Workin' Man - Part XXXI - If It Wasn't For the People...

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 

 For the most part working in the Department of Revenue was a vast improvement over working in retail. One reason was that I didn't have to deal with the public. The entitlement of the typical shopper was slowly sending me into a low-level rage every work day. I worked most holidays. I worked at least part of every weekend. My schedule at Revenue was Monday through Friday. We had numerous holidays off, including Arbor Day, which people outside of Nebraska never heard of! At first I was scheduled 8:00am - 4:30pm, which meant that I was home before the evening rush hour. Eventually my schedule moved earlier and earlier until I was working 6:30am - 3:00pm. This gave me more "off" time in the afternoons and evenings. In many ways the stress level was considerably lower. But I still had to deal with people — coworkers and managers. 

Most of the people around me were a pleasure to work with. We helped each other solve problems, showed each other tricks and shortcuts, and worked well as a team. There were exceptions though. I referred to, in the last article, my perception that there was a caste system in place in the department. I should say, not the whole department, but definitely my part of it. The Incentives Group, which I was a part of, was part of Audit, which in turn was a division of Compliance, which also included Collections, Sales Tax Auditors and Legal. There was a clear divide between the auditors and the examiners. Auditors were always considered to be superior to the examiners, no matter the level of knowledge and experience. And since the auditor position required a level of academic achievement that the examiner position did not, it was impossible for an examiner to be promoted to auditor without earning a Bachelors Degree in accounting. This encouraged an attitude of superiority by the auditors over the examiners. This was exacerbated by the practice of examiners' work being reviewed and approved by the auditors. 

Accounting procedures required that any processes be reviewed by two individuals. In a business, the person writing the checks is not the same person keeping the books. Every decision is run by another person. In theory, this served as a level of training for new examiners since there really wasn't any training other than "here's your desk". To be fair, I had some auditors who gave me good feedback and helped me get better at my job without making feel like a second-class employee. Since initial training was virtually non-existent, this  effectively was our training; making mistakes, getting them identified and corrected, then moving on to new mistakes! On the other hand there were auditors who it seemed like went out of their way to make us examiners look stupid. There were two who were egregiously bad. Coincidently they were both named Kim. 

Kim #1 was an experienced auditor, she knew a lot, but existed in a state of perpetual simmering anger. To describe her as continually mad at the world doesn't do justice to the level of rage that constantly radiated from her. The story I heard was that a few years earlier there was a flattening of the organizational chart and that several layers of managers, supervisors and executives had been eliminated, Kim's position among them. For some odd reason her passive aggressive payback for this demotion was to print out everything and save it in her cubicle. Every email, every report, every audit. Every flat service was covered in tottering towers of paper. Unlike other auditors who attempted to educate the newer examiners with feedback, Kim had two main approaches. One was to bark information at you so that you were so glad to get away from her that you weren't entirely sure if your question had been answered. The other was to decline to give you feedback when you made an mistake and just correct it herself. This ensured that you would continue to make the same mistake. Early in my tenure I was making an easily corrected mistake that Kim never told me I was making. After around six months I made the same mistake with a different auditor, who did correct me. I could have learned the right way six months earlier if I had gotten feedback from Kim. One of the things that Kim was in charge of was random samples.  

When we reviewed refund claim we didn't look at every invoice, just a sample based on whether the sales tax was over a pre-determined amount. This was called the "scope". The smaller invoices which we did not look at were referred to as "below scope" and were accepted without review. Except that periodically we would randomly sample 20-25 below scope invoices to ensure that they were legitimate. One of the examiners was responsible to select the random sample using a random number generator, which Kim would then approve. Except that Kim was extremely slow at approving them. I found that I was often completely done with a refund claim review before I had received approval for a random sample. So I started taking the preliminary sample listing that had been prepared for Kim's approval and using that. Eventually Kim figured out what I was doing and called me on it. Funny thing, when she complained to Mary, our manager, about my actions, it was decided that the examiners could create their own random samples instead of waiting for Kim to get around to approving them. On another occasion Kim tried to throw me under the bus for some minor paperwork error, showing up at my desk with the manager and accusing me of failing to follow her directions. Two other auditors came to my rescue and stood up for me. I learned to stand up for myself and push back on her bullying and eventually she stopped bothering me. It may have had something to do with me catching a $400,000 aging error that she had approved which required us getting that money back from a taxpayer. She retired before the pandemic. I run into her periodically and we get along just fine now!

