Workin' Man - Part XVII - Good Cop, Bad Cop

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 

 B&R moved their managers around on an unpredictable schedule. After I had been at Cornhusker for about three years Brian was transferred to the 48th & O Super Saver and Bill, who had been the Assistant Store Director (ASD) at the 56th & Highway 2 Super Saver, became our new Store Director. Bill was about eight years older than me, but it felt like he was from my parents' generation. I don't know what the corporate people had told him when he was promoted, but he was under the impression that the store was a complete mess and that he needed to clean it up. In some respects he wasn't wrong. The previous store director was very slack on discipline, and had his favorites, but overall the staff knew their jobs. Bill charged in like the proverbial bull in a china shop. At the same time a new store Human Resources Coordinator was hired. Todd was a former principal in a small town, and was just as keen as Bill to instill discipline in the troops. This drastic change in approach served to change the way I was perceived by the staff. Whereas before, I was the asshole who was too strict, and was perceived a mean in contrast to Store Director Brian, compared to Bill and Todd I was suddenly the nice guy, even though I hadn't substantially changed my approach. It's all relative. My daily routine was exhausting. I spent half of my time talking Bill out of firing people who simply weren't used to his manner, and the other half talking good employees out of quitting or telling Bill to go fuck himself. 

Brian's easygoing ways may have bothered me, but I benefited from them as well. I had received absolutely no direction from him when I started, and quickly learned to enjoy the lack of oversight. This enabled me to determine my own job description. Bill was more of a hands-on manager - not so much as telling people what to do, but constantly wanting updates on what they were doing and how they spent their days. I found this out during the second New York Block Party, which took place shortly after Bill took over the Cornhusker store. During the first event I stepped back from all other responsibilities and devoted myself to overseeing the promotion. The planning for Block Party Year Two had been underway for quite a while before Bill transferred, so he was unaware of all the details involved, and was equally unaware that I would be spending 100% of my time as master-of-ceremonies, and not involved in my regular day-to-day responsibilities. Bill did not think it was a good use of my time, and that, coupled with corporate's lack of enthusiasm, I did not attempt a third New York Block Party the following year. 

Bill, despite his brusk manner, and tendency to be a borderline micromanager, thought of himself, as a father figure to the staff. He saw himself as approachable and encouraged employees to come to him with their personal problems. This was most emphatically not how anyone saw him. This didn't stop him from attempting to give people advice, or sharing his opinion of how they should live their lives. On several occasions he asked me about my own Wiccan-Pagan spirituality, which he thought was "weird" and didn't fit in with his Christian-centric world view. One afternoon he opined that my life would be better if I'd just go to church. I brought our HR Coordinator into the room as a witness and let Bill know that his remarks were unwelcome and that further occurrences would result in a formal complaint. He apologized the next day, but I don't think he really understood what was wrong with what he said. 

Todd didn't fit the mold of the B&R HR Coordinator (HRC). Unlike many HRC's, he saw himself as a part of the store team, where most HRC's identified more with the corporate HR apparatus and Donna, the company HR Director. Todd wasn't afraid to lay down the law regarding dress code, time clock, scheduling, performance reviews and the like. One of the things I learned from Todd was how to deal with the inevitable attempts that employees made to deflect blame when they were being written up or counseled on their behavior. We'd talk to somebody about coming in late and they'd want to tell you about someone else's supposed infraction in order to take the heat off. As a school principal he had seen it all before. When an employee tried some whataboutism, he would calmly state "We're not talking about that right now, we're talking about you". 

Many times I have said that Bill drove me crazy every day of the two years that I worked with him. However, the man was loyal to his team, and would stick up for them against customers and even the corporate office. I received a phone call one afternoon from Tom, the Operations Vice President. He relayed to me an accusation from a member of the company Loss Prevention team, who said that I told him to "follow the Black people" when they were on duty at our store. I informed Tom that not only had I not said that, but would never say anything remotely like that. Tom continued to lecture me on the importance of not acting in a discriminatory or bigoted way. I interrupted him and reiterated that I did not say what I was accused of saying and would not listen to a lecture predicated on the assumption that I had. And hung up. I was sitting in Bill's office during the conversation. Bill immediately called Tom and defended me, insisting that I was not the type of person who would say something like that, and demanding that Tom back off. 

One of Bill's remarks to me still makes me laugh to this day. One morning the Night Crew was getting ready to leave before they had finished "facing" the aisles - the store was a complete mess. I instructed the remaining stockers to grab some cardboard bins and start pulling off excess cardboard and getting the store in order. All but one stocker complied. This individual, a thuggish young guy who was dating the daughter of one of our managers, had been a troublemaker, bullying some of the other stock crew. I saw him down one of the aisles, just idly moving items around, not doing much of anything. I repeated my instruction to grab a cardboard bin. He refused. So I fired him. When he asked me why he was being fired I told him to go home and look up "insubordination" in the dictionary. The next day Ron, the father of this idiot's girlfriend, told me that he was telling people that I fired him because he didn't know the definition of a word. Bill was not happy that I fired the guy without his input. On my next performance review, in the category for "makes reasonable, rational decisions", Bill gave me a low mark and said that I had been irrational when I fired that stocker!

