You shall not make for yourself a statue or an image.

3. You shall not swear falsely by the name Yahweh, your god

4. Remember the Sabbath day.

5. Honor your father and your mother.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. You shall not covet you neighbor’s house.

 Ten Commandments (Ex 34:14-26)

1. You shall not bow down to another god; for Yahweh is a jealous god!

2. You shall not make molten gods for yourself.

3. You shall observe the festival of Unleavened bread.

4. You shall redeem every first born of your sons!

5. You shall observe the Sabbath.

6. You shall make a festival of Weeks.

7. Three times a year every male shall appear before Yahweh, god of Israel.

8. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice on leavened bread.

9. You shall bring the firstfruits of your land to the house of Yahweh your god.

10. You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.

So, which version do you want to follow? Or post in your classrooms? 

In addition to the fact that there are two distinct and clearly contradictory versions of The Ten Commandments right there in the text of the Bible, the way that the first, more popular version, is interpreted varies depending on the church tradition or denomination, there are eight distinct traditions or versions which divide the seven verses in Exodus differently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments

1. Septuagint
2. Reformed Protestantism
3. Ashburnham Pentateuch
4. Talmud
5. Samaritan Pentateuch
6. Augustine
7. Roman Catholicism
8. Lutherans

"I am the Lord your God"

One tradition lists this as the First Commandment

Seven combine it with "You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me" as the First Commandment, the remaining tradition separate them into the First and Second Commandments

Four traditions combine it with "You Shall Not Have False Idols"  or "Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thee a Graven Image" as the first commandment

The other three call "You Shall Not Have False Idols"  or "Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thee a Graven Image" the second commandment.

The next few are called the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th if all the previous commandments are combined into the First;  3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th if not

"You Shall Not Take the Name of the Lord in Vain" is third/second commandment
 
"Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep it Holy" is the fourth/third commandment

"Honor Thy Father and Mother" is the fifth/fourth commandment

"Thou Shalt Not Kill" is the sixth/fifth, although one version counts it as the eighth commandment

"Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery" is the seventh/sixth commandment, although since one source reverses this and the previous command, it is 3 for seventh and 5 for sixth

"Thou Shalt Not Steal" is eighth/seventh commandment

"Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness (Lie?) Against Thy Neighbor" is ninth/eighth

The next three commandments are all combined into one commandment as either the Ninth Commandment in one tradition; or as the Tenth Commandment in 4. Three traditions split them up as follows:

A. "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's House" One combines this one with "B" as the Ninth Commandment; Two combine this one with "B" and "D" as the Tenth Commandment

B. "Thou Shalt Not Desire Thy Neighbor's House" One combines this one with "A" as the Ninth Commandment; Two combine this one with "A" and "D" as the Tenth Commandment

C. "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife" One combines this one with "D" as the Tenth Commandment; Two list this as the Ninth Commandment, not combined with others

D. "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Stuff"  One combines this one with "C" as the Tenth Commandment; Two combine this one with "A" and "B" as the Tenth Commandment

The one exception adds "You Shall Set Up These Stones, Which I Command You Today, on Mount Argarizem" and combines all the "covets" as the ninth commandment

(4 of 8 combine all 3 "covets" into #10, 3 combine 2 of them in various ways)

Even though there are actually fifteen commandments, (if you count every one that at least one tradition considers a separate commandment), the Bible, just before the listing, specifically calls them ten commandments (or words, sayings, or matters), but does not clearly delineate where one "commandment" ends and another begins. Maybe whoever wrote it thought it would be obvious, or that it was unimportant. Here they are separated out and listed in order:

1. I am the Lord your God
2. You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me
3. You Shall Not Have False Idols
4. You Shall Not Take the Name of the Lord in Vain
5. Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep it Holy
6. Honor Thy Father and Mother
7. Thou Shalt Not Kill
8. Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery
9. Thou Shalt Not Steal
10. Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness (Lie?) Against Thy Neighbor
11. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's House
12. Thou Shalt Not Desire Thy Neighbor's House
13. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife
14. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Stuff
15. You Shall Set Up These Stones, Which I Command You Today, on Mount Argarizem

Periodically there are legal disputes about posting the Ten Commandments in courthouses and in government buildings. The rationale being that the commandments are all basic moral/ethical stuff and no one should have any problem with them, even if they did originate in a religious book. There are some problems with that position. Some of them are hardcore religious and not just "do unto others..." stuff.