Kim #2 was not outwardly aggressive. She was an auditor as well, but with much less experience than Kim #1. This lack of experience didn't dissuade her from lording it over the examiners. She was the auditor assigned to approve withholding claims. These were claims where taxpayers in incentive programs could receive a percentage of the withholding that they had paid to the state. In addition to this legitimate responsibility, she somehow believed that as an auditor, she was my supervisor, and could direct how I spent my time. The way the work group was structured was that all the examiners in our group, Incentives, and the Personal Income Tax and Collections (PITAC) group had a supervisor, who in turn reported to a manager. The auditors in both groups reported directly to the manager. Auditors had responsibility to review and approve examiners' work, but had no authority over how they spent their time, or any other supervisory tasks. Kim regularly questioned my schedule and priorities. Eventually I simply stopped answering her questions. 

There was one incident involving Kim that resulted in my one and only disciplinary meeting. One of the programs that I worked involved distributing credits to an incentive company's shareholders. I handled individual taxpayers while Kim handled partnerships and corporations. One day I found a folder on my desk that looked like a shareholder distribution for a partnership, so I walked it over to Kim #2's desk and left it there, since she wasn't at work yet. A few hours later one of the other examiners brought the folder back to me. She told me that Kim dumped it on her desk and told her to give it back to me, since it was obviously mine. The examiner relayed some of Kim's other remarks which were rude and condescending. I was irritated that Kim couldn't handle this herself, as well as the content of the remarks. I tossed the folder onto my desk and told the bearer of bad news that I didn't want to hear any more since it was just pissing me off. I just chalked it up to typical Kim rudeness and delusions of grandeur. About a week later I received a meeting invite that included my immediate supervisor, my manager...and no one else. After some weird small talk, they told me that they had received a complaint about me: that I had yelled at the other examiner, telling to stop pissing me off and threw the folder onto my desk. I decided to refrain from arguing and told them that the version they received was mostly accurate and that it wouldn't happen again. I never found out who complained, but it wasn't the other examiner.

One of the things that I thought I could bring to the table at the department was that I brought the perspective of someone who had been in the business world for my whole life, while most of the people around me had spent decades working for the government. Unlike many politicians, I didn't think that government should be run like a business, but I did think I could help them understand why businesses did what they did. I was sadly mistaken. Whenever I would attempt to give some perspective regarding how private businesses conducted themselves, I was shut down and my point of view dismissed. One particular example involved requirements for a new incentive program. Applicants were required to provide a copy of their Paid Time Off (PTO) policy. In a meeting one afternoon we were reviewing the information that this company sent us, including their PTO policy. My manager was insistent that they were not following the directions and that we needed to go back and ask for their complete PTO policy. I spoke up, pointing out that what they gave us was exactly what any private company would have as a PTO policy...based on my experience working outside of government. It was if I hadn't spoken. The conversation rolled on and I was ignored. 

To be fair, the stress level was considerably lower than it had been in retail, but the irritation level, the way the lack of respect and dismissal of my contributions, affected my work ethic, was not insignificant. In addition to this, my annual reviews, while never bad, were unhelpful and contained no detail about how I could improve or advance. After about six years, things changed...somewhat.

Start with Part I

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXIX - Sex, Cults and Rock & Roll

Before I was branded as a failure by Way leadership I was being groomed for bigger and better things. At the time, Nebraska had a fairly healthy Way presence. Not as numerically entrenched as New York, but a branch of seven twig fellowships was well established. I was given the position of Assistant Twig Coordinator for the group that met at our home, mentored directly by Carol D., a Way Corps graduate. Within a short period of time we had gathered enough people to run our own Power For Abundant Living (PFAL) Class. I was appointed co-coordinator of the class with Mary H, a Way Corps student who was on Leave of Absence (LOA) Status due to missing tuition payments. (This was fairly common; most people who were released from the Way Corps were kicked out for financial reasons; it was rare indeed for someone to be separated or even have their application rejected, for any other reason). It was a heady time. My performance as Class Coordinator was a success, and I was (I thought) on the fast track to leadership. 