Like a lot of stores, the Frozen Foods department wasn't allocated enough hours to have its own manager, so the Dairy Manager was in charge of both departments. (This was one of those grocery store things that I never understood. If you want a department to be run right, you should be able to hire someone to manage it full time. In addition, there should be enough hours scheduled to hire some part-timers to keep the department stocked when the manager isn't there. But for some reason the Frozen department labor percentage was set so low that you could only schedule 20 hours in most weeks. The Frozen Foods Manager had to work in another department, or manage two departments, in order to work full time. Ridiculous. Then, because most departments required some attention every day you'd have to move people in from other departments to pick up the slack. Their hours were being charged to another department, but they were still working in Frozen, so on paper it looked like Frozen was achieving its labor budget. Why not reduce the budget of the other department that apparently had excess hours and give it to Frozen? I have no idea. In smaller stores this situation applied to Floral and Spirits departments as well. So, anyway, Kim was manager of both Frozen and Dairy. She did most of the stocking in Frozen Foods herself, and had a dependable clerk doing most of the work in Dairy. She was also pregnant and was due just before Thanksgiving. Our plan was to promote Justin, an up-and-coming young man, to the position of Dairy-Frozen Assistant Manager while Kim was on leave. He trained with Kim and was ready to take over...until he quit to take another job outside the company a week before Kim went into labor. (He did this two more times, with different positions. On the third time I lobbied hard to get Bill to not promote him, but he did it anyway and I got to say "I told you so") We scrambled around to come up with a Plan B and decided that I would do all the Frozen ordering, Bob, the Dairy clerk would handle his department, and Kory, the Assistant Grocery Manager would take over stocking Frozen and building displays. Neither Kory nor I knew what we were doing. 

One morning, about a week before Thanksgiving, I came in to find that only one of the three Frozen pallets that had come in the night before had been stocked, and Kory had class that morning and had to leave. It was a Thursday, which meant that the Store Director and the Grocery Manager had the day off. I was responsible on an ordinary Thursday to order grocery and run the store - now I added to my to-do list ordering and stocking Frozen. (Did I mention that I didn't know what I was doing?) Stocking was going slow, as I kept getting interrupted, and there were a lot of customers in the aisles since it was our busy season. Late in the morning I was asked by the Scanning Coordinator if I was going to build a display for the Mrs. Smith pies, which were in the ad, and did I know that the shelf was completely empty? So, I diverted my efforts to creating a pie display, until I could get that done I rolled out a couple of pie pallets onto the sales floor, which began to be attacked by customers. Even after I got the display built, it seemed like I was refilling it every half hour. It helped when the swing shift supervisor came in at 2:00, which gave me some help in Frozen, and someone who could handle calls to the check stands, phone calls, etc. Around 10:00pm I was finishing up, restacking the pie backstock pallets in the walk-in freezer, when I cut it a little too close backing the forklift out of the walk-in and tore the whole door frame off. The freezer lights went out. (But fortunately, not the fans). I had to call in our HVAC guy to fix it. 

One of my management tenets is that a manager shouldn't get tied down to "doing things" in one part of the store, and should be patrolling the whole building, making sure that "things got done". Since I was focussed on Frozen Foods all day, things weren't getting done in the rest of the store. When Bill came in on Friday morning, he observed that the store looked pretty rough, and confronted me as I walked in the door, demanding to know what I had been doing all day to justify the store being in such as mess. I took a deep breath, did a lap around the store, and told him. 

This wasn't my only forklift accident. On Christmas Eve one year Bill called me to the back room - a beer truck had just arrived and Bill wanted me to get on the forklift and unload it. I was in the middle of half a dozen things already, so, grumbling, I jumped on the forklift and headed out the back door...and tore the overhead door off. (It was not rolled all the way up). After much begging and pleading we got someone out to fix it (remember, this was Christmas Eve). Later in the day, Bill called me up to his office and asked me to shut the door. I just knew that I was getting a write-up. Bill asked me if I was curious why he hadn't said anything about the damage to the door. When I replied that yes, I was curious, he responded with that he was the dumbass who didn't roll the door up all the way!

Eventually Bill and I settled into a rhythm and grew to respect each other. My final annual performance review with Bill took place shortly after he was transferred to another store. He gave me high marks and noted that we made a good team. Looking back, it was my time working with Bill when the staff began to view me as a leader worth following, not just the guy with a title who they were forced to obey. A lot of this was due to the contrast of my style of management with Bill's. Some of it was due to my own maturing into the job and the relieving the pressure of working for a manager who was a "nice guy". I'm sure that there were still people who thought that I was a jerk, but overall, the staff respected me. Bill left after two years, transferred back to 56th & Highway 2 as the store director, and I had one more year at Cornhusker under the new store director, Matt K, before I was transferred to the Pine Lake Super Saver. 

Workin' Man - Part XVI - New York Block Party

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

One advantage of being at a new store was that we weren't right next door to the corporate offices. Before B&R built what we called The Taj Mahal over near 45th & W their corporate headquarters was in the strip mall next to the 48th & O Super Saver, where the Dollar Tree was until recently. (Interesting fact about the B&R headquarters, it's not owned by B&R, it's owned separately by the Raybould family who collect rent from B&R). With the corporate overlords so close, we had frequent unscheduled visits; lunch time stops to the Deli, after work grocery shopping and more. We could always count on Richard, the VP of Operations, coming in at 5:00 to buy a six pack of beer, so we made sure the path from the front door to the beer case had full shelves. Russ was still active in the company then. I could always expect him to come in early on Friday evening and yell at the top of his lungs that we needed more checkers. Every Monday morning Russ would gather in the conference room at 48th & O with some of his old cronies to drink coffee and eat doughnuts. This coffee klatch was so sacrosanct that he once kicked out the HR Coordinator who was conducting an orientation for new employees. I always thought it was funny how people thought Russ's abrasive manner was considered a positive trait, good ol' plain speaking, while my own was looked at as a problem. A lot of people idolized Russ. I thought he was a bully and an asshole. Though for good or bad, you always knew where you stood with Russ. If he yelled at you, as long as you fixed the problem you never heard about it again. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