The first three to five, depending on how you're counting, address who you should be worshipping, when you should do it, and how you should talk about the god who is the object of this worship. For anyone who worships a god different from the god of the bible, this is not something that they they would want to do and it certainly shouldn't be displayed in a government setting. If you think that the whole world, or at least the whole country, consists entirely of Christians and Jews (and depending on how you view Allah, Muslims), then you might have no problem with this. But that's not the reality— there's a large number of people who worship or honor different gods (or no gods at all), in addition there's that pesky First Amendment.

The "covet" prohibitions are also problematic. Most people would agree in theory that these are things that you shouldn't do, but when you get down to it they are prohibitions against thought not actions. So once again, this comes down to strictly religious rules, not anything that could or should be encoded into secular law.

Honoring your parents (unless your parents are evil bastards), no stealing, lying, killing or cheating on your spouse...I'll give you those. The Five Commandments sounds okay.

Start at The Beginning: Part I

Managers Part XVI - The Monkeys

The class and book Managing Management Time described the responsibility to take some kind of action as a "monkey". If it was your responsibility to get something done, then "the monkey" was on your back. Before we get deep into the jungle, let define some terms. Most people define "delegate" as any action that someone else has to do so that you don't. We, however, are going to define "delegate" in conjunction with "assign". When you assign a task to someone, you have told them what to do, and when to do it. Sometimes you even tell them how to do it. (Rarely do you tell them why it's being done.) For example you tell your janitor to clean the bathroom, when he is done you tell him to sweep the sidewalk, when that is done you tell him to organize the storage closet. Or you can give him a list at the beginning of his shift:

1. Clean the bathroom
2. Sweep the sidewalk
3. Organize the storage closet

Or...you can give him the responsibility to keep the store clean and organized and let him determine how to do that. 

The first example is assigning; you give your subordinate tasks. Think back a few lessons to the Five Levels—this sounds a lot like Level 2 or even Level 1. But when you give someone responsibility, then you have delegated. This is more like Level 3 or 4. But in order for delegation to be effective, i.e. you get the results that you desire without a lot of hands-on involvement, you have to train your subordinate to the point where they completely understand the responsibility that you have given them and you have to give them the authority to carry out their delegated tasks. What this means is that you have to be confident enough to let go of the responsibility and let your delegated subordinate handle it without unnecessary interference from you. In the case of our janitorial example, you don't even want the janitor checking with you before cleaning or organizing, you want Level 4 freedom! Now, when you have passed this responsibility on, taking away any but routine involvement, then the metaphorical monkey has been transferred from your back to his.  

Unfortunately, it's not always clear who a monkey belongs to, and your subordinates and your bosses alike will attempt to get you to take ownership of monkeys that aren't yours. So how can you reliably determine who a monkey belongs to? It's all tied int to the Five Levels of Freedom, which we will look at in the next installment. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

Managers Part XVII - Who Does This Monkey Belong To?

In the last installment of "Managers" we looked at Assigning vs. Delegating and the concept of "monkeys". In order to effectively manage your management time you have to effectively juggle your boss-imposed time, the system-imposed time and your self-imposed time, all of which are components of your management time. We have looked at boss-imposed and system-imposed time in previous posts, but it's that subordinate-imposed time, which has no theoretical basis, and technically shouldn't exist, which is the biggest item that eats into your self-imposed time. The key to minimizing that which shouldn't be is for everyone to know precisely what their job entails and what it does not. Once everyone has a clear understanding of who is responsible for what, it will then always be clear who is responsible for a given action or decision. Before we get into some examples, a little bit of what minimizing subordinate-imposed time is not. It's not a manager neglecting to train a subordinate, ignoring legitimate demands on her time, or palming off the manager's tasks onto subordinates simply out of laziness. It's not letting a subordinate fail when timely intervention might have saved the day. What it is, is setting clear boundaries and then defending them, all the while keeping in mind where you and your subordinate are on the Five Levels of Freedom.

