Yup, I Got Fired (No Not Recently!)

Why did I get fired from the leaderless local grocery chain? Rumors abound, as they usually do. One tale was that I had an affair with a subordinate, another had me fist-fighting with a customer. I’m sure some people thought I was also responsible for the Russian hacking of the DNC. The incident for which I was fired was described by the company as “improper conduct toward a customer”, but more on that later.

I had been a manager at the leaderless local grocery chain for about 16 years. During the early years of that tenure I had acquired a reputation for being hot-headed and a bit of a “yeller”. That reputation was well-earned. Before being hired at the leaderless local grocery chain (henceforth LLGC) I had been involved in a religious group wherein dictatorial methods were employed by the putative leaders. Unfortunately, I had absorbed these toxic ways of managing and applied them in my interactions with subordinates. There was also the bad luck of being paired with a store manager, who, while a “nice guy”, was completely conflict-averse and was very happy to allow me to be the bad cop in any situation. He routinely promulgated policies which he did not enforce. When I enforced them, employees complained to him and he would usually overrule me. So, during these early years of my career at LLGC, the combination of my own abrasiveness and my boss’s spinelessness came together to brand me as someone who was rough on people and did not make good managerial decisions. 

In later years, I would see that certain members of upper management never forgot shortcomings, and once you acquired a “target on your back”, that target never fully went away.  

As a store-level manager the best thing to ever happen for me was a new manager. My old store manager was transferred to another store and an assistant store manager who had recently come to LLGC from another company was promoted to store manager at my store. Almost overnight my role in the store changed. When working as assistant to my first store manager I was the management “asshole”; but the new guy was like a bull in a China shop. He was aware of the first manager’s reputation as “nice guy” who let things go, and in his role as “new sheriff in town” quickly began to lay down the law and whip the place into shape (and other clichés). My job was now mediating between the new boss and all the employees who were in a state of shock over the new regime. For months I spent 45% of my time convincing my boss not to fire good employees who just didn’t understand the new way of doing things, 45% of my time convincing those same good employees to refrain from walking out or punching their new boss in the face, and the remaining 10% of my time doing all other aspects of my job. A year or so before the management change I had been making an effort to be a better manager and be less abrasive; that effort combined with the contrast between the old store manager and the new, gave me a new image. I was still perceived by employees as someone who spoke his mind and was direct in his interactions, but these personality traits were now considered positive rather than negative. After I was eventually transferred to another store many employees expressed their desire that I come back!

It should be emphasized that I had few problems with customers. In general I went out of my way to make things customer friendly, sometimes vocally opposing company policies that I thought were onerous to our shoppers. During the last meeting that I attended as a manager with LLGC I had an intense argument with the CFO about a proposed policy that would have made things easier for the accounting department, but that I predicted would be resisted by customers. As a store manager myself during my final three years with LLGC I pushed internal policies that went over and above what the company expected.

I would be dishonest if I neglected to mention that I occasionally ran afoul of company expectations during my time as an assistant store manager.  I was spoken to on a few occasions about my use of social media that the company thought reflected poorly on them, and was disciplined on one occasion for a prank gone bad. I was a bit of a wild card in general, not shy about challenging authority or about making wise-guy comments. But I had a goal of being promoted to the position of store manager, having applied and been turned down eight or nine times. After being passed over a number of times I asked the Vice-President of Operations, who was the immediate supervisor of store directors, for input and guidance on what I needed to do in order to be promoted. Eventually this paid off and I was finally promoted. I assumed that my previous indiscretions and issues were behind me, but I was mistaken. The target is never really off your back at LLGC.

After about a year and a half as store manager, things were looking good. I had a good team, I got along with my immediate supervisor and despite the usual array of managerial problems, I liked going to work every day. That all changed during my second Memorial Day weekend as a store manager.

I was working late on a Friday night. It was busy and the store was as packed as it ever got. One of the cashiers had made an error and had called me over to try to fix it. The error was such that fixing it at the register, while technically possible would have taken a long time, and I wasn’t really sure how to do it. The best way to fix it was to bring the customer to our customer service counter and have one of the clerks there take care of it. Without getting into all the details of who said what to whom, the customer was adamant that the problem be fixed at the register and accused me of being a racist for wanting to take care of the problem by having the cashier bring him over to the counter. He became increasingly loud and disruptive. Eventually I asked him to leave the premises, which he eventually did.

The following morning I discovered an email from this customer, a Ghanaian literature professor at UNL, sent to our home office accusing me of threatening him and using profanity in addition to the accusations of racism. He used the word “sinister”. Several employees who were present backed up my version of events, but this customer was insistent that the company take some action. The Directors of Loss Prevention and Human Resources conducted an investigation which dragged on for weeks. At one point I told my supervisor that I would write an apology to the customer, on the condition that they understood that it was to satisfy his demands (he had previously received an apology from a company representative, but stated that he wanted an apology from me personally) and was not to be construed as an admission of guilt on my part. I wrote the apology, vetted by the Director of Human Resources so that it would not open the company to legal action, but the customer did not accept it. At this point he appeared to consider anything less than my termination as unacceptable.