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

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

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

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

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

 I started as an assistant store director (ASD) in August 2001. The ASD position varied from store to store and the exact duties depended on who the store director was, the staffing level of the store, and the personality and priorities of the ASDs themselves. Some ASDs were basically glorified grocery managers, spending most of their time ordering groceries, working new items on the shelves, and building displays. Others viewed themselves more as trainers, devoting their energies to teaching customer service seminars and sitting in their offices a lot. As I alluded to before, my predecessor was the kind of ASD who was very hands-on and didn't delegate, but did everything himself. At any rate, there was absolutely no training of any kind. If you were applying for this position it was assumed that you knew what the job was and how to do it! But no one really knew what an assistant store director did, until they did it. It was a side affect of this ignorance that when an ASD position was posted you might get a dozen people apply, most who had no experience or qualifications. It was easy to see what a department manager did - they ran their department! But the work of an ASD was kind of like the drummer or the bassist in a band - most people never noticed you until you screwed up! My approach was in line with the theory of management where I was to get things done, rather than do things. I started out my first shift by just walking around and observing. One of the things that I observed was chaos.

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

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

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

Not long after that there were three incidents in a short time period that blew up in my face. 

1. A cashier called for a price check. Someone responded. She didn't hear it. She asked for it again. Someone responded again. She still didn't hear it. Repeat a third time. I happened to be nearby on a forklift and shouted out the price for her.
2. Store Director announced at a managers' meeting that only people who were scheduled to be in the cash office, plus the manager on duty, should be in the cash office. Saw that a non-authorized person was in there one night, using the computer. I asked her to leave. She argued with me, I asked her more emphatically. 
3. We had recurring problem with our cardboard compactor jamming. The solution was to put in a small amount of trash at a time, push it down the chute with a long pole and turn on the "crusher". Repeat until all the trash was crushed. It would jam if cardboard was thrown down until the chute filled up; gravity just wasn't sufficient. The process to avoid jamming was covered with all departments. One night I found the chute full and jammed with boxes from the meat department. I found the one meat department employee on duty and showed him the jam and told him to get it unjammed. He asked me if I was going to fire him if he didn't. I repeated my instructions.

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

All three of the employees mentioned above had complained about me to the store director, complainer #3 right after my encounter with him. 

1. This encounter was characterized as me yelling at the checker because I didn't like the way she asked for a price check. 
2. I was criticized for kicking this employee out of the cash office because "she was such a nice girl". (I guess "nice girls" didn't need to abide by store or company policy)
3. I never found out what the meat department employee told the store director, but I'm sure my interaction was characterized as yelling.

Carlos, the meat department employee, complained to Brian the store director when he stopped in to do some shopping. I had been unaware of the other two complaints. Brian found me in the office and he - as they say - ripped me a new asshole. I had never heard him yell before, and I only did one other time. In his mind, I was terrorizing the staff, taking out my frustrations with my own crappy life (I was going through a divorce) on them. I'm sure it looked that way to a team that was used to the laissez faire management style and saw my direct approach as "yelling". At the time, I considered that maybe I was too tough with people, and signed up for some counseling through the employee assistance program. I tried to discuss my plan to soften my approach, but my conflict averse boss didn't want to talk about it - I think he was embarrassed that he lost his temper! 

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

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

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

Workin' Man - Part XIV - Assistant Store Director

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

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

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

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

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

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

I was feeling pretty good about my prospects. I had only been a B&R manager for two years and already had been promoted to Assistant Store Director. Of course, I didn't really know what an assistant store director was supposed to do! One of the things that I had to battle right out of the gate at the Cornhusker Super Saver was the management style of my predecessor. Lonnie was one of those hands-on managers. If something needed to be done he felt that he had to do it himself. My management style was completely different. A manager, in my view, wasn't paid to do things, but to get things done. A misconception that many people have is that a "good" manager should be down there with the troops, getting their hands dirty. While this may be good public relations, it's not an efficient use of management time. 

There was an incident with an employee of the Frozen Department when I still worked at 48th & O. This employee was habitually clocking in, then changing his clothes, stopping for a snack, and then starting work. I observed this a few times and asked him to only clock in when he was ready to work. He kept at it despite my warning. When the HR Coordinator and I sat him down to give him a written warning, he was not cooperative. He sullenly noted that he "hadn't seen me do a lick of work since I had been hired". My response was to ask him what I was supposed to be doing. When he replied that he didn't know, I asked him how he could know that I wasn't doing it. His idea was that I should have been stocking frozen or sweeping the floor, rather than making sure that the store was running smoothly. I kept this encounter in mind when dealing with corporate directors. I tried to avoid judging them by the time they appeared in my store (usually making more work for me), since I really didn't know what the extent of their responsibilities were. 

Despite my confidence that my management style was superior, I still had to deal with expectations of the employees who were used to Lonnie doing things for them. For example the Deli team was used to Lonnie starting up the first batch of fried chicken on Sunday morning. I let them know right away that I wouldn't be doing that. 

The other main bump in the road was the personality of the store director. Brian had a reputation as a "nice guy". His theory of management was to let his people do their jobs without any input or interference from him, which was great when they were doing their jobs according to company standards, but not so great when they weren't. He would articulate company standards in our management meetings, then, when I attempted to enforce these policies, he would tell the employee that everything was fine and that they didn't need to listen to me. More on that later, but it set me up as the "bad guy" and set up a pattern where any time I would try to correct an employee, they knew that a visit to Brian's office would negate anything I had to say. 