When I was a unit manager or assistant manager in several retail stores I oversaw various department managers who were responsible for operations in their departments. For each department there was a director who operated out of the central office who gave direction, set prices and determined what products were sold, but the managers in each store had a lot of freedom as regards to scheduling, ordering, signage, displays, production, hiring and overall day-to-day operations. With regard to most of their job duties they were a Level 4—independent action, reporting to the store director or home office director after the fact or Level 5—reporting only routinely. Some parts of the job were Level 3—check upstairs before acting. I routinely prohibited my managers from acting at Level 2—ask before acting, or Level 1— wait until told. In one store where I was an Assistant Store Manager I had a Bakery Manager who consistently would show up in my office whenever a crisis hit, asking me what to do. The man seemed to be incapable of making a decision. If someone quit, he wanted to know how to write his schedule; if a piece of equipment broke down he wanted me to tell him whether or not he should fix it; he wanted me to tell him what to order for a sale or how to build his displays. This manager wanted me to do his job for him and at the same time increase my subordinate-imposed time. Writing schedules, keeping the equipment working, order and building displays was his job, not mine. Fortunately for me, I was a professional manager I didn't get sucked into this time wasting activity. The monkey belonged to him, but he wanted that simian to skip on over to my back.

In a different store with a different Bakery Manager there was a completely different mindset.  This second Bakery Manager, who unlike the first Bakery Manager who had 20 years of experience, was new to the Bakery business. Fortunately for him and for me, he had been schooled from Day One on what his job description was. He received training from bakers and other experts in the physical mechanics of running a bakery and received training from me in how to be a manager. He understood from the beginning what his job description listed as his responsibilities as well as the concept of the 5 Levels and that I wanted him at least a Level 3, preferably a 4 or 5. He never, ever came to me with a problem where he didn't have at least a proposed solution. I consider him one of my success stories as a manager.

Less obvious examples of monkeys jumping onto your back from their proper home include subordinates sending you emails asking for your input on matters that they should have figured out for themselves; subordinates leaving for vacation and leaving critical tasks undone for you to complete; or subordinates telling customers or vendors to call you regarding an item that they should have handled.

A manager can't, however, get to this point overnight. You have to train your people so that they have the ability to do their job, you have to communicate with them so that there is no question what their job is, and most importantly you have to delegate, give them Level 4 or 5 authority to do their jobs. You'll never eliminate, nor should you want to, eliminate all interaction with your subordinates, and they should be comfortable coming to you with intractable problems. There will always be things that don't neatly fit within the written job description, and there will always be situations that need your touch. But don't get sucked in to doing your subordinates job for them.

Start at the beginning: Part I

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XV (What Difference Does It Make If it's True Or Not?)

If Jesus didn't really exist, would it make a difference? It depends on who you ask.

Some might say that as long as you follow what most of us think of as Jesus' teachings, it wouldn't matter at all. As long as you're on track with loving God and your neighbor, feeding the poor, treating others as you want to be treated, you're good to go (to heaven that is). Those in the "doesn't matter" camp maintain that it's his teachings that are important, and that those teachings are just as important if they were put together by fiction writers than if the Biblical Jesus was an historical person who is accurately portrayed in the Gospels. 

Other, more literal-minded Christians hold the opposite view: that if Jesus, as presented to us in the Bible, didn't exist, then there is no point to life...and they certainly aren't saved. To them, Jesus wasn't just some guy who spouted self-help advice, but The Son of God who died for us. Without getting into the nuances of what specifically the death and resurrection of Jesus meant to the writers of the Bible (and it's not precisely the same from one author to the next) suffice it say that his death and subsequent not being dead accomplished something that wouldn't have been accomplished just by preaching sermons on the mount or multiplying bread and fish or walking in water. Or so many Christians believe. Not that most of them could actually explain it. 

