Managers Part XXI - Delegation & Assignments

One of the core concepts of getting control of your time as a manager is learning to delegate. Before you can do that, you have to understand what delegation is and how it's different from assignment. 

One way to look at assigning tasks, is that it's the manager constantly telling people what to do. They complete one task, then are given another, or are given a list of tasks to be completed in a set time frame. Delegation, on the other hand, occurs when a manager communicates her expectations, draws the big picture, and gives her subordinates the freedom to make it happen in their own way. There is a continuum of assignment/delegation, with a new employee figuratively having their hand held as they go through their day, being told what every step is. This progresses to asking for assignments and then to knowing what to do, but checking with the boss. Eventually, the subordinate is able to self-assign without checking with his manager.

Delegation is not to be confused with abdication of responsibility. I have seen plenty of hands-off managers who are loved by their employees because they "let them do their jobs", when closer inspection would reveal that they aren't doing their jobs, they're doing something that's not their jobs, but the manager is too conflict-averse to actually manage them. These employees might benefit from some direction from their manager, but in its absence they set their own standards. These standards might be convenient for them, but also might be out of sync with the standards and goals of the company. In situations like this neither delegation nor assignment is taking place. The employees who realize that they have the freedom to spend their work days however they like will become resentful when some manager higher up the chain of command tries to correct things, or a new manager, who knows how to manage, comes on board. The employees who expect to be assigned tasks will, in the absence of any direction, badger the manager for instruction, ironically tying up his day micromanaging. Thus the management pyramid is turned upside down.

One morning a few months back I entered a local grocery store and immediately became aware of two things that were out of place. One was sign on the front of the building announcing that a fundraiser was taking place. The problem was that this fundraiser was the previous day. The second was overflowing trash cans in the lobby of the store. Of course trash cans get full and people forget to do things like take down signs, but I frequently interpret little things like that in light of management and their commitment to customer service.

Why was that sign still up? Perhaps whoever was supposed to remove it simply forgot. But my management brain looked at it differently. Most likely no one had been assigned the task of removing that sign when the event was completed. It wasn't on anyone's to-do list, so it didn't get done. The store director, or department manager, whoever had set up this event, did not think to add this to "the list".

Which brings us to delegation. There were likely several managers, including the store director, the evening supervisor, perhaps the front end manager, who were overall responsible for the store being fully staffed, fully stocked and clean. All of these people should have been trained as to what state the store should be in and had been delegated the responsibility of making sure that those standards were met. Surely this included walking outside periodically. By the time I arrived several manager shifts had come on duty and walked in the front door since that sign became outdated. Same with the overflowing trash cans. My guess is that whoever is specifically assigned to empty trash had clocked out between 6:00 and 9:00pm and the next person so assigned had not arrived yet. In between, no one thought it was their job and the manager in charge hadn't followed up. That store team was used to be assigned tasks, not delegated responsibility. Since no one had been assigned the tasks of taking down the banner or emptying the trash, it didn't get done. 

These may seem like small things, and they are, but they are indicative of a larger trend.

When I was an Assistant Store Director in a grocery store, one of the corporate supervisors insisted that we give our evening supervisors a to-do list. My Store Director and I had invested a lot of time training our supervisors and department managers to see the big picture. We delegated to them the responsibility of keeping the store in great shape. They didn't need a to-do list. If I gave them something outside the norm, they didn't need me to hand them a note, they just got it done. This corporate supervisor was obviously not a delegator when he ran his own store, but rather was an assigner of tasks. 

Management isn't about doing things, it's about getting things done. If you don't train and delegate, you'll be doing it all yourself, and if you don't follow up, things might get done, but they'll be the wrong things.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Workin' Man - Part XXI - Pine Lake Adventures

 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 

If you're going to work in retail you're going to run into rude and obnoxious customers. probably every day. One of the most infamous was a man we called "Handbasket Guy". We kept a stack of handbaskets near the entrance doors, but as customers used them they accumulated near the check stands until someone collected them and brought them over to the entrance. Until this was done there was a stack near the exit doors. Handbasket Guy always entered through the exit doors. If there was no handbaskets there (right where they shouldn't be) he would walk up to the nearest employee and simply bark out the word "handbasket". We would direct him to the entrance, where logically you would place them, but he would invariably argue that the door from which people left was the correct spot for something customers needed coming in. 

If that was all he did, it wouldn't be so bad, but he was an utter asshole to the cashiers. He somehow had it in his head that cashiers were legally required to ask a customer if they had found everything that they came in for. It was true that we wanted them to ask that, but no one got in trouble for not saying it. Handbasket Guy would berate the cashiers if they didn't ask him if he had found everything. It got so bad that if we saw him get in line a manager would take over. I used to enjoy being over-the-top, obnoxiously polite to him. 