In the last half of my tenure at 48th & O I had been part of a program called "Next Generation Management". The purpose was to prepare up and coming junior managers for advancement by teaching us about the nitty gritty details of the retail grocery business. We would get a day of classroom training in some aspect of the business, merchandising, loss prevention, displays, sanitation, etc (I don't remember them all). We would then receive an assignment in that day's category. We had six weeks to plan and execute our assignment, which included a projection of how much money our project would save the company or increase revenue. In many of these projects it was difficult or even impossible to project a financial benefit, but the judging criteria demanded that a savings or profit projection be included. I remember losing points for honestly stating that my sanitation project would result in cleaner more inviting stores, but that a price tag couldn't be attached. Some of my fellow students tried to impress the panel of judges with overly optimistic financial projections, which didn't always work. One fellow student, in a calculated effort to make himself look good, always started his presentations with some variation of "Everything was terrible. Then I came along and fixed it. Now everything is great". It must have worked since he rapidly moved up through the ranks to Night Manager, then Grocery Manager and was promoted to Store Director at ALPS, the limited assortment store (similar to Aldi) on North 27th Street. B&R was always charmed by people like him who were good at self-promotion and brown-nosing. Sometimes it worked out, often it did not. (He eventually either quit or was fired after telling the corporate director who was his immediate supervisor where to go, and allegedly throwing his nametag at him)

Shortly after I received the promotion I was separated from my first wife and my personal life was in an uproar. I was thrown out of my house and had to quickly find a place to live. The same night my part-time second job went away, closed down for fraudulent practices. I was having a hard time concentrating on even the basic parts of my job, and I asked to resign from the Next Generation management classes. After a few months I had adapted to my situation and asked the VP of Operations if I could be admitted into the next class. Instead I was enrolled in a program specifically for Assistant Store Directors (I can't recall the name). It was much more practical than the NGM classes, with fewer assignments that lent themselves to inflated results! In this program each of us would spend 1-3 days immersed in one of the various departments, shadowing an experienced department manager who would give us an overview of how the department was run. The idea wasn't that the experience would enable us to actually run these departments, but that it would give us the knowledge of what it took to operate a bakery, or a meat department. For example, in my time in one of the bakeries, I saw how everything took time. You couldn't just go to a Bakery Manager and expect that the shelves would be full without delay, but knowing the lead time for the various products gave us an idea of what we could expect from the departments. 

The one uncomfortable experience was working for three days with Joe, a Meat/Smokehouse Manager. Joe had been the Meat Manager at 48th & O. I got along with him okay, but we were never buddies. After I transferred to Cornhusker I saw him come in my store one night with a young woman (we'll call her Sheryl). It was common knowledge that Joe and his wife were separated and that he was living with Sheryl. A few days after, at a company gathering I mentioned to a manager at 48th & O that Joe and Sheryl were shopping at my store. This manager went to Joe, implying that I was gossiping about his situation. Joe called me at work and ripped into me for saying anything about seeing him and Sheryl. He would not accept my explanation that it was just an innocent observation and that I didn't know or care about his marital situation. From that point on, Joe and I did not get along. We managed to get through three days with him teaching me the basics of meat and smokehouse operations, and despite the ubiquity of knives, I came out unscathed.  

The classes, which included five assistant store directors and the corporate bakery director, fostered a camaraderie among the ADS's. We started convening unofficial, impromptu, "assistant store director meetings" at local bars where we would compare notes and just generally kvetch. This continued for several years as the ADS's became the core reset crew. 

One aspect of Store Director Brian's niceness that turned into an ongoing practice started out on my first Christmas working at the Cornhusker Store. The stores at the time were open 24 hours a day, and only closed on Christmas Eve at 6:00pm, reopening on December 26th at 6:00am. Convinced that left to himself, Brian would allow people to come in well after the supposed closing time, I deputized myself to guard the doors, refusing to let anyone enter once the clock struck six. Of course, many people tried to come in, all of them "needed just a couple of things", but I stuck to my guns and it became an annual thing. 

Part XIII - Grocery Guy

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 

 After working part-time at the Cornhusker Super Saver for around six months I noticed postings for management positions being posted in the break room. The plethora of opportunities was due to a new store opening at South 27th and Pine Lake Road. I decided to apply for the Grocery Manager slot at the 48th & O Super Saver. I thought my previous experience working as a manager at Food 4 Less and my recent time working on the Night Crew would help me get my foot in the door. I did indeed get my foot in the door and my foot stayed in the B&R Stores door, the parent company of Super Saver, for just under 17 years. 

I started as Grocery Manager for Store #4 of B&R Stores, the original Super Saver in August 1999. I got a little bit of training by Jeff, my predecessor. I came in at 6:00am and leaned how to put in a grocery order and then went back to finish up my two weeks notice at The Omaha World-Herald. Other than that, it was figure it out as I went along. My second week there I was told that I was going to be on my own as the manager-in-charge for second shift on a Friday night. The Store Director and Assistant Store Director would be leaving at 5:00pm, and I would be on my own until the Night Manager arrived at 9:00pm. I had no idea what I was doing, or even where anything was. Fortunately most of the action was handled by the Front End shift supervisor, who oversaw the cashiers. A team of grocery clerks brought the shopping carts in, cleaned the bathrooms and kept the aisles and displays full. When I asked George, the Store Director if I was going to get any training he told me that I'd figure it out and I was the evening supervisor 1pm - 10pm every Friday. The only manager in the store for 5 hours.

Friday nights were where I learned a lot about managing, not just the tasks, like ordering, but keeping all the balls in the air, dealing with angry customers, keeping all the clerks busy, making sure the Deli and the Bakery and the Meat department crews were all doing their jobs. One night, as I was making my rounds, I saw our evening janitor, Bill, gathering up trash to take out to the dumpster. Or that's what I thought he was doing. As I observed him, I saw that he was hiding items of produce under the trash bags, very carefully constructing what looked like a cart full of trash, but was really full of items that he was stealing. I called the police and had him ticketed for shoplifting. He ended up getting the charges dropped because the cop screwed up the paperwork. He had the gall to ask for his job back. He did not get it. 