There's a metaphysical aspect to Jesus in the minds of the true believers that goes beyond what he is reported to have preached about in his alleged time on earth. By believing in him you get a free trip to heaven when you die. Although there's disagreement about just what "believing in him" involved: "confessing that God raised him from the dead" or "accepting him as Lord" are two that I have heard. You get Holy Spirit within according to some. In short, for a lot of people it matters very much whether Jesus existed—it's literally a matter of (eternal) life and death. 

As someone who now views Christianity, Judaism and the Bible from the outside it just doesn't matter to me—it's nothing more than an intellectual exercise to speculate upon the likelihood that there was an historical person upon whom the Biblical Jesus was based. Some of what he taught was definitely words to live by. Yes, just some. Jesus, as presented to us in the Gospels, was very much a believer that the world was ending in the short term. As such, he was very much concerned with people as individuals  getting their acts together so that they would be worthy to enter the soon-to-be-established Kingdom of God. He was not concerned at all with family ties—he even told his potential followers that they had to reject (many versions use the word "hate") their parents and family to be his disciples. Not to mention his admonitions to followers to jettison all worldly riches. What do you need a bank account for if the world is about to end? 

There are good arguments on both sides of the "did Jesus exist?" argument. There are some, also on both sides that I reject:

Arguments against a historical Jesus:

• The Romans kept scrupulous records of all legal proceedings and there is no record of Jesus' trial and execution
• This is a myth. The Romans in some jurisdictions, like Egypt, kept voluminous records, which still exist because the papyrus was preserved in a dry environment, but there is a lack of evidence for similar records in Roman Judea. There's no Roman records of Jesus' trial because there were no records of anyone's trials, especially not someone who would have been considered a run-of-the-mill insurrectionist. 
• There are no contemporary references to Jesus. Even the first Gospel wasn't written until at least 40 years after his purported death.  
• Very few historical records from Classical times were contemporary. Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars is a notable exception. There are dozens of Roman emperors for whom we have no reference to them in their lifetimes. For some, we're not entirely sure if anything that was written about them is true. Lack of references in or right after his life are perfectly normal for that time period.
• The qualities ascribed to Jesus mirror the lives and missions of many other gods and saviors in the Mediterranean and Levant, including Osiris and Mithra.
• It would take too long to quote and debunk all of these comparisons, which crop up around Easter and Christmas each year, but in general they make false comparisons and misrepresent the stories around some of the other pagan deities. 
• Debunking aspects of the Bible don't necessarily eliminate the possibility that a "Jesus" lived and preached and was executed in Judea around the beginning of the common era and that myths and legends attached themselves to him

Arguments for the existence of a historical Jesus: 

• "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" is more an argument in support of the objective truth of what Jesus is reported to have said in the gospels rather than a strict argument in favor of his existence. It also ignores the alternative, that he was simply mistaken.
• Would the Apostles have risked everything, even their lives, for a myth? 
• To be persuaded by this argument you have to assume that everything written about the Twelve Apostles in the Acts of The Apostles was true. Acts, like the Gospels, was written to tell a certain story and is no more verifiable than are the Gospels. The existence of the specific twelve men known as The Apostles is as difficult to verify as the existence of Jesus himself. The names, even, are inconsistent from one Gospel to the next.
• Even assuming that the apostles and other, later, followers of Jesus risked martyrdom, this is a weak argument for the historiography of Jesus. There are many, many examples of people going to their deaths for beliefs that were demonstrably false. I'm sure Christians would consider Islam false, yet there's no shortage of Muslims who have died for it over the centuries.
• References in Josephus, Tacitus and others.
• None of these were eyewitness accounts. Most are referring to Christians, not Christ.
• Even assuming that an historical person on whom the Gospels is based existed, there is no evidence that the miraculous works ascribed to him happened.