Customers who also worked in retail were those whom you thought would know better, and make allowances, but it was not the case. Products in a grocery store are stocked in a variety of methods. Most grocery items are stocked overnight by the night crew; Dairy and Frozen as well; Produce and Meat usually are stocked by their staff in the morning. There are, however, items that are stocked by "merchandisers", employees of the companies that provide the products. These include, soda, cookies and crackers, and beer. When the merchandisers arrive to do this varies, but at least some of it still remains to be filled when the first customers make their way in. 

One thing about Sundays is that most department managers have the day off. The Store Director and Grocery Manager are also off, so usually the Assistant Store Director (in this case, me) has to do double duty, overseeing the whole store plus handling Grocery Manager responsibilities, including doing the grocery order. The first thing I did was take a quick lap around the store to make sure there were no major problems, and then commence ordering. These tasks would take a couple of hours. Around 7:00am Roger, who worked in the corporate office, came in to do his shopping. One of his regular purchases was 2-liter bottles of Diet 7-Up. Unfortunately, the 7-Up merchandiser usually didn't get in that early, so the Diet 7-Up 2-litters were often empty. Roger never said anything. Since there was a deadline for when the grocery order had to be sent in, that was the priority. There simply wasn't time to stock all the items that the merchandisers were responsible for. 

One fine day, in a conversation with Company President Pat Raybould, he informed me that a "good customer" was complaining that we were always out of things when he came in on Sunday mornings. (Pat invariably referred to anyone who complained to him as "a good customer" — I don't know if he thought there was such a thing as "bad customers"). I knew he had to be talking about Roger, so I asked Pat if that's who our "good customer" was. When Pat confirmed that this was the case, I suggested that Roger simply ask me about anything that appeared to be out and I'd check for him. I also suggested that perhaps as a fellow B&R "associate" Roger might be expected to have enough respect for those of us in the stores to approach us directly, rather than just bitching about it. Going forward I started my day by grabbing a case of  Diet 7-Up 2-liters and putting them on the shelf and Roger started talking to me instead of complaining!

It wasn't always customers who were obnoxious, sometimes it was fellow employees. In a previous article I mentioned Joe, who had been the Meat Department Manager when I worked at 48th & O — someone whom I didn't get along with. He had been transferred to our Meat Department at Pine Lake, bringing with him his "my way or the highway" attitude. He started battling with other department managers right away. As is probably pretty obvious, some items in a grocery store need to be refrigerated. Milk, of course was a major product in need of refrigeration. Before Joe arrived we had been putting overflow milk racks in the Meat cooler on busy weeks. Joe did not like anything from other departments being stored in "his" coolers and engaged in a running battle with the Dairy Manager. One morning he and I had a confrontation over some ad items that we were out of on the first day of the ad. One of the things Store Director Nick was very serious about was that all ad items be fully stocked, all the time. After all, we're inviting people into the store because we allegedly have certain items which we have reduced the price for — how stupid do we look if we are out of these items? On Day One? Joe took offense at me asking him what happened to cause us to be out. He erupted in anger, defecting the discussion into a personal attack. When I registered a complaint with HR I discovered (according to corporate HR) that he had no similar complaints in his personnel file, which I thought was, as the English say, bloody amazing since I was personally aware of several similar incidents involving Joe with other managers. Over the years Joe got his way because no one wanted to deal with his temper, including his Store Directors. Nick, my Store Director backed me up, and at least one complaint went into his file. Not long after this incident he left the company, possibly because the new Director of Meat Department Operations wasn't interested in putting up with his nonsense. 

Another manager who I must mention was a Dairy Manager named Peter. He had some previous experience as a Dairy Clerk at another store, where things were somewhat looser than they were at Pine Lake. At his previous store the emphasis was on the Dairy aisle looking neat and orderly, although not necessarily full. Peter's previous manager would disguise empty slots on the shelves by filling them with adjacent items. There was also a laser focus on the storage cooler being neat and orderly, without much in the way of backstock. Since there was nothing "in the back" when an item sold out, there were many "outs" in that department. Milk stock levels were handled by calling the milk suppliers to bring in special deliveries every day, instead of ordering enough to get through to the next delivery. Since the department looked good, no one at corporate knew about the out-of-stocks and no one complained. We were not going to allow this to happen at Pine Lake and let Peter know that the way things were done at his previous store was unacceptable. He fought us every step of the way. One of our battles involved carts. At his old store stock carts were used to store the little backstock they had in the cooler. At Pine Lake we needed them emptied before the night crew came in, as they used them all to run the evening delivery truck. I lost track of how many times he was told not to keep carts in his cooler until one Sunday morning I came in to find a half dozen of them in the cooler, stacked high with dairy products. I dumped them all over and removed them. I may have made my point. I have mentioned that our Grocery Manager was named Peter as well. One afternoon I called him on the walkie-talkie, but Dairy Peter responded. "I was calling the real Peter, not you..."Fake Peter". And Fake Peter became his name for the rest of his time there. Soon after he applied for a Dairy Manager position at his old store, where he ended up getting fired after Nick was transferred there. 