I mentioned in my reminisces about my part time job with The Omaha World-Herald that my hours were different than what I thought they would be. I knew that I would be working at least one weekend day, but was surprised to learn the rest of the schedule expectations. A salaried manager was expected to work, not 40, but a minimum of 45 hours each week. Most days I was scheduled to work 6am - 3pm, with an hour for lunch. Fridays was 1-10pm without a lunch, since all the other managers left by 5:00pm. At first I had Sundays off, and had to work a half day on Wednesday, although "half day" was a misnomer. a half shift should have been 4 hours, so theoretically I should have been leaving at 10:00am, but we had a managers meeting from 9-10am, and since it was ad day I unfailingly had vendors looking for me when I came out of the meeting. Noon was a more common time to leave. Fortunately, shortly after I was hired we were given the choice of working 5 days or 5 ¹/₂  days, so my schedule changed to 6am - 4pm, with Thursday and Sunday off. 

Periodically our supplier, which at the time was Fleming Foods, would host a "Food Show". This was a gathering of vendors, who would promote their products, and give us an opportunity to buy quantity at lower prices. They also had an ad schedule; we had the opportunity to order our ad items in advance. An experienced grocery manager had a pretty good idea how much of a given product he could sell at a particular price, and order accordingly. I, on the other hand, had no idea what I was doing. I'm pretty sure my orders bore no relationship to what we could potentially sell. It was possible to check the computer database to see what had sold the last time a specific product was in the ad. One vendor, who was known as a weaselly sort, offered to sell me some Rotel, which sold well during Super Bowl.  I checked the database and ordered accordingly. The problem was that the database listed sales in units - I thought it represented cases. If I remember correctly we sold about 100 units around Super Bowl the previous year, which meant I needed 8-10 cases of 12 each. I ordered 100 cases. The vendor had to have known that I was making a rookie mistake, but let the order go through. We eventually sold it all, but it took all year! I never trusted that guy again. 

Years later all bulk or pallet sized orders originated in the corporate office. But when I was first promoted to grocery manager we had the freedom to order large quantities and run our own internal sales. I would regularly order a truckload of Old Orchard cranberry juice and other flavors, figure out what price point I wanted sell them at, calculate what price I needed to buy them at to achieve our gross profit goal, and negotiate with the supplier to get my target price. For about a year I would order a truckload every quarter and sell the whole delivery in less than two weeks. 

There were definitely some interesting characters in that store. Don, the Assistant Grocery Manager, was one of those guys who had a story for every occasion. He was a guitarist, and he used to talk about having played with some famous people, including David Crosby. No one believed what we thought were just tall tales until several years later talking with some local musicians who confirmed that he had indeed played with David Crosby! 

Terry was our janitor. He was a scruffy little guy with a giant moustache, who always seemed down on his luck. He would share his financial woes with the rest of us, woes that boiled down to him spending money foolishly. A couple of us offered to help him manage his money for a few months, especially since he was constantly taking out high interest payday loans to make ends meet, which always put him further behind, but he refused. The craziest thing he was involved in was getting involved with a woman in another state. This was around the year 2000, the infancy of the internet, and I don't remember how they got in touch. Despite being chronically broke he paid for her and her adult daughter to move here whereupon she moved in with him, hooked up with another guy, and kicked him out of his own apartment. He was the only person who I ever gave a zero to on an category of his annual review. This was in the category of appearance. There were a lot of issues there, but coming to work with a large hole in the seat of his jeans...while not wearing underwear, earned him that zero. 

Our maintenance man was another guy named Don. I don't remember him doing much maintaining, just a lot of walking around or standing up front with his arms crossed when we were busy. He was once asked to build a mobile podium for the cashiers' managers to use. The tiny wheels he put on it bent under the weight of the wood after one shift. I was assigned by the store director to do Don's annual review. The reviews had 15 categories where we rated the employees on a scale of 0 - 4. A "2" indicated that an employee was doing the basics, but not really doing anything outstanding. It was a typical score for someone new. A "3" meant that they were an excellent employee. "4's" were rare, but I always tried to find some reason to give a few. Some managers maintained that they meant "perfect", which was incorrect - it was more like "over and above", or "an example to others". If you didn't miss any work and showed up in the proper uniform every day I gave you a "4" in the attendance and uniform categories. (A "1" meant you had areas that were well below standard; a "0" was rare enough that I only gave out one in 17 years. I gave Don a pretty good review. A couple of "4's" and "2's" and mostly "3's". Weirdly he sat through the review sullenly declining to give an feedback or response. After we were done he stomped into the store director's office and slammed the door. He thought that he should have received all "4's" and complained about his review. Fortunately, the store director backed me up. 

My biggest challenge during my time as a grocery manager was my relationship with the Night Crew. In theory the grocery manager decided what displays would be built and where. The grocery manager did the daily ordering which  determined their nightly work load. The problem was that the Night Crew had very firm ideas about how things should be done and what they would do. My own inexperience added to the mess. Again, in theory, the grocery manager was supposed to "walk the store" and make sure the Night Crew had left everything in order. In practice, any changes or input were going to be ignored. Very soon after I started, Mike, the Assistant Store Director, pointed out a few minor things to me that he thought needed to be changed, and that he wanted me to communicate to the Night Crew. They were so minor I can't even remember what they were, but when I talked to Alex, the Night Manager, about it, he out and out refused. If you've read my series on managers, you know that a manager has several possible sources of leverage over their employees. 

1. Legitimate Power: The ability to influence others due to one's position, office or formal authority
2. Reward Power: The ability to influence others by giving or withholding rewards such as pay, promotions, time off, etc.
3. Coercive Power: The ability to influence others through punishment
4. Expert Power: The ability to influence others through special knowledge or skills
5. Referent Power: Power that comes from personal characteristics that people value, respect or admire

There were several problems that stymied my ability to get the Night Crew to do what I needed them to do. 