After a few months, Ronnie S, our State Coordinator, had the brilliant idea that we should split each of the twigs into two. This was supposedly because our numbers had grown so fast and the added centers would cause our numbers to grow exponentially. I found out much later, that this was merely a ploy to exaggerate Ronnie's success at outreach. He spun off a portion of the branch into a "twig area" (basically a mini-branch) led by Carol D, the Way Corps grad, when new leadership came in the following year, it quickly became apparent that most of these fellowships existed only on paper. One of the splits was my own fellowship. Four of us, me, my roommate Tim, Pat N, a single mother of two boys and Beth, and brand-new PFAL grad, were to form the new twig, meeting in Pat's home in a trailer court on the west side of Lincoln. I was terrified of the new responsibility. I had been a Twig Coordinator before, in New York, but back then I had inherited a large, vibrant, functioning group; here I was put in charge of three other people and expected to shepherd the growth myself. At first it went pretty well. Next door to Pat there was another single mom with two teenage boys, living with her mother. We signed all four up for the next PFAL class, basically doubling our group size. Carol's twig provided another four people and we ran our second PFAL class, again with me running the show. 

Here's where I'm going to divert a bit from my own personal story and talk about The Way's attitude toward sex. At the very least, it was confusing. They didn't frown on pre-marital sex. Weirdly though, they did frown on unmarried couples living together. To clarify, people who were strictly roommates, like in WOW or Way Home situations, was okay, but if you were "a couple" and presumably having sex, that was referred to as "shacking up" or "playing house" and was strongly discouraged. I am aware of several instances where a couple was living together, but in order to get married in a Way ceremony, they had to make separate living arrangements until the wedding. I can't think of any scenario where this makes sense. 

This is something that I will get into in more depth in later installments, but in the higher echelons of Way leadership, infidelity was rampant and sexual abuse was not unheard of. Although how much this filtered down to the lower levels depended a lot on the personality of the local leadership, their own views of sex and how much control they could hold over you using sex. Ronnie S, our local head honcho appeared somewhat morally conservative; although there was a lot of extramarital sex going on among the younger Way adherents he either didn't know it was going on, or only chose to address it if he could use it to exert influence over you. 

There hadn't been many opportunities for sex while I was a WOW. I personally steered away from romantic or sexual relationships with roommates for the same reasons that workplace romances are often a bad idea — once they end, that person is still right there, every day. And there just weren't that many other options, especially since we were being actively persecuted in Sidney! When I arrived in Lincoln, with many choices for pairing off with young, attractive women and most important to a cult member, like minded in regard to Way doctrine, I was, to put it politely, rarin' to go. But, back to the leadership arc. 

Not long after I was given the responsibility of running a new twig fellowship, I was moved from one Way Home to another across town, and made Way Home Coordinator. This was a bit odd, since there was a twig fellowship running out of this Way Home and I wasn't going to run it — I was still the coordinator of the group at Pat's house on the other side of Lincoln. My new residence was definitely not within walking distance of the location of the fellowship I was coordinating, and I didn't have a car. I borrowed my new roommate's motorcycle on occasion, but due to the distance, I spent more time over at Pat's house than at my own home. Mike and Rosemarie (the same Rosemarie from Sidney and Kearney) and their twig coordinator Mary did their thing and I did mine. This move took place in February. 

It was around late April or May when I was informed that due to my not meeting financial obligations I would not be entering the Way Corps. Also around this time, the four people that we had signed up for and graduated from PFAL decided that they no longer wanted to be involved in The Way. Leadership, as I had stated in the previous chapter, had decided that I was a failure. My fellowship was dissolved, and I no longer had any leadership position. Around this time, it came to the attention of Ronnie S that I had been involved in a relationship with Pat N. Everything that had gone "wrong" was blamed on this relationship, and things going "wrong" was presented as evidence that the relationship was the cause. 

Seeing that my future as an up and coming Way leader wasn't going to happen, Pat and I decided that we should get married. Ronnie refused to officiate the ceremony and we got married by a judge at the County-City Building. We were nominally still part of The Way, and still participated, but we were "tainted" and our presence was only barely tolerated. The owner of the Way Home I lived in was a Way person who lived out of state. I got her permission to continue living there after Pat and I got married, which Ronnie was furious about, since he had already assigned a new bunch of Way Home people there. But Ronnie was reassigned that August and a new state leader came in. 