One of the things I got interested in while at Pine Lake was craft beer. It had been a long time since I was a Bud/Miller/Coors type of drinker and made Leinenkugel's Red my go-to beer. Around this time some craft brewers were starting to distribute their beers more widely and getting space in grocery stores. Major labels were also experimenting with different styles. I remember being intrigued by a Michelob six-pack that included Märzen (aka Octoberfest), Pale Ale and Stout. Samuel Adams was producing seasonal 12-packs with various beer styles. I started trying out the different types and began to acquire some expertise in differentiating among pale ales, India Pale Ales (IPS's), blondes, reds, stouts, porters, lagers, kölsches and more. I attended the Lazlo's monthly beer tour with some coworkers and turned my old Ill-Gotten Booty blog into a beer review blog. One of my goals at work was to get all my daily tasks done early in the day and all my weekly tasks done early in the week, this meant that Friday afternoons were just free time. What did I do with this free time? I would wander around the beer aisle, trying (and usually succeeding) to convince people to upgrade to some craft beer. Occasionally I would join the Spirits Manager and do some sampling. Being "the craft beer guy" became my Super Saver identity. Fellow employees sought my advice regarding what beers to buy and our craft beer sales were well above the company average. 

One of the things I had learned early in my working life was to always verify that you are being paid what you should. Since I was on salary I always received the same amount each week, but there were two areas that bore watching: vacation hours and bonuses. 

Vacation time was allocated based on the average number of hours that you worked per week the previous year, multiplied by the number of weeks you were entitled to (2 weeks after one year, 3 weeks after 10 years, 4 weeks after 15 years). For salaried managers, since we worked 45-hour weeks, we would receive 45 hours multiplied by the number of earned weeks. A problem arose where the corporate office was only reducing a manager's vacation bank by 8 hours for every vacation day taken, when they should have charged 9. Eventually they figured it out and correctly recalculated managers' vacation balances, causing some managers to lose a couple of days that they thought they had. Since I always kept careful track of my vacation accrual and use, the recalculation didn't cause me any issues.

Around the same time the corporate office started to keep better track of vacation approvals. They distributed to each store director a list for each employee showing how much vacation time they had earned over the course of their employment, and how much vacation they had used during that time. Some employees had used vacation hours way in excess of what they had earned; Store Directors had been approving vacation time, and vacation pay for people who hadn't earned it. Since there was no central tracking, this went on for years. A lot of people were very angry, thinking quite reasonably that a representative of the company had authorized the vacation pay, and that they shouldn't be penalized. This resulted in some employees having negative vacation hours. 

For years employees were able to roll over unused vacation time, but following the vacation hours crackdown the corporate office decided that only two weeks per year could be carried over. I worked with a guy who had nine weeks accumulated! Since we had a year to use it up before losing it, he took every Friday off as a vacation day for a full year! But no, they weren't done changing vacation rules! Previously a new year's earned vacation was added to your vacation "bank" on the anniversary of your full time hire date. This was changed to your original hire date, whether full or part time, which was often not the same date. I benefited from this, since I was first hired in February 1999 but didn't go full time until that August, so I was able to access my new year's vacation hours six months early. Others did not. One manager I worked with had his full time hire date in January, but his actual hire date was in November. Since this pushed back when he could access vacation hours, he was effectively cheated out of a year of vacation. 

Bonuses were something that required a bit of calculation. Most management positions were assigned a budget goal for gross profit. Your actual gross profit as a percentage of the budgeted gross profit determined what bonus tier they were in. Each tier would then receive a different percentage of their base salary as a bonus. There was a similar bonus for achieving labor goals. All of this information was available to the store's department managers. A facility with basic math was all that was required for calculating what your bonus would be each quarter. 

I noticed early on that Kipp, the CFO, often made errors when calculating bonuses. He always corrected them when it was pointed out, but he was usually quite ungracious about it. (i.e. he was an asshole) I attempted to teach the other managers how to calculate their bonuses using simple math, but some of them seemed immune to learning and seemed content to just trust Kipp, who really couldn't be trusted. In an industry where understanding profit margins was so important, it was stunning how many people that I worked with couldn't grasp grade school math. 