1. I wasn't technically the Night Manager's boss - he was very aware that, although I was responsible to give them direction, on the org chart we were equal. I didn't have any formal authority to tell them what to do
2. I had no control over pay, vacation, promotion. There was nothing I could do for them. 
3. I couldn't force them - same as #2. There was nothing I could do to them. 
4. I couldn't dazzle them with my deep knowledge of merchandising or even stock crew operations, because I didn't have either. To them I was an outsider (true) whose only experience was six months as a stocker. My many years experience as a manager was worthless to them. 
5. I've worked for managers who got things done simply because they were good people that their employees would do anything for. I've been that manager on occasion. These guys had no respect for anyone, least of all me. 

The problem was exacerbated by the refusal of the Store Director to address the problem. I exacerbated it myself a couple of months after I started. Thanksgiving was coming up, my first big holiday as a manager. As the big day approached I kept hearing the phrase "double truck". Due to the holiday, one of our regular deliveries would be eliminated, so extra stock needed to be ordered to make up the difference. But I took the term "double truck" very literally. If normal procedure called for one case, I ordered two. If it called for two cases, I ordered four. When I arrived at work the next morning the aisles were choked with stock that would not fit on the shelves. Craig, the Assistant Store Director (the previously mentioned Mike had transferred to a new store) had to literally prevent Alex from assaulting me. 

My lack of experience coupled with the Night Crew's lack of respect escalated. One night a member of the forklift crew ripped up a list of changes that I left for them right in front of me. Alex refused to walk the aisles with me in the morning, despite our VP of Operations and Store Director mandating that it be done. It finally came to a head during a meeting that included me, Don, my Assistant Grocery Manager, the Night Manager and his Assistant Night Manager, the Store Director and Assistant Store Director. I don't know if Alex had complained about me, or if store management finally saw a problem that needed to be resolved. The meeting was tense, but it seemed like we were getting things figured out. Alex and his assistant talked about the amount of time it took to execute a change in a display and I promised to keep the operational side of things in mind when planning. It all appeared to be headed for resolution; I summed up my side of things by saying that I just wanted to have open communication. Alex responded with "Well, I'm communicating that you don't really know how a night crew works" or something similar. Store Director George attempted to smooth that over by asking both of us if we could work together moving forward. Alex shrugged and gave an answer something like "I'll do what I can". George was prepared to accept this, but Assistant Store Director Craig exploded. He asked Alex what he meant by that. What he thought "doing what I can" entailed. He ripped into him for his comment about communication. He ripped into him for his attitude. He made it clear that he thought that the problems between day and night teams were entirely Alex's fault. 

From that moment on I had an ally in Craig. Even though Alex didn't respect Craig either (he had recently left another grocery chain to work for Super Saver), Craig did have real authority over the Night Manager and backed up my decisions, while at the same time teaching me how to be better at my job.

Not long after this meeting most of the bulk and truckload ordering had moved from store level to the corporate office. All available storage space was rapidly being filled. Unlike Food 4 Less, the back rooms at Super Saver were small and were not designed to store large quantities. Overstock was stacked on top of the warehouse racking on the sales floor. All of that top deck space had been filled and pallets were being stacked three high near the check stands, and in other areas of the store not designed for storage. Alex and his crew complained to no avail, until one day, fed up with the mess, Alex and several of his most experienced forklift drivers walked out. Now this left us short staffed, but no one missed Alex. 

The two years that I worked at the 48th & O Super Saver were in some ways the last gasp of the old school way of running a grocery store. I mentioned earlier that bulk ordering shifted to the corporate office. Adequate staffing was coming to an end. In Super Savers the Grocery Manager oversaw the janitors and grocery clerks, who were responsible for bringing in carts from the lot and generally keeping the store in order. In those days there would be four grocery clerks and a "utility clerk" (basically a janitor) on duty in the evenings, with six clerks on weekends. By the time I left Super Savers in 2013 we were lucky if we had two. Having that many unspecialized staff meant that not only could you handle special events that required extra staff, like anniversary cake giveaways, but if someone called in sick in another department you could loan them out to check, or stock dairy, or fill produce racks. It wasn't long before Walmart came to town, resulting in fewer sales. The corporate answer was always to cut labor. Another change was the bonus structure. For some reason Grocery, Frozen, Dairy, General Merchandise (GMD) and Spirits Managers were not eligible for bonuses, but the so-called perishable departments, Meat, Deli, Bakery and Produce were able to earn quite lucrative bonuses. A Meat Manager could conceivably make $60,000-70,000 in bonuses on top of a typical $35,000 a year salary. The potential bonuses were much reduced, which angered many long term managers, especially the Meat managers who had grown to expect the large payouts as part of their salary. 

After about two years as a Grocery Manager I started to set my sights on a promotion to assistant store director (ASD). My own ASD had started coaching me on some of the responsibilities of the position and I felt confident that I would be able to step up. There had been some changes with store directors retiring and ASDs moving up, leaving several open positions. I was considering applying for the position in one of the smaller stores, but my ASD counselled me to wait, suggesting that something better would open up soon. In fact, he was promoted to store director, opening up an ASD position in my own store. I interviewed for the position and was offered the job. Unknown to me, Tom S, the Operations VP, was offering the job to Lonnie, the ASD at the Cornhusker Super Saver. So I had to interview again, this time for the ASD position at the Cornhusker store. Brian, who had hired me as a stocker two years before, was still in charge and hired me as the Assistant Store Director for his store. 

Time for the next new adventure.