Then I got fired from my job and ended up four months behind on my rent. 

You would think that a Christian community would support one of their own when bad times hit. But the way The Way viewed things was that bad things happened due to your lack of "believing" — so it was my fault, evidence of some spiritual malady that was causing my problems. Instead of help, I received lectures until one day I lost my temper at the new leader's wife and we didn't attend another Way function for seven years. We moved out of the home that we rented from a Way person and moved on with our lives.

Except we didn't. 

Despite not being actively involved in The Way, Waybrain was still very strong with us. We had internalized many of the cultish assumptions and ended up back in their arms in 1990, finding a Way that, if possible, had become even more cultish.

Start from the beginning: Part I

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXVIII - Apprentice Way Corps

I've lived in Lincoln Nebraska since August 1981, 45 years as of when I am writing this blog post. I'm often asked why I moved from New York to Nebraska and I often just lie. At least I did until recently when I started just telling people that I came here as part of a cult. It's made for interesting conversations! 

Back when I was actively involved in The Way I would say that I was sent here as part of a missionary program, people understood that. After I left, more often than not I would tell people that I travelled around a lot in my youth and settled down in Lincoln when I met my first wife and started a family. Sometimes I would say that I was in a cult. It all depended on who I was talking to and whether I felt they really wanted to know or were just making conversation. After my divorce I shied away from a relationship with a woman whom I liked a lot and thought I had a lot in common with because she couldn't understand how I had "been so stupid" to get involved in a cult. 

Towards the end of my year long commitment to participate in the WOW Ambassador program I made two decisions that in retrospect were idiotic decisions. Despite the utter mess that my year as a WOW had been, I (1) Decided to apply to the Way Corps and (2) Sign up for a year to live in a Way Home, an in-state program overseen by The Way's Limb (i.e. state) Coordinator. The Way Corps was The Way's supposed leadership training program. Virtually every level of Way leadership was a graduate of The Way Corps, rather than rising up organically in the community. At the time Way Corps training was a four year process. The first year, called the Apprentice Year, took place wherever you happened to live. You were encouraged to take on leadership roles: running twig fellowships, coordinating classes, and being active in local Way events. You were also expected to get your tuition together, either by saving it yourself, or, as was quite common, getting "sponsorships" (later called "spiritual partners") to help defray the costs. (more on that later) The Way Home program was similar to the WOW program with a few exceptions: you could work full time if desired, you were not prohibited from leaving your assigned area, and your witnessing time was up to you. Other than that, you were at the beck and call of Way leadership and were expected to put the needs of The Way before your own. 

The Way Home where I lived for the first half of the Way year (August-February) was in a older neighborhood. It was a three bedroom home with a finished basement. The basement had another bedroom, a family room and a laundry room. My roommates were Carol, 28 years old and a graduate of the Way Corps; Tim and Joan, both early twenties, who had been WOWs in Nebraska the previous year and were Apprentice Corps as I was; and Lisa, a senior in high school. I was assigned to be the Assistant Twig Coordinator to Carol for the fellowship that met in our home. 

In retrospect Way Corps tuition seemed ridiculously low. If I remember correctly, it was $4,000 per each year "in residence", the second and fourth years when you were at a Way property actively being "trained". $1,000 was due around 6 months before you started "in residence", the rest due at intervals during the year. But I looked up an inflation calculator online and saw that the purchasing power of a 1982 dollar is around 3 times what it is now, so in current dollars the tuition would have been around $12,000 per year. I have no idea if the tuition increased in subsequent years. To put the do-ability of coming up with this in perspective, the first full-time job I had in 1982 paid around $13,000 a year. I was tithing to The Way, so subtract $1,300 and you've got $11,700. The tuition of $4,000 would have been 34% of a typical annual wage for a non-skilled, non-professional job in those days, and most of us Way Corps candidates were in our early twenties, not college graduates and a lot of us were working part-time jobs. I have no idea if this was a reasonable amount for room and board, as well as the purported training, but it certainly was outside the realm of possibility for the typical Way kid. So the solution was sponsorships/spiritual partners. 