One of the things I enjoyed about my time at Pine Lake was the sense of teamwork, especially among the shift manager team. For the whole five years that I was there Nick K was the Store Director and Shannon was the HR Coordinator. Peter was in the Grocery department, first as the assistant grocery manager and later as the Grocery Manager. Jamie, who was kind of a younger version of me, was the Assistant Grocery Manager the final few years. Jamie was very rough around the edges and always said what he meant, which resulted in him often being at odds with other members of the store team. But for some reasons the grocery clerks, who were mostly high school boys, absolutely loved him. He had a system for the swing shift and an informal checklist of things that had to be done the last hour before the night crew came in: the 4 B's. The B's were Back Room, Bathrooms, Bulk Foods and Break Room — all areas that had to be cleaned or put in order by end of shift. Another unusual thing — in my previous stores, and what I had seen in other stores in the company, grocery clerks were usually the laziest and most likely to screw around of anyone in the store. Part of the problem was that it was an entry-level low-paying, low-skill job, but the clerks were nonetheless expected to work independently. Our grocery clerks, in contrast, all seemed to take pride in their work and could be counted upon to get the job done. Occasionally though, bad ones would slip through. 

One of the parts of organizing the back room at night included taking out stacks of milk crates that were stored on wheeled carts out behind the store. One Sunday night Shannon, who was serving as evening supervisor that night, noticed that some of the stacks seemed a little heavier than usual and discovered that many of the crates were filled with bottles of Jack Daniels and other whiskeys. Everyone denied having anything to do with it, but a Loss Prevention investigation resulted in four grocery clerks and a Dairy clerk being charged with theft and, of course, fired. Later in my time there was a clerk that we suspected of theft, but hadn't actually caught in the act. Nick convinced him that there were security cameras in the areas that he was stealing from (there weren't) and he immediately confessed!

Most of the clerks were a dependable part of the team. During the holidays Nick assigned each manager a section of the store to keep full, along with a grocery clerk to assist. Since, as I have previously outlined, during the holidays we didn't adhere to the regular schedule, it was all hands on deck, so we had plenty of people during the peak times. Periodically we would go down our assigned aisles, make a list of what we needed, head to the back room where we had a section set aside to store the fast moving items and fill 'er up! It was sometimes difficult to keep ahead of demand, and trying to stock while the aisles were crammed front to back with customers was not fun, but we got the job done. 

Holidays were always the time when the whole store really came together, we worked hard, and the salaried managers worked long hours. My first Christmas Eve at Pine Lake was a bit of a surprise though. About an hour before the store closed Nick called all the managers and other key people up into his office. I couldn't imagine what was going on, and was quite surprised when Nick started passing around bottles of beer! This was a tradition that had started when Nick worked at the Millard Super Saver and that we carried on the whole time I was at Pine Lake. I also carried over my tradition of guarding the door at Christmas Eve closing time. One year we had a bunch of new grocery clerks who just couldn't believe that I wouldn't let anyone in after 6:00pm sharp. They all came out to observe this strange phenomenon! But the wildest Christmas Eve was when a pitcher for the New York Yankees stopped in.

I was at the front door as usual, and just before 6:00 a man with a small baby tucked under his arm ran into the store. A few minutes later I saw him run out...without the baby! I had a walkie-talkie and called Nick in a panic. I imagined that this guy had abandoned his child on Christmas Eve. It turned out that he had left his wallet in the car and the women on the check stands volunteered to watch his baby while he ran out to get it. The guy was Joba Chamberlain, former pitcher for the Nebraska Cornhuskers baseball team and current New York Yankee, who that same year was pulled over for DUI with an open bottle of Crown Royal that he had purchased at the Pine Lake Super Saver on the console and talked crap about Yogi Berra. 

Start with Part I

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XX - Dispensationalism

Many Christians would take issue with the fact that the Bible contradicts itself, not to mention historical and archeological records. Many others simply ignore the contradictions — or don't know about them because they don't read the Bible. But from the very early days of Christianity theologians have been aware of contradictions and discrepancies and attempted to reconcile them. (I'm mainly dealing with how Christian theologians addressed inconsistencies, I am not very familiar with how Jewish scholars may have approached issues in the Jewish scriptures).

The question of the nature of Jesus Christ — was he God, or was he a man? — caused a lot of ink to be spilled in the first centuries of Christianity. Even when they thought they had an answer ( he's both!) the minutia of how he could be both, as well as the ramifications of the various theories, occupied Christian leaders for centuries, when it could be argued that they certainly had better things to do. 

The problem that the Church Fathers identified was that there were sections of the gospels and epistles that very clearly indicated that Jesus was a man, a very holy man, a special man, but a man —  not God. There were also other verses which just as clearly came down on the side of Jesus being God. These second century scholars had a choice: they could ignore the question and focus what Jesus preached and encourage people to follow his example and live their life as he taught; they could decide that Jesus being a man made more sense and interpret the verses that suggested that he was also God in that light; or place their bets on Christ's divinity and interpret the verses that said otherwise in that light. What they did was decide that Jesus was man and God. They argued interminably about the details, but ended up with the conclusion that he was fully God and fully man. (The nuances of that stance take up fat volumes — check it out some time). They created a theological edifice to explain away a contradiction — a Christology which cannot be found in any actual book of the Bible. 