Workin' Man - Part XII - Paying Off the Pile of Debt and More Newspaper Delivery

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 

Over the course of five or six years, in order to pay off $20,000 in credit card debt, I had a succession of part-time jobs in addition to my main job. The first position was as a night stocker at the Cornhusker Super Saver while I was still a manager at The Omaha World-Herald. I worked four nights a week, 9:00pm - 2:00am, 20 hours/week. When I came in at 9:00, my first task was go around to all displays and organize them so that the forklift crew could start filling them right away. Usually the delivery truck came in at 10:00. Another stocker and I would unload the truck and then start "stringing" the aisles, i.e. taking the stock from the pallets and setting it on the floor in front of the shelf where it would ultimately be placed. Once this was done the manager would assign me to either work with the forklift crew filling displays or to work one of the aisles. Since I was only scheduled until 2:00 it would either be a smaller aisle, or I'd work with another employee to stock their aisle. I was 40 years old, and by far the oldest one on the crew and was frequently mistaken for a manager. It was pretty routine work, but I wasn't getting much sleep. The most exciting things that ever happened was the occasional run-in with a shoplifter (company policy hadn't yet banned physical contact). The worst that happened was getting buried in a pile of bodies one night when several stockers tackled a shoplifter who I was chasing. Ouch! 

Back at the World-Herald, my disenchantment with the bonus and salary situation led me to start exploring my options. A new store had just been built in Lincoln, resulting in multiple management openings, including the Grocery Manager at the Super Saver at 48th & O. The Grocery Manager was in charge of what we called "Center Store" the food aisles of can and boxes, as well non-food items like detergent and paper towels. The Grocery Manager was considered next in line behind the Store Director and Assistant Store Director. I was hired for the position after an interview with George Hill, the Store Director. Of course, now I couldn't keep my part-time job with Super Saver, so I agreed to stay on with the Omaha World-Herald part-time. 

My new part-time position was as an assistant to my replacement. I was doing some of the same things, repairing racks, tracking single copy sales and collecting from the racks on weekends. But it didn't last very long. One reason was that my schedule at my new grocery job was not 6am - 2pm as I thought it would be, but 6am - 4pm. (9 hours work + an hour for lunch), so I couldn't get to the newspaper office until late. The other reason was that the new State Circulation Manager, who set up his office in Lincoln, unlike Omaha, as his predecessors did, was cleaning house of holdovers and filling positions with his own people. I was told I was being laid off because we "had too many part-timers", but they soon replaced me and the others they "laid off". 

I still needed a second job, so I took a job as a telemarketer. They weren't very picky about who they hired. I found out later that in a group of 20 new hires, 5 or 6 would leave on break during the first night of training. When night two of training started there would be fewer than 10 left. After one shift working the phones for real, 5 newbies would be left. Only 2 or 3 would end up staying around. It was hire in bulk and see who sticks with it. The place was open Monday - Saturday, from 8:30am - 9:00pm. I'd work an 8-hour shift on Thursday, my day off, and 4-hour shifts, 5:00 - 9:00pm on week nights. I had a  rotating weekend off at the grocery store, so I would work a full shift on my one Saturday a month off. 

Telemarketing is a hard job. There's a lot of rejection - think about how often you hang up on cold calls. But there are sales. Think about it, there would have to be, or why would companies keep doing it. I was very skeptical about my ability to make any sales, since part of our sales spiel involved getting the potential sale's bank account number and social security number. I thought surely no one would be that stupid to give that information out. I thought wrong. Most of the phone crew managed to average two sales per hour. There were a lot of hang ups and rejections, but as long as we consistently achieved our goal of two sales per hour, everything was fine. Back then minimum wage was $5.15/hour. We were paid $8.00/hour to start, plus commission. If you averaged 1 sale/hour, you received $1.00/sale. If you averaged 2 sales/hour, your commission went up to $2.50/sale. If you managed managed to average 3 sales/hour you received $4.00/sale. Once you closed the sale a verifier would get on the line and confirm your sale to eliminate the possibility of cheating. 

We sold several different products. Our main one was called Auto Savings Discount Club (ASDC) which had nothings to do with autos or savings, and wasn't a discount or a club. (It later changed its name to American Savings Discount Club) What it turned out to be was getting people with bad credit to sign up for a limited line of credit for a fee. After paying a fee a member could draw on this line of credit to pay bills in an emergency - paid back at interest of course. Eventually the FCC closed them down - they were preying on people with poor credit and it turned out they weren't even giving them access to the lines of credit. 

We also did some political polling. The first time was for Jon Corzine, who was running for Senator in the New Jersey Democratic primary. Most of the people we called would ask whether he was Democrat or Republican, and when I responded that he was a Democrat would assert that they were voting for him.  My explanation that it was the primary, and that they were all Democrats, fell on deaf ears and I eventually just gave up trying to explain. The one that was really interesting was when we did polling for a New York City Council candidate. First we would call and ask some questions about which issues were most important, once we had the answers we would call back in a month, emphasizing all the issues that our candidate agreed with the voter we were calling, ignoring the areas of disagreement. A different script would pop up for each voter, depending on how they had answered the questions during the previous call. Tricky bastards, those pollsters. 

Before the place was shut down, I got very good at selling ASDC. The trick was to cycle through the "no's" as quickly as possible. This meant getting a sense for who was either too dense to understand what you were selling or too smart to fall for it, in addition to those were just going to string you along. Once you knew you had one of these you had to get off the phone as soon as possible and tee up the next one. Since telemarketing success depends in large part in reaching a lot of people, the key to making sales is to not waste time with the people who aren't interested. I developed an ability to detect early in the call who I should push it with and who I should give up on quickly. Getting those who I knew were a lost cause off the phone enabled me to reach more people and therefore get more sales. This was against company policy, which had a script for you to follow that needed a "no" three distinct times before you could move on. We had a quality assurance monitor who would listen to our calls and write us up if we deviated from the script. But those of us who brought in a lot of sales were eventually left alone. 