Sponsors would commit to contributing a set amount every month to help a Way Corps person defray the tuition costs. Some candidates had well-off friends or relatives who supported their commitment to The Way and contributed all or most of the tuition up front. Most of us had to spend time begging for money. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you take the long view) my relatives were definitely not supporting my involvement in The Way and most of my Way friends were in the same financial boat that I was. The end result was that when the first installment was due, I was a long way from $1,000 and was removed from Apprentice Corps status. 

I felt like a failure.

I was told that I was a failure.

But there's a lot more to tell about the year from August 1981 to August 1982, which I will talk about in Part XXIX.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXIX

Workin' Man - Part XXX - State Deep State

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 

 My blizzard of job applications included four positions, if I remember correctly, in Nebraska State government. I received an email back from one of them, informing me that I was being considered, and was called in for an interview for a "Fiscal Compliance Analyst". The description was somewhat vague, but the requirements listed were all things that I had, including post-secondary coursework in accounting. One of the benefits that I took advantage of at B&R Stores was their tuition reimbursement program. They paid for a good portion of the two-year Associate Degree in Business with an Accounting Focus. I completed my degree during my first year as a Store Director at Russ's. This degree got me in the door at the Department of Revenue. 

When Revenue Human Resources called to schedule an interview I had completely forgotten even the vague job description, so I went into that interview in the dark about what I was actually applying for! The interviewers, the Manager of the Incentives Group of the Audit Division and the Senior Auditor in that group, went through a list of generic questions, most of which I had asked people myself during the many job interviews I conducted in my management roles. I was asked how this position fit into my long range career plan. At fifty-seven years old, my career plan was anything but long range. I honestly told them that it didn't, but that I had read the job description (I had, even though I couldn't remember what was in it!) and I thought the requirements fit with my skill set. I then asked if the next question was going to be "Where do you see yourself in five years?" — which it was! I told them that I hoped that I'd be in a job where I was valued and where I enjoyed going to work every day. I later found out that my age was a plus, since many younger people right out of college left after getting enough experience to move to a private accounting firm for a much higher salary. They figured at age fifty-seven I wasn't a job hopper. They were right.

A week or so later I received a job offer and began my new career on January 11, 2016. 

The work group to which I was assigned handled tax incentives. Nebraska is one of many states that offer tax incentives to encourage businesses to locate in our state. In general, a company would agree to increase their employment and investment by a set amount and in return receive credits that could be used to offset income tax liability or receive refunds on sales taxes or state withholding tax. To utilize their credits a claim was submitted listing eligible sales tax transactions and claiming a refund on the amount of sales tax. Our group was made up of examiners and auditors. Examiner, which was my position, was the entry level slot. An examiner did all the initial reviews of refund claims which were then checked over by auditors. Auditors also audited the businesses who applied to be on an incentive program. An auditor needed to have a Bachelors Degree in Accounting, so for an examiner to be promoted to an auditor position, they would need to receive a a degree; there were many examiners who remained in that position for 30 or 40 years. I often referred to the Audit Division separation between examiners and auditors as a caste system. (more on my perception of Revenue caste later).

When a taxpayer in an incentive program applied for a refund of sales tax, the examiners were the first to review the claims. The taxpayer would submit a listing of all the invoices for which they were claiming a refund of sales taxes, as well as pdf images of a percentages of those invoices. The examiner's job was to confirm several items on each invoice:

1. The invoice was for a transaction that took place at the taxpayer's business address ("at the project")
2. The tax on the invoice matched what was claimed
3. The vendor who charged the sales tax was licensed for sales tax in Nebraska
4. The transaction was properly paid tax, i.e. not an exempt transaction
5. Not previously paid on an earlier claim

There were other, more arcane things, to look for, but those were the basics. In retrospect, it should have been fairly simple to train a new examiner to review a sales tax refund claim. But for some reason new examiner training was designed to be as complicated as possible, with little information on how to actually review a claim. Training started out with a few days of generic training — first with instruction on things like benefits, and moving on to audit-specific training. The problem was that the audit-specific training was very specific...it applied to auditors, not to examiners! I tried to absorb as much as I could but I'm glad I didn't try too hard, since it had nothing to do with me! 