A very large plot hole in the Bible is the stark difference between how God is portrayed in the Old Testament and the New Testament. (Other than the Apocalypse of John [Revelation] which reverts back to the wrathful, vengeful God imagery). In the 1800's there arose a theological position called "dispensationalism" which attempted to explain the differences. But long before that, Marcion, a second century Christian, came up with his own solution. Marcion took a blunt force approach to Biblical criticism and simply threw out the parts he thought made no sense. Observing that the vengeful God of the Old Testament bore no resemblance to the God of the Gospels he concluded that they were different gods. In Marcion's view, the Old Testament God was evil, while the New Testament God of Jesus was the "true" God, the good God. He threw out the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John and the non-Pauline epistles and heavily edited what was left. Say what you want, but Marcion took care of those pesky contradictions!

Nineteenth Century dispensationalists eschewed Marcion's approach. Rather than relegating the Old Testament God to second deity status, they arranged history as outlined in the Bible into a number of "dispensations". A dispensation, according to them, was a time period where God dealt with humanity in different ways from the other time periods. One group that I was involved with called the "administrations". There were usually seven of these time periods, although I have seen eight listed as well. Since these dispensations were the opinions and interpretations of the theologians who came up with them, there were difference ways to divide them up. Here are a few ways that people have attempted to assign the breaks in these divisions:

• Innocence/Original Paradise/Garden of Eden - Adam and Eve before eating from the Tree of Knowledge
• Conscience — after "The Fall" — no rules, people followed their own conscience, ended with The Flood
• Human Government — From Noah to Abraham
• Promise — starts with Abraham and indicates God dealing with one specific group of people — ends with Moses
• For some, the previous three are grouped together, sometimes called "patriarchal"
• Law — the giving of the Law to Israel — different interpretations on when it ended
• Christ's Ministry — not all recognized this as separate — some interpretations ended the Law at Jesus' resurrection, some at the beginning of his ministry, some at the ascension, other at the end of The Acts of the Apostles. The Christ's Dispensation likewise had differing opinions on it's scope, or even if it is a separate time period
• Grace — this started whenever either the Law or Christ dispensation ended and includes the present day. 
• Tribulation — starts with the rapture and includes all the horrors of the Book of Revelation
• Millennial — ends with Christ's return to defeat The Beast and The Devil and initiates the Thousand Year reign of Christ on Earth
• Some combine the previous two
• Paradise — establishment of God's eternal kingdom on earth 

Despite there being disagreements among dispensationalists on where these divisions should begin and end, the concept does have its own logic. There's no question that God acts differently throughout different time periods as outlined in the Bible. But there are no bright lines delineating changes in God's rules — if there were, there would be no disagreement among the various advocates of dispensationalism. This is the problem with viewing the Bible as an inerrant and divinely inspired, it's impossible to accept that there are errors, discrepancies and contradictions and one has to sometimes tie oneself into knots to explain them away and make it make sense.

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

Workin' Man - Part XX - Falklands Jalapeño-Pineapple Pancakes

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 

 Well, this was something different. In my previous management assignments I was looked at as the new guy who didn't know anything. When hired as a Grocery Manager at 48th & O my grocery experience was negligible. When I was promoted to Assistant Store Director (ASD) at Cornhusker I was replacing a popular and knowledgeable individual who had a very different management style. It was uphill all the way. In both stores I was eventually able to prove myself; but when I arrived at the South 27th & Pine Lake Super Saver I came with reputation for knowing what I was doing, and for being a tough but fair manager. (Although one person told Bob, our General Merchandise (GMD) Manager, that I was "moody" — fair enough!) In retrospect, my five years as ASD at Pine Lake were probably the best years of my grocery career. Store Director Nick was easy to work for — he gave clear direction, but was not a micromanager, and the Center Store Managers were experienced, knew their jobs and took direction well. 

One of the big differences starting out at Pine Lake was that, unlike my start at Cornhusker, things were organized. Nick was not a "nice guy" — he was friendly enough — but did not play favorites and kept a sharp eye on what was going on in the store. Shannon, our HR Coordinator was also pretty direct. My old Store Director, Matt K, once remarked that the employees at Pine Lake must have always been pretty clear about expectations with the three of us in charge! Employees definitely had their preferences for who they would go to with issues. What they didn't realize was that we talked all the time and made sure we were in agreement on major issues. There was no going to "dad" because you didn't like "mom's" decision. One incident stands out. I was upstairs, looking out the window to the sales floor below and saw Tom C, the Frozen Foods Manager talking animatedly to Nick. Technically, since I was his immediate supervisor, Tom should have been coming to me with whatever his problem was. When Nick finished talking to Tom, I asked Nick what the conversation was about. Tom C was asking if he really needed to work until close on Christmas Eve, which I had made a requirement for all department managers. Nick asked him "What did Tom J tell you?" and followed up with "Whatever Tom J told you, that's what you need to do". We had each other's backs. 