I lean toward the opinion that there was someone upon whom the Jesus of the Gospels was based. He had a loyal cadre of followers who became convinced, for whatever reason, that he was resurrected after being crucified. Stories circulated and were passed by word of mouth and grew in the telling. Different factions had their own ideas about what he taught and what his life and death meant. Eventually people started writing down these stories, some of which have survived to modern times, four of them incorporated into The Bible. These biographies are historical documents and hold as much weight as any other historical document from that age—in other words we consider the source, consider biases and take it all with a grain of salt. I find it unlikely that these myths and legends were created first and only later did his followers insist that he was a real person—I find it much more likely that the myths and legends were pasted onto to the fairly unremarkable life of a real person. 

The existence of the "Apostle" Paul confuses things a bit. By his own admission he never met Jesus. Everything he claims to know about Jesus and God's purpose for Jesus and how Christians should conduct themselves was received in visions. One might suppose that Paul was a faker who attempted to hijack the nascent Christian movement and mold it according to his own views. And many thought just that! In many ways Paul, whose mission was to non-Jews, taught a Christianity that was very different than what was being taught by Jesus' original followers. It certainly differs from what we see in the Gospels. According to Paul's own letters the original apostles were teaching that converting to Judaism was a prerequisite to becoming a Christian, which Paul vehemently opposed. He claimed that it was God's will that pagan converts not be required to conform to Jewish law. 

There is an argument to be made that Paul created the story of Jesus out of thin air—why else would The Twelve had allowed him to become as influential as he did with resisting him? The argument assumes that neither Jesus nor The Twelve existed. I find this argument unpersuasive. Paul refers in his own writings to Peter/Cephas and to James, Jesus' brother as well as to "The Twelve". (Was "The Twelve" a generic reference to a ruling body? Was it literally the twelve guys named in the Gospels? I don't know) So they presumably existed. I don't find it plausible that they created the Jesus character, or that Paul created them just to give himself an antagonist. No, I view Paul as someone who always thought he was the smartest person in the room. I'll assume for the sake of discussion that he had some kind of vision and ran with it. So, if there were original followers of Jesus still around, how did he get away with it?

It is an undisputed fact of history that there were multiple varieties of Christianity a generation or two after Jesus' time. We have Paul's testimony in his letters that already 20 years after the crucifixion there were multiple factions. Is it unbelievable that Paul's faction, based as it was on converting the more numerous Gentiles, would outcompete the groups that maintained adherence to Jewish practices, including circumcision and complex dietary laws?  The fact that he never met Jesus and converted before ever meeting a real follower of Jesus (except to persecute them, by his own admission) apparently was no bar to his version of Christianity becoming the seed around which the dominant Catholic/Orthodox churches grew. 

In one of Paul's letters he makes the point that if Jesus didn't really live and die and rise from the dead, then our faith would be in vain. So he at least believed Jesus really existed! A counter argument can be made that Paul, in his epistles, makes no mention of any details of Jesus' life that we later read about in the Gospels (Gospels first appear around 70 CE, Paul began writing around 50 CE) and for that reason was making it all up. Of course, Paul didn't live in Judea or Galilee, but in what we call Asia Minor, modern Turkey. It's not inconceivable that while he was familiar with Christians prior to his conversion, he wasn't in a circle where the oral stories were circulating, or just didn't think the biographical details were all that important compared to the redemptive nature of his  death and supposed resurrection. 

At any rate, there are good arguments pro and con and bad arguments pro and con for the existence of Jesus, or at least someone upon whom the Biblical Jesus was based. However, I long ago found the reasons for going beyond that and accepting the supernatural, spiritual, aspects of the Bible to be unpersuasive. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XV

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. He was so proud of his titles and the associated ability to lord it over people. But now he had been stripped of almost all of his precious titles. He still held the position of Way Home Coordinator, which was supposed to mean that he was the leader of the little group who lived in our house on Metropolitan Avenue, yet this was in tension with my position as the Twig Fellowship Coordinator based at the same house. There was no way that there wouldn't be fireworks. 

There were two parallel paths that I would take through the rest of the Way year. One was paved with red flags that in hindsight I should have heeded and got the hell out, the other path was crowded with what at the time looked like what the Bible calls signs, miracles and wonders. The problem was that I didn't see the red flags as red flags and I had been conditioned to look for divine intervention everywhere. We had been indoctrinated with the view that when bad things happened it was "the Adversary" (i.e. The Devil) attacking us due to our "stand on The Word of God". So both side-by-side paths were convincing me that I was on the right path. 