The next phase of my training involved sitting in a conference room listening to a senior auditor go through a Power Point presentation. There was so much information that I was having trouble keeping up, or even understanding what the point of much of it was. It certainly gave me virtually no information on how to review a refund claim. Years later, when I became responsible for training new examiners, I referred to it as long on theory, but short on practice. It didn't help that the person who was supposed to be training us (another examiner started on the same day as I did) started out the training by admitting that she wasn't very good at training. After our completely useless training Jessica (my coworker who started when I did) and I attempted to review the claim that we were assigned. Since we had received no practical instruction regarding what we should be looking for, we agonized over every invoice. Attempts to get clarification elicited curt answers that were only partially helpful. Jessica was convinced that we were going to get fired because we didn't know what we were doing. I knew better. While a trainee is responsible to learn the job, the greater responsibility is on the shoulders of the trainer, who is tasked with ensuring that the new employee has the tools needed to do their assigned job. We were not given those tools. 

My own learning style is hands-on. I learn best by doing the work and learning from my mistakes and from feedback from my supervisors and trainers. Part of my process is paring away the information that I don't need and concentrating on what is important to get the job done. For example, the main incentive program consisted of six tiers. Each tier had different requirements and different benefits for meeting those requirements. With one minor exception a review of a refund claim could be completed without understanding the difference among the tiers, or even knowing what tier the taxpayer's project was. So I ignored this information. In fact, over nine years later, as I approached retirement, I still didn't know the details of the different tiers without looking them up and it didn't affect my ability to work claims, or eventually to approve and sign off on them. 

One challenge of working for the state didn't directly involve the work that I was doing, but the fact that it was extremely difficult to find a parking spot. There were two state owned garages, and several surface parking lots, but there was a waiting list for all of them. Most of the streets around the State Office Building had metered parking. When I started work parking was $2.00 an hour, soon to go up to $2.50 and eventually $3.00. For an 8½ hour day, a $17.00 per day expense ($340 for the month!) was not reasonable (private garages were $10.00 for the whole day) so while on the parking spot waiting list I had to scout around in the morning for a street without meters. After trying different spots at varying distances from the office I finally settled on a couple of streets that were pretty close. There was a couple of streets two blocks long running east-west, crossed by another street running a block north and a block south. At its closest it was two blocks from the office. I found if I arrived after 6:15 and before 6:45 there was plenty of available spots to park. The streets were full of apartments and apparently most of the residents left for work between 6:15 and 6:45! I parked there every day until I finally got a garage spot the week before we were all sent home in April 2020 due to the Covid pandemic.

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXXI

Workin' Man - Part XXIX - Chain of Command

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 

 While I've got my time at the state on hold until after I retire, I thought I'd revisit some specific categories of previous jobs.

One of the more frustrating aspects of working for B&R Stores was the lack of any clear "chain of command". If you were hired as an entry-level employee you might think it was pretty clear — there was a Store Director at the top of the pyramid, with an Assistant Store Director and a Human Resources Coordinator the next step down, followed by department managers. If you worked in the Dairy Department you received your assignments from the Dairy Manager, who in turn reported to the Store Director. The Store Director reported to the Vice President of Operations, or later, the District Manager (and he reported to the VP of Operations) and the Operations VP reported to the President. In theory, pretty simple. But the waters were muddied by the presence of Department Directors.

Department Directors were corporate personnel who were responsible for a single department in all stores. For example, the Produce Director was responsible for setting prices in all Produce Departments, deciding on product variety, overseeing training of department managers, and setting department standards. Every department had its own director. In theory, it wasn't a bad system, but as in most areas of life, theory and practice did not always align. The authority and responsibility of the Store Director for all that happened within the four walls of a store often competed with actions by a Department Director. One area was hiring. 

If there was a department manager opening, the Store Director would interview and make the final decision for who would be hired for the position. Assistant Department Mangers from his and other stores might apply, or there might be outside candidates. For internal candidates the Store Director might seek feedback from the applicant's manager or from the Department Director. But on many occasions the Department Director would unilaterally decide to transfer Department Managers from one store to another, in which case the Store Director had no input into his new staff member. If this wasn't bad enough, when there was an opening in a high sales volume store the Department Director would transfer a Department Manager from a smaller store to the high volume store, leaving the low volume store with the opening. Did the Department Director then fill the now open position? Nope. It was up to the Store Director, who previously did not have an open position, to run ads, conduct interviews, and fill the position. This happened to me multiple times when I was the Store Director at Russ's Van Dorn, especially when corporate knew that they were closing the store. 