Tom C, as it turned out, was not a very good Frozen Foods Manager, and as it further turned out, Nick & I dropped the ball when it came to supervising him. In some respects the department appeared to be in good shape. He hardly ever ran out of anything, he always had his ad displays up on time, and the profit margin was always at or above budget. I was guilty, as was the company overall, of not questioning success. Tom C was a big man, he had to be well over 500 pounds. One morning he fell on some ice in the parking lot and couldn't get up; he hurt himself so badly that he couldn't work for what turned out to be seven months. As Center Store Manager I was his immediate supervisor and temporarily took over managing the department. I figured I could have a clerk do the stocking and I could order and build displays. I quickly found out what Tom C was hiding. 

Every department utilizes "backstock". During an ad you try to have enough on hand to get you through the ad week, in this case you store it in a walk-in freezer. Sometimes you just order too much, and you "run the backstock" before putting in an order so you don't order what you already have. When an ad is over, any unsold ad items are put in a secondary display and priced somewhere between regular prices and ad price. Tom C was not managing his backstock. When I took over the department there were at least 80 pallets of assorted backstock in the freezer. Ten pallets would have been excessive. Every shelf was filled, and every inch of floor space was full of pallets. After stocking the load from a delivery, Tom C would put any excess on a pallet in the freezer and then never touch it again. On his next order he would bring in more of what he already had. After an ad was over he would put what wasn't sold on a pallet in the freezer and then never touch it again. The result was that every week the backstock grew and grew. It's not like it was even organized. Every pallet had a jumble of different types of stock. It was a mess. Tom C, realizing that his department was such a mess that he would not be able to get it in order, turned in his resignation. We hired a replacement, who we were very upfront with regarding the shape the freezer was in. He lasted less than a week before he claimed that he fell in the freezer and spent another week on light duty. He quit once he was off light duty. 

Nick had the idea that before we hire another manager the first step would be to organize everything. He and I, joined by Assistant Grocery Manager Jamie, and a team of grocery clerks, pulled all the pallets out one by one and organized them by type of product: potatoes on one pallet, frozen vegetables on another, frozen dinners on a third, and so on. When we started it was so disorganized that there literally were potatoes on every pallet. This took two different sessions to get everything organized. While we were working we found several pallets of old ad items that were seriously out of date, those had to be thrown out or donated. We initially got the number of pallets down to around 65. For a while we had grocery clerks pulling pallets out and stocking from them each night. We had wrapped each pallet in plastic and affixed a sign with the last date that it had been worked. We had a system. Except Nick caught the grocery clerks rolling out pallets, unwrapping them, moving the top layer around, and then putting them back without actually stocking anything. He banned the clerks from running backstock. Which meant that I and some of the other managers had to do it.

Little by little the number of pallets decreased. There were some mornings when the Frozen Foods order was less than a dozen cases because we had so much backstock! We had probably gotten the number of pallets down to around 40 when Pat Raybould stuck his head in the freezer one day and freaked out. He demanded that we set a date when the backstock would be down to a reasonable level (10 pallets?). I tried to tell him that it was impossible to do, we had no idea how long it would take us to get to an arbitrary number. Of course he had no idea how bad it had been and how much progress we had made, but the law of diminishing returns was setting in, as well as the lack of any more low-hanging fruit, and a dearth of other available cliches. I eventually picked a random date, which we ended up not making, but he soon forgot about it, as he usually did. 

One of the side effects of having to run Frozen Foods for so long was that I learned to drive the standing forklifts. In addition to the traditional sit-down forklift, Pine Lake had two stand-up forklifts. Since at the time we were the only store that had them anyone transferring from another store didn't have any experience with them. The advantage to them was that they had a tighter turning radius, which was helpful in narrow aisles. The down side was that if you were trained on the sit-downs, everything felt backwards. I had to work in the freezer every morning, which, once we cleared the floor of all the excess pallets, was very spacious. This made it the perfect place to practice driving the stand-ups. More on forklift adventures later. 

One of the first things I did after transferring to Pine Lake was to convince Nick that we needed to adjust our schedules during the holidays. Officially those of us who were salaried were required to work a minimum of 45 hours a week. In most stores this meant that you were scheduled for 45 hours, but if an crisis came up you worked extra. No allowance was made for getting those hours back. What I proposed was that we plan to average 45 hours per week during a holiday season. This meant that during Thanksgiving or Christmas week we all might be working 60+ hours, but we would work 25 or 30 on the slower weeks. This was difficult to do over the Christmas holidays since we were busy leading up to Christmas, which was immediately followed by a busy New Year's, with year-end inventory in there somewhere. I would start mapping out the managers' schedule well in advance in order to get Nick's approval (especially since I was writing his schedule too). The benefit to scheduling this way was that the store had the maximum number of managers during the peak times, while no one worked more than an average of 45 hours per week. Of course the corporate office would not have approved of this arrangement, and we sure weren't going to tell them! We also instituted a requirement of mandating that department managers work certain peak times during the holidays. All managers had to work until close on Christmas Eve, and work a 12-hour shift the day before Thanksgiving. Nick and I scheduled ourselves this way too, so no one could legitimately complain. I was surprised to learn that in a lot of stores the schedule didn't change for holiday weeks and stores were staffed during peak times by third tier evening supervisors instead of department managers. There was some complaining, but I believed that if you agreed to work in a retail store you had to be available to work on holidays. 