When I was still living at the first Way Home I had re-enrolled in college. I had dropped out during my sophomore year, and, due to some bad grades I had been put on academic probation. When I re-enrolled I was still on probation, which meant that I could not fail any classes and had to maintain at least a "C" average. I had also taken a job in Manhattan working for the stock brokerage firm, E.F. Hutton. I worked at Hutton during the day and attended classes at night. This meant that it was difficult for me to spend much time on Way activities. Way leadership suggested that, although I was living in a Queens Way Home, it might be better if I attended Twig Fellowship in Manhattan, where I worked and went to college. If this situation had continued, things might have turned out differently, but two things happened to change the course of my life. The first was that I failed a math class. It may have been advanced algebra, or maybe calculus, I don't recall. Even though I had aced every other class, I was still on academic probation, and this one failure meant that I was dismissed from Bernard M. Baruch College. Around the same time I was offered the position of Twig Fellowship Coordinator. I was virtually locked into a Way trajectory. 

I mentioned the two parallel paths—I want to address the one that was festooned with red flags first. As far as I knew, Eddie wasn't removed from his positions because higher leadership thought he didn't have leadership qualities. His branch responsibilities ended simply because there weren't enough twigs for three branches and the other two branch coordinators had more of the accepted credentials. His Twig Coordinator of the English-language fellowship position wasn't taken away due to incompetence or ungodliness or lack of leadership, but to allow him to concentrate on the various Spanish language fellowships. But with the 20/20 vision that comes from being 40 years in the future, I can tell you with conviction that Eddie was a sociopathic abuser. A characteristic that somehow escaped the notice of the supposedly spiritually savvy leadership. 

I'm not going to get specific about all of the insanity that Eddie engaged in. I mentioned in Part XIV that he believed that "casting out devil spirits" was the appropriate response to a roommate talking in his sleep. He constantly belittled the people around him, especially women. He drank to excess. We sublet a basement apartment to a woman who he coerced into sex. Several of us complained about him to upper leadership to no avail. The fact that Eddie was put in a position of leadership where he was supposed to care for other Christian believers and lead by example, should have suggested to me that upper leadership didn't know what the heck they were doing. But I somehow rationalized the situation. The "obey leadership" habit was hard to break. There must be some kind of plan that I was unaware of. Part of me thought that I just needed to up my spiritual game and commit myself more fully. More on that after I take you on a stroll down the other parallel path.

When I took over the fellowship on Metropolitan Avenue in Richmond Hill, Queens, there were four or five of us. By the time I left New York that August, there were easily thirty people crammed into our living room on Twig Fellowship nights. The main method of increasing membership was to "witness". Like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, The Way engaged in door-to-door witnessing. Since we started out with just a handful, we would have a short meeting and then hit the streets, the bowling alleys, the bars and knocked on doors. We also started seeing people who had been inactive in Way events start showing up. Maybe they didn't like what was going on when Eddie was in charge and wanted to give us a shot. Maybe it was just coincidence, but these formerly inactive people started bringing friends. And the friends started bringing friends.  The house started filling up. 

One of the measures of success of a Way Twig or Branch was running a class. The Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class was for people who wanted to stick around, it was the first level of commitment in Wayworld. You needed seven new people to be able to run a PFAL class and typically several Twigs combined their new people into one class. We were able to run one all by ourselves. Then we were able to run another one. And a third—which was unheard of. Way fellowship meetings were beginning to tend toward formal at that time. We went in the opposite direction which seemed to draw in even more people. For some reason that I can't recall I started running meetings and teaching barefoot and sitting cross-legged on the couch. We were told to start running a 10:30 fellowship on Sundays—because Way HQ did. No one specified that it was to be 10:30AM, so, rebels that we were, we met at 10:30PM on Sunday and the living room was as full as any other time.  The biggest thing was that we started to get known as the place to go for miraculous healing.