Things would get confusing when Department Directors would issue conflicting orders to their Department Managers. The Grocery Department Director might instruct his managers to cross-merchandise by placing some items in specific places in the Meat Department, while the Meat Director would prohibit non-meat items from being placed in those spots, leaving it up to the Store Director to mediate. Sometimes Department Directors would encourage their managers to act as if they were independent entities. I sat in on a meeting of Meat Department Managers where they were explicitly told to disregard certain orders from their Store Directors. 

Human Resources often acted as if they were completely separate from store chain of command as well. In theory, Human Resources Coordinators were responsible for hiring entry level employees, setting up interviews for management openings, processing vacation requests and payroll, and keeping the paperwork flowing. Technically within the chain of command of a store, in practice they answered to Donna, the Corporate Human Resources Director. With a few exceptions, the Human Resources people had not come up "through the ranks" and usually had limited actual hands-on retail experience. Also with few exceptions, the Human Resources Coordinators were looked at almost as spies from corporate and not fully trusted by store management. 

There was also a turf war waged between Corporate Human Resources and Operations. This came to a head about halfway through my time in B&R.  Tom, the Vice President of Operations decided that the position of store level Human Resources Coordinator would be eliminated and replaced by a second Assistant Store Director, who would be responsible for human resources.  Donna was implacably opposed to this, but it went forward anyway. This resulted in two related problems. You had some Human Resources Coordinators applying for Assistant Store Director positions, thinking that it was the same job with a different title, when in reality the second Assistant Store Director was responsible for Human Resources and several "Center Store" departments. Most of these people had no retail or department management experience. The other problem was Assistant Store Directors suddenly being in charge of human resources with no previous experience. Dan, the first Assistant Store Director to be be thrust into this role asked for help from corporate HR, but received none. Donna, the Human Resources Director, forbade any Human Resources Coordinators from helping him, setting him up for failure. It didn't help that at the same time Ron, the Operations VP's assistant, was embedded in the store and mandating how much time Dan could spend in each of his new roles. 

The worst was the lack of coordination at the corporate level. The Triumvirate at the top consisted of Pat Raybould, company President, Tom, Vice President of Operations, and Larry, whose title escapes me, but who was in charge of the various department directors. One of the three would come into the store, walk around, make some observations that required you to reorder your priorities and create extra work. An hour later another of the three would stop by and tell you something different, often contradicting what the other one had told you! When Pat's father, Russ, was still alive, he was an additional factor, often just yelling about some minor issue. Of the three, Larry usually made the most sense, but he was obsessed with dress code — hair style, jeans versus dress pants, tattoos, facial hair. It was considered good news when all three of them showed up together, because at least we'd get one non-contradictory set of instructions. 

The way things were done encouraged a culture where no one really knew what was expected of them, since the rule book was constantly shifting.

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXX

Workin' Man - Part XXVIII - Loss Prevention

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 

When I first wrote this I was still employed at the Nebraska Department of Revenue, so I thought I'd revisit some specific categories of previous jobs. 

One of the departments at B&R Stores was the Loss Prevention Department, originally known as "Security". Like most of the B&R top dogs in the early days, the head of Loss Prevention was a friend of B&R founder Russ Raybould, who kinda-sorta was qualified. The qualifications of Loss Prevention Director Bob was that he had been a guard at the State Penitentiary. If you have access to an image of "Boss Hogg" from the old television show The Dukes of Hazzard, minus the white western hat you know exactly what Bob looked like. Up through the nineties, retail stores weren't as concerned about lawsuits from alleged shoplifters, so the job was much more physical back then. Not for portly Bob, but his crew were a bunch of cowboys. 