One of the managers who was challenging to schedule was Peter, the Assistant Grocery Manager when I started. He was a rabid Husker fan and had season tickets, as well as attending several away games each season. At first this wasn't a huge problem, since the assistant grocery manager usually was scheduled on Sunday, with Saturday off. He turned down at least one opportunity for promotion to grocery manager in another store when he was adamant about having Saturdays off during the football season. Eventually he was promoted at Pine Lake. I honored his time off requests for every football Saturday for the first year he was in that position, but after one season I announced that I would no longer accept time off requests, since it seemed like everybody wanted off on game day. He worked it out by switching shifts with another manager, but I never thought that he was committed to be a manager in a retail grocery store. Attending Husker games and playing golf seemed to be his main priorities. Otherwise he did a good job and was a key member of the management team, as long as there wasn't a football game conflicting with store priorities. 

In light of the post-Covid shift in the employee-employer power dynamic, it might seem like we were too tough on our employees when it came to scheduling and time off. These days post-Covid you hear a lot of people declaring that they aren't requesting time off, but informing their boss that they would be gone. Even now, I stand by my position that if you are going to work in a store that is busy on weekends and holidays, by accepting employment there you are agreeing to be available during the busy times. I think that the fact that the whole management team was there during the holidays, not taking advantage of their position or seniority, helped sell the idea that no one was getting vacation time approved during holidays. 

One of the most important things that I learned from Nick was that you did not run out of anything during the holidays, especially not "holiday" items or anything that was in the ad. During a holiday week we would make a list of everything we were out of first thing in the morning. We would start out by calling other Super Savers and Russ's to see if they had any extra that they could transfer. Then we would split up the list and head out to our competitors to buy as much as we could of the items that we needed. This procedure led to the case of the infamous Falklands Jalapeño-Pineapple Pancakes. I was sent to Hy-Vee with a mission to secure Bisquick, canned pineapple, and for some reason, jalapeño jelly, on a snowy Christmas Eve. I had found all three items on my list, emptied the shelves, and headed up front to pay for them all. Now people who have never worked retail might think that this was a win for the store that was being raided — they're making sales, right? But what's really happening is that their customers will be disappointed when they can't find these items on the shelf. (Hy-Vee used to try this with us just about every Sunday in order to replenish their ad items. After it happened once I refused to sell to them!) But anyway, back to Christmas Eve. As I stood in line, pushing a shopping cart full of just three items, I was starting to attract attention. Customers in line curiously asked me what I was doing with these seemingly mismatched products. I tried to deflect attention by telling them that I just got whatever was on the list, but that didn't satisfy them. Thinking fast, I told them that my wife was from the Falklands,  and every Christmas Eve, for our whole church, she made a Falklands delicacy — jalapeño-pineapple pancakes! I made it out the door with my cases of mismatched breakfast food, and told the team back at the store about my adventure. The next two Christmas Eves I actually made jalapeño-pineapple pancakes for everyone to try — surprisingly tasty — and popular! 

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXI

Managers Part XX - Good Leaders CAN be Bad Managers

Reading a novel the other day I came across this quote "People often confuse leadership and management, you may be an effective leader, but terrible at minutia". It was in reference to a pilot who was promoted to a position where she no longer flew, but planned the missions of her subordinates.

So often we hear the traits of leadership praised while those of management looked down upon as inferior, as if a manager is someone who somehow failed to be a leader. I have always taught that leadership is just one trait of a good manager. But this quote made me want to take it further. A leader is someone who can inspire others to follow, and I've always thought that someone who had leadership qualities in a management role was by definition a good manager, but I am rethinking that position. Effective management is, in part, a function of effective leadership. Inspiring one's followers to the point where they can have responsibility delegated to them is a mark of a good manager. But that part of the quote about minutia is the key. A person can be an inspiring and charismatic leader, but lacks the skill at analyzing, organizing and planning that are essential ingredients that go into the makeup of a successful manager. Visualize a manager who is well liked, whose subordinates will follow any orders, but cannot put together a schedule, or properly budget, or order the right amount of product; who cannot articulate the needs of his business unit to corporate headquarters. He wouldn't last too long, despite his popularity with "the troops". 

In this series on managers, I have concentrated mostly on the people management aspect of being an effective manager. What has been the unspoken assumption all along has been that, in order to manage the people, you first need to be proficient at the other management skills — the minutia.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXI

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XX

One thing that I want to make clear is that despite my characterization of The Way as a cult, I believe that many of the tactics that people have used to oppose cults is also wrong. 