As an agnostic who these days casts a skeptical eye on the miraculous, I really don't know what to think about this aspect of my time in The Way. We would pray for people and it sure seemed like they were healed of various maladies. There wasn't any eyesight to the blind or healing the lepers, but we were all sure convinced that healing was taking place. And it wasn't just the hardcore Wayfers, but people who would show up at our house for the first time and swear that their illness, or limp or whatever was gone. To me, this was some bona fide Book of Acts stuff...signs, miracles and wonders. These apparent miracles helped to convince me that The Way was...the way. After all, I didn't see anything like this when I was attending Catholic mass. 

The red flags were rationalized away as a sign that I needed to increase my own commitment. The Way's doctrine of The Law of Believing always put the blame for bad things squarely on the shoulders of the person that they happened to, so of course I needed to ratchet up my own believing. The huge increase in people who attended our fellowship and experienced miraculous healing confirmed it. What was the next step? I made a twofold decision: to enroll in the Advanced Class that was taking place that summer in Rome City, Indiana and after that to sign up for the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program. A decision that would take me from my home of New York City and deposit me in a town of 5,000 in the Nebraska Panhandle. 

 Start from the beginning: Part I

Workin' Man - Part XV - Am I The Asshole?

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 I started as an assistant store director (ASD) in August 2001 at the 27th & Cornhusker Super Saver. The ASD position varied from store to store and the exact duties depended on who the Store Director was, the staffing level of the store, and the personality and priorities of the ASDs themselves. Some ASDs were basically glorified grocery managers, spending most of their time ordering groceries, working new items on the shelves, and building displays. Others viewed themselves more as trainers, devoting their energies to teaching customer service seminars and sitting in their offices a lot. As I alluded to before, my predecessor was the kind of ASD who was very hands-on and didn't delegate, but did everything himself. I saw myself as a trainer and developer of potential managers, but spent a lot of time on the sales floor as well. 

There was absolutely no training of any kind. If you were applying for this position it was assumed that you knew what the job was and how to do it! But no one really knew what an Assistant Store Director did, until they did it. It was a side affect of this ignorance that when an open ASD position was posted you might get a dozen people apply, most whom had no experience or qualifications. It was easy to see what a department manager did—they ran their department! But the work of an ASD was kind of like the drummer or the bassist in a band—most people never noticed them until they screwed up! My approach was in line with the theory of management where I was to get things done, rather than do things. I started out my first shift by just walking around and observing. One of the things that I observed was chaos.

At my previous store I was used to the store level managers having a monthly schedule. We were allotted one weekend off a month, and shifts were covered ahead of time if someone was on vacation. At the Cornhusker Super Saver schedules were not written down, and days off were covered at the last minute. I found out on the Wednesday of my first week that I was needed to work the swing shift on Friday! I got permission from Brian, the store director, to start using a written schedule and post it for several weeks in advance. This was helpful, especially since we had a few shift supervisors who worked primarily in other departments, and being able to give them their schedule well in advance helped scheduling in their main departments. 

The culture of the store was very laid back, which was great for morale, but was often bad for getting things done. There didn't seem to be any sense of urgency. The pricing team often took all day to get signs for the new ads put up. The cashiers' manager was allowed to work part time, no evenings or weekends The night crew had overtime hours in the triple digits. The cash office had turned into a hangout, and the smokers apparently were taking breaks every hour. My management philosophy could be laid back, provided everything was getting done and everyone was being treated equally. And that was the problem—not everything was getting done, and not everyone was being treated equally. Managers who have favorites generally don't think anyone will notice that they have favorites, if they even notice it themselves, and usually don't notice the resentment from other employees that favoritism engenders. For every person who thought that we had the best boss in the world there was another who was angry at his tendency to let people get away with not doing their jobs. 