Since catching shoplifters was the low hanging fruit of Loss Prevention, that's what they focussed on. They would wander around the stores on the lookout for thieves. One Loss Prevention Officer has a unique approach. He had thinning white hair, and looked older than his fortyish years. He would hobble around the store with a walker, waiting to spot a shoplifter and would spring into action, using his skill as a judo black belt to subdue any resistance. Most of the Loss Prevention crew just seemed to view it as an easy part-time job where they could wander around the store for a few hours, or sit in the camera room watching security video. The fact that they were outside the in-store chain of command imbued many of the them with an outsized sense of their own importance. They didn't answer to the Store Director, and their own boss was never on site with them. A few of them spent their shifts flirting with the high school and college girls who made up a lot of the second shift staff. When I asked that one particular Romeo refrain from talking to the female employees when they were supposed to be worked he arrogantly lectured me that he was "working sources" or some other pseudo-cop bullshit. The same guy was caught lurking in the corner of the cutting room of the meat department and when challenged by the meat cutter told him to mind his own business. I threw him out of the store. 

One night while I was working the swing shift at the Cornhusker Super Saver I couldn't find our Loss Prevention guy. The clerk in the Spirits Department, where he had last been seen, told me that he had left at 6:15, which was about a half hour earlier. I went upstairs to check out his sign-in sheet and saw that he has signed out at 7:00, which was still 15 minutes in the future! I also noted that next to the time were my initials! He was fired the next day. 

During my last year at the Van Dorn Russ's Carl, the guy who had succeeded Bob aka "Boss Hogg" as the LP Director, was always doing stings, which he called "audits". There was the ever popular sending in a minor to buy alcohol, but a new one popped up one weekend. The "mission" was to have a Loss Prevention walk into areas in the store where non-employees weren't supposed to be and see if anyone stopped them. This particular afternoon I started get calls that a creepy looking guy was walking into back rooms and just staring. When asked what he wanted he would simply walk away. When challenged by a manager he flashed his little tin Loss Prevention badge. I called Carl to complain and received a condescending lecture.

I wonder if these guys ever actually prevented any loss. 

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXIX

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXVII - No Kool-Aid Necessary

One of the things that people misunderstand about cults is that what makes a cult cultish isn't what they believe, it's what they do. 

You want to believe that the earth was populated by aliens from the planet Xrts'di!c 3 billion years ago, or that you get reincarnated as a rabbit? So what? As long as those beliefs aren't hurting anyone I have no problem with them.  Most Christians believe a number of things in common, despite differences in church governance and ritual. One of those things is that God exists as something called The Trinity, which oversimplified means that God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit are all God, not three separate gods and that neither is superior to or pre-existed the other. The doctrinal nuances and niceties are over most people's heads and what people actually believe would probably be considered heretical by the theologians. 

The Way International didn't believe that God was a Trinity, but that Jesus was simply a man. For many mainstream Christians this was enough to label them a cult. Just as those same Christians labelled Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses as cults due to their non-mainstream view of God and Jesus. I'm not going to discuss the details here regarding why The Way International believed that Jesus wasn't God, because I don't think it is relevant to their categorization as a cult. My own view is that the writers of the Gospels and Epistles, far from being inspired by God to put together a coherent narrative, were all fallible human beings who had different ideas about the nature of God and Jesus. Their disagreement needed to be explained somehow — early Orthodox-Catholic Christians harmonized the contradictions by coming up with The Trinity; Unitarians, ignoring or explaining away verses they didn't like, came up with their own doctrine. 

No, what makes a cult is something that has little to do with the minutia of doctrine. Is there a charismatic leader who is deferred to? Does it claim to have special knowledge that no one else has access to? Does it work to cut you off from previous ties? Does it attempt to regiment and control aspects of your life? By no means does it have to be as extreme as the People's Temple in Guyana. It doesn't have to require you to dress in yellow robes like the Hare Krishna group. You aren't necessarily locked away in a "compound" like David Koresh's Branch Davidians. Usually the signs are a lot more subtle. 

When I was first involved in The Way while living in New York the cultish nature wasn't as apparent to me. The Long Island and New York City fellowships had grown quickly and organically and for a long time were functionally independent. When I was in the WOW Ambassador program I rationalized the level of control being because I was in a structured program, it wasn't until I moved to Lincoln that I saw that living a normal life, i.e. job, education, relationships, etc, was going to be hampered by involvement with The Way. 

Start from the beginning: Part I