Eventually, after weeks of this, I had a visit from two members of senior management who still hadn’t made up their minds regarding what action to take. They brought a copy of a video, which only showed my feet and the feet of the customer, which allegedly indicated that I had aggressively invaded his personal space. I ended up being disciplined for this supposed aggressive action, as well as for tenuously related social media posts. The discipline included counselling and probation. In addition, my annual review was coming up. On a LLGC performance review if you received a “zero” in any category or the total score was below a certain benchmark you were given a ninety-day period to correct any problems that were identified; if you didn't, you were fired. This incident earned me a “zero” in one category and an overall low score. So in addition to the first probation, I had another ninety days on top of that. All of these probations dragged out the time frame that I was dealing with this to mid-November, almost six months after the original incident, six months during which I didn’t know if I would have a job when it all was over. Part of the terms of the probation was that I was to receive regular feedback from upper management regarding my progress, which I was not receiving and had to agitate for. I eventually received it, and at the end received a very good assessment from my supervisor, as well as another excellent one the following year.

It seemed that I had escaped unscathed, but that target on my back just got bigger; they never forget. The whole process soured me on the way things were done at LLGC. I don’t think I ever really recovered from it. There was a large portion of “I don’t give a shit” in my attitude from then on, and a reluctance to put up with abuse from either customers or upper management. 

The incident that sealed my fate occurred because I was a wedding officiant. One of my employees asked me if I would be willing to officiate a wedding in the store between two friends of hers, both women.  I agreed. The couple bought their flowers and cakes in the store and had a lunch in the Deli café as well. I thought that having an actual wedding in the store would be a cool thing to do. Being aware of possible prejudicial attitudes among our customers I did not post anything on Facebook, but did post pictures on our internal social media site. Very quickly the backlash started. The Director of Human Resources informed me that several other store managers had complained about me conducting personal business (my wedding business) on company time, despite me informing our office personnel that I was taking a fifteen-minute break to do this. When I was finally written up for this alleged infraction, a big deal was made of the fact that my name-tag was clearly visible in the pictures (as if no one would have known I was the store manager without the name tag), which was used as “proof” that I was on the clock while conducting this wedding. Somehow they found out that I had left a little early that day due to not taking a lunch break and chided me for that, pointing out that I was in the café “during lunchtime”. They did not see the contradiction between claiming that I was on company time and at lunch at the same time. It was also brought up that one of the brides had her dog with her – a service dog for a veteran of the military, but that fact that it was a service dog was ignored. At the same time I was criticized for attempting to hide it (I didn't get permission from my supervisor) and at the same time for publicizing it on the company social media site - contradictions abounded!

I found it hard to believe that any other store managers were complaining that they thought I was conducting private business on company time; I don’t think a store director existed that didn’t make doctor’s appointments or take care of other non-work-related business at work. I am convinced that any complaints were based on the fact that the marriage ceremony (which took all of 5 minutes) was between two women and not a man and a woman. The Human Resources Director let it slip that a store employee complained that this ceremony was “morally repugnant”, which confirmed my suspicions.

One thing that this HR Director was very, very good at was protecting the company from legal action. I am convinced that this was when they decided to fire me, but that they knew that I would easily be able to collect unemployment insurance. I was informed that any future problems, no matter the nature would result in my termination.

One of the things that I insisted on as store manager was that cashiers bag as they go if they did not have a bagger helping them, rather than waiting until the whole order was rung up and then bagging. The reasons for this are too boring to get into, but the short version is that I decided that it made better customer service. I had two checkers, women on the far side of forty, who resisted this policy. In addition, they frequently spent time chatting with customers while another customer stood waiting for their orders to be scanned. On one particular day my assistant store manager and I observed one of these cashiers talking to a customer at length while a large order was waiting to be started. As it went on and on, we wondered aloud what was going on. Eventually (we later determined by watching video that it was over five minutes) I went over to find out what the delay was. Now in telling this story over the last year or so, some people have assumed that I was abrupt or abrasive in my intervention. On the contrary, I was very aware that I needed to avoid portraying this as a failing on the part of my employee in front of the customer (even if it was) and that I needed to give off a friendly vibe. So, smiling and relaxed, I asked the cashier “so, what’s happening here?” The customer immediately became aggressive and confrontational, yelling and using profanity. As he walked out the door he leaned into me and elbowed me. My assistant store manager backed me up, but LLGC had their excuse for firing me and they did.

Oddly enough, it took them another week to fire me. In the interim I “volunteered” at the company sponsored Boo at the Zoo and attended an all-day seasonal merchandising training session. An hour before the training was to end my supervisor asked me to come see him before I left, since I was planning to start a week-long vacation the next day. I was fired at that meeting.

So I wasn’t fired for any of the numerous rumors that went around, but for officiating a same-sex wedding that some bigots got offended at, they then waited for another incident that would look better to the Department of Labor when they tried to deny me unemployment benefits.