Many people define a group as a cult based on what they believe rather than what they do. Scientology has a lot of bizarre beliefs, but are the beliefs by themselves harmful, or is it the level of control that they exert on their members what is actually harmful? And what constitutes a bizarre belief? Are the Scientologists sci-fi based doctrines really more unbelievable than an invisible god who is really his own son born from a mother who never had sex? Or this same god-who-is-really-his-own-son ascending bodily after being dead for three days? What about a boat with two (or is it seven) of every animal in it surviving a world-wide flood? Talking donkeys? People living over 900 years? The difference is that the majority of religious groups don't attempt to control every aspect of your life, and if your behavior is far enough outside their norms, you can just leave. The church that I grew up in was pretty oblivious to whether I attended services every Sunday and likely didn't notice when I left. Cults, on the other hand, engage in harmful practices. It's true that sometimes these harmful practices are based on harmful beliefs, the beliefs by themselves are not harmful. 

The opposition of the people of Sidney (which I will get into shortly), was based on ignorance. They may have heard about a few things that The Way taught that deviated from standard Christian teaching, but it is highly unlikely that they were aware of the harmful practices that went on inside The Way. Groups that received the cult label based on their beliefs (or misunderstanding of their beliefs) were lumped in with the People's Temple and in the minds of the ignorant were dangerous. This ignorance fueled a counter-belief that any opposition to a cult was justified. People were kidnapped and mentally tortured under cover of the pseudo-righteous term "deprogramming". Families were broken up over these differences. Much of what I will describe about my time in Sidney is akin to the "villagers with pitchforks and torches storming the castle" that you see in old school horror movies. My own assertion that I was involved in a cult in no way absolves them of ignorant and bigoted thinking and actions. The very acts of persecutions was in fact something that stiffened my resolve and stick with The Way despite the obvious red flags that popped up throughout my WOW year. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXI

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XIX

Having driven from my home in New York City to Way headquarters in rural Ohio a few times, I was familiar with the concept of small town and farms, but living in a small town like Sidney, Nebraska was big-time culture shock. One of the biggest shifts was the prevalence of churches. I grew up in the New York City neighborhood of Rosedale, Queens. The 2010 census put Rosedale's population at around 25,000. At the time there were six churches — two Catholic, one Presbyterian, a Lutheran and an Episcopalian, plus a small Baptist church that may have actually been in Springfield Gardens. Sidney, on the other hand, with one-fifth the population, had twenty-five churches of various denominations. Of course, there was the size. Sidney was small enough to walk across in a half hour, the populated areas appears to be around 2 miles east-west and 2.5 miles north-south, excluding the area on the interstate and other areas within city limits that are not developed — and Sidney is the largest town for hours in any direction. Another feature of a small town (at least from my perspective) is the suspicion with which "outsiders" are viewed. Everyone seems to know everybody else, and families that had been in Sidney for decades were still referred to as "the new people". This may seem like paradise to many, but for four young people (we were aged 20-22) from outside the community who were representing a religious cult, this was anything but. 

We arrived in Sidney a week late, and after a night in a hotel and a dinner of chicken-fried steak (a first for me) at Dude's Steakhouse, we set about finding housing and jobs. This was surprisingly easy. The next day we rented a two-bedroom duplex one block off the main drag of Illinois Avenue/Highway 30. Steve, as the interim Way Corps leader, had been sent to scout out the city a few weeks earlier and already had a job lined up detailing cars at a local dealership. Rosemarie and Gail found jobs waitressing at a Dairy Queen and at a hotel restaurant respectively. I was the last one to secure employment, an apprentice glass cutter and go-fer at carpet store just a few blocks from our new home. 

The WOW year, especially the portion spent in Sidney, (we were reassigned to Kearney, a larger college town mid-year) was another of those red flags which should have inspired me to leave the group. On one hand we were subject to non-stop persecution by the locals and on the other the supposed "spiritually aware" leadership was incompetent. But these pressures, at least in my case, paradoxically served to make me more committed. 

Steve was a member of what was called the 10th Way Corps, i.e. the tenth group to start the so-called  leadership training by The Way. He had made it through his first year of training at various Way training locations and was now on what they called an interim year where he was to put his training into practice before returning for his second year "in residence". Steve was supposed to be a leader, someone who we were to look up to, someone who would keep us on a godly path  and lead us to success. Steve was also an irresponsible, immature, entitled, horny twenty year-old who was impressed with his own status as a member of the Way Corps without the slightest idea how to motivate or lead. Part of this was due to the top-down style that was ingrained in Way "leaders" who believed that they were blessed with a version of the divine right of kings (including droit du seigneur). Steve's weakness as a leader would be exacerbate the pressures that resulted from opposition of the townspeople. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XX