Managers Part XXI - The Holidays

One of the responsibilities of management is to be an example (a good one of course!) to the non-management employees. Managers have to battle the non-management employee's view that managers don't do anything, that they don't know anything and that they just get in the way. One way amateur managers try to overcome this bias is to be "Mr. Nice Guy", or to spend their day "in the trenches", doing "real work". There are one major problem with these approaches. Both types of managers tend to not manage, worrying so much about how they are perceived that they become ineffective. If the chief manager is spending all of her time sweeping the floor or stocking shelves, why do we really need a manager? A manager's job is not to do things, but to ensure that things get done. (Search through these articles for the 5 Levels for more explanation). Sure, a manager might gain some goodwill by pitching in with mundane tasks, but what's happening in the rest of his area of responsibility while he's stocking shelves or cleaning toilets?Unless the staffing plan includes "vocational time", a manager should be spending his time directing the work of subordinates. This brings us to the holidays.

There's a school of thought that maintains that a manager, by virtue of seniority or by having "made it" to those exalted ranks of bosses, should get the best shifts, including a day off on a given holiday. Most of my experience as a manager has been in the realm of retail grocery, so that's what I'll refer to.

Just as the by very fact of having accepted a job in retail you have also accepted the reality that you will be busiest and most in demand at exactly the time that you want to have time off, by accepting a position in management (especially in retail) you accept the reality that your managerial skills will be most needed during those times when you believe that your seniority earns you time off. The thing about holidays is that they are unusual. You are selling items that you hardly knew that you carried throughout the year. You are busier, with customers in a hurry and impatient. This is the time to make sure that someone whose job is to ensure that things get done is on the scene. This is the time to have people who don't need to be told what to do in the building.

A few years ago I was in a local grocery store at about 7:00PM two days before Christmas. For those of you who have never worked in retail grocery, December 23rd, along with the day before Thanksgiving and July 3rd, is one of the top three busiest days that a grocery store will see all year. As I walked through the store the only manager that I encountered was a harried cashier supervisor. The only person who was on the sales floor was a high school-aged boy diffidently facing the cereal aisle. The displays were close to empty as were the aisles. However the store was not, empty of customers. Every part of the store was thronged with Christmas shoppers, many of whom were disappointed to find that what they had come in for was sold out. Possibly the missing products were somewhere in the store, but since there wasn't anyone to get this done, the emptiness prevailed. Obviously all the managers adhered to their regular schedules and went home at 6:00PM.

Contrast this scene to one a few years earlier. At 7:00PM the store director was just leaving after a 12-hour day, the assistant store director was ten hours into his 12-hour shift, the assistant grocery manager and evening supervisor were both scheduled until 11:00PM. There were twice the usual complement of grocery clerks, all with assignments to keep their assigned aisles and displays full. Managers from various departments were still around, giving last minute instructions to their closers.

The difference in these two scenarios should be obvious. In the second, the senior managers saw that it was part of getting things done to not pretend that this was just an ordinary day and do what needed to be done to keep the store running smoothly. Why, if you took your position as a manager seriously, would you assume that extraordinary sales conditions warranted ordinary staffing?

I worked in the store described in the second scenario. While we may have worked six, or even seven, days during the week leading up to Christmas, followed by an almost as crazy New Year's week, with year-end inventory crammed in there somewhere, we planned for the insanity. We might work 60 hours or more for two weeks straight, but the weeks before and after the insanity might see us working only three or four days. And because the senior managers scheduled themselves to work late, or on holidays, they short circuited any complaints from "the troops" when they had to work on the holidays.

The point is that the title of manager shouldn't entitle you to special treatment or exempt you from the stresses of unusually busy seasons. If anything, it should be the time when you're spending more time and effort in your job.