I viewed part of my job as a manager as straddling the line between communicating company policy and speaking up for my employees when corporate policy was unreasonable. When corporate policy was clear, I had the responsibility to enforce that policy. Even though I have lived in Nebraska since 1980, I am still culturally a New Yorker, which means that I am direct in my communications. Nebraskans tend to be more roundabout in their interactions—and that was the conflict. The contrast between plain speaking, direct Tom, and smiling, nice guy, do whatever you want, Brian, was stark.  Employees and managers simply weren't used to being accountable for their time or actions. An early example involved our Produce Manager. The corporate office had recently decided to retire the old style box cutters in favor of a newer "safety cutter". There was a lot of pushback from veteran grocery people; that's what they were used to. (This was one of the few times when the corporate office knew what they were doing—the number of incidents of people cutting themselves with their own box cutter dropped sharply) One afternoon Patrick, my grocery manager, informed me that the Produce Manager was using the older version box cutters and was talking about how he was not going to switch. I went down to the sales floor and firmly reminded him of the new policy and confiscated his old school box cutter. Shortly thereafter the store director took me aside and chided me for "yelling". 

As a manager, there is one thing that was guaranteed to get me mad, possibly even to get me to transition into raising my voice, if not actual yelling, and that's arguing with me after I had given a legitimate assignment, or pointed out a problem. (The employees at this store responded to any interaction other than "good morning" by getting defensive and complaining about being yelled at)  I always told people that if I had my facts wrong, for example, if I was calling you out for being late, when the time clock showed that you weren't, then I would accept correction. But if you simply didn't like the policy, or didn't think you needed to do what I was telling you to do, then we'd have a problem. Before addressing something with an employee I had already considered whether what I had to say was legitimate, so in most cases I already knew that I was right. 

One week the sensitivity of the staff versus my direct approach came to a head. There were several incidents where I felt I was enforcing company policy and received pushback. The employees all complained to the Store Director. Brian found me in the office and he, as they say, ripped me a new asshole. I had never heard him yell before, and I only did one other time. In his mind, I was terrorizing the staff, taking out my frustrations with my own crappy life (I was going through a divorce) on them. I'm sure it looked that way to a team that was used to the laissez faire management style and saw my direct approach as "yelling". At the time, I considered that maybe I was too tough with people, and signed up for some counseling through the employee assistance program. I tried to discuss my plan to soften my approach, but my conflict averse boss didn't want to talk about it—I think he was embarrassed that he lost his temper! 

An incident one Friday morning illustrated how not everyone was super-sensitive. Ron, the Smokehouse Manager, had one of the product demonstrators sell brats or polish dogs for a dollar every Friday. One particular morning there was some confusion regarding where we would set up and Ron barked at a few of the guys who were setting up. Since they were only doing what I told them to do, I defended them. Ron and I ended up standing toe-to-toe in the office yelling (for real) at each other for about five minutes. When it was all done, we shook hands and got on with our day. He was a supporter and ally for the rest of my time in that store. 

Yet Nice Guy Brian surprised occasionally. On every Christmas Eve that I worked with him he fired someone. I remember the first one being the Video Manager, who was having videos shipped to her home and charging them to the store, the second one was a product demonstrator who met her boyfriend and spent an hour shopping while on the clock. I don't recall who the third one was, but I found out that after Brian was transferred to another store, he fired someone on his first Christmas Eve there! There was also an incident with a Deli employee who refused to shave according to company standards. (We were only allowed moustaches then, no beards—this guy had a thin beard that followed his jawline) Brian ignored the lack of shaving, but for some reason focused on his habit of wearing his baseball hat backwards. One evening Brian asked him nicely to put his hat on frontwards. As Brian walked away he saw the employee out of the corner of his eye flip his hat around backwards. Brian, for the second time that I was aware of, yelled, and fired the employee on the spot. He told me later that he asked himself "WWTD?" (What would Tom do?)

Throughout my whole time working with Brian I attempted to tone down my approach to people and rehabilitate my reputation as a hardass. The perception that people had of me was hurting my prospects of promotion—I had started applying for open Store Director positions—and the notes on my annual review referring to how I was rough with people negatively affected my chances. I worked hard at making my interactions more user friendly. Although sometimes I would just get frustrated and give up trying to do my job the way the company wanted me to. Everything changed, though, when we got a new store director and HR coordinator. In short order I became the good cop to Bill and Todd's bad cops. 

Start with Part I