One of the recurring reasons to drop a call was when the person we were calling wasn't home. We were supposed to then try to sell to whoever answered the phone, as long as they were an adult. This never worked. We'd ask for "Bob Smith", and be told that Bob wasn't home. According to the script we were to say that we could make the offer to them - Mrs. Smith, or Bob Smith's brother, whoever - and proceed with the script. The problem - every single time - was that, no matter how well you thought the call was going, no matter how much it seemed like a sale, when you swooped in for the close they would invariably say "Bob's not home". Why bother? 

I used to get a kick out of people who were conflicted about what we were selling, but didn't want to come right out and say that they weren't interested. We'd get to the close and have to ask them for their bank account information.

Me: I'll just need your bank account number

Prospect: I don't know it

Me: All you have to do is look on the bottom of your checks, the first nine digits is the routing number...

Prospect: My checkbook is in my car

Me: Okay, I'll wait while you go out to your car and get it

Prospect: I don't know where my car is

Me: What?

Prospect: My brother has it

Me: *Click*

I don't know if people really kept their checkbooks in their cars, or they just thought it sounded like a plausible excuse, but in the two years I was there I heard this dozens of times. 

I mentioned earlier that my work schedule rotated my days off once a month. The company required a request in advance to change the schedule, but they tired of me requested a change every month and decided to just let me come in whenever I felt like it. Many weeks I worked until I made my goal for sales for the week. After I had been on the phones for around two years I was getting a divorce. After missing a few shifts to find a place to live I stopped in to the phone bank, only to find out we were shutting down because ASDC, our biggest client, was being shut down by the FCC, and the money they owed us was frozen. We eventually got paid. Once again I needed a part-time job.

By this time I was an assistant store director at the Cornhusker Super Saver, I wasn't having any success finding a second shift job, so I ended up taking a Lincoln Journal Star seven-day motor route. My territory was the southwest corner of Lancaster County - west of Highway 77 and south of Highway 33, including the towns of Sprague and Hallam. I'd start around 2:00am and deliver papers until around 6:00; head home, shower and start work at Super Saver at 7:00. Gas was around $1.60/gallon. I was making over $900/month after paying for gas and replacing the occasional tire. I ran this route from November 2001 through May 2002. It's not generally known that paper carriers are classified as independent contractors. You can't call in sick or take a day off unless you can find someone to substitute for you. So I worked sick and never took a day off. I paid for gas and tires myself. A problem being an independent contractor is that you don't receive a paycheck, you receive a check representing your net profit, with no tax or social security taken out. This means that you're likely to have to pay the IRS in April, rather than receiving a refund as most people do. I didn't report my paper route income and ended up having to pay the back taxes plus penalty and interest when the IRS figured it out. Ouch. 

In 2002 I planned on taking a trip to New York to visit family, stopping along the way to see friends. I planned on being gone for around two weeks, but could not find anyone to cover for me, so I had to quit. I still needed a second job. That Autumn I was contracted to deliver the Tuesday afternoon Star Express, a free paper put out by the Lincoln Journal Star. This was a lot easier that the rural route and it was only one day a week! And it was in the daylight! After a year or so the Star Express was discontinued. The Journal Star started a program where all non-subscribers would receive a paper every Wednesday morning. By this time I had long since paid off my debt, but was keeping the route to help make ends meet. I was making $200/month, which was the same amount that I was paying in child support for my last minor child. Once I was no longer paying child support I decided that I no longer needed the extra income and quit the last in a long succession of second jobs.

Workin' Man - Part XI - Consultants, Management Time and The Answer Man, Oh My

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

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

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

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

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

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

I have learned over the decades to be extremely suspicious of consultants. They generally don't know as much as they think that they do, they make extravagant promises and make sure to feed you enough information to keep you interested and willing to keep bringing them back. I don't recall the name of this consultant, but what he was pitching was process improvement. In general I think process improvement is a good idea. In short, what it involves is looking at your processes for anything that is superfluous and analyzing the steps and handoffs involved. Are there steps that are unnecessary or don't add value? Is it generating paper that doesn't go anywhere? Are unnecessary people involved? The program started off with a weekend retreat at Mahoney State Park attended by representatives from all of the company's divisions. We were supposed to hash out a plan to implement a process improvement program, based on guidance from the consultant. What we came up with was a grass roots, from the bottom up, methodology for  implementing change in the company. According to the plan, a core group of people would go around to all the departments, interview the staff, and map out the processes involved in their jobs. Once this was all done, a team of any four people could implement a change to any department after putting together a detailed plan. Coaches, who had undergone training by the consultant, who be available to guide and advise the change teams. So far do good. Or so we thought. 

The problems started right away. The unionized sections of the company refused to participate. Other areas like the reporters didn't have a specific procedure that they followed. I was one of the coaches, and stayed busy training teams on how to implement change according to the program. But more problems cropped up when teams that had no real understanding of how divisions of the company worked were making changes to those divisions without the permission, or even the input, of the affected managers. I don't remember anything actually getting done. Ever. Eventually the Publisher (newspaper-speak for CEO) got tired of the whole thing and fired the consultant. My skepticism of consultants continues to this day. 

I was one of those people who volunteered for everything. And got volunteered for everything. One of the more fun things that I signed up for was being on staff for the Omaha World-Herald carrier newsletter. Every month I wrote an article called "The Answer Man". My non de plume was Dlarehd L. Rowahamo - which is Omaha World-Herald spelled backwards. The premise was that Dlarehd was either from another planet, or perhaps another dimension or timeline, and didn't quite understand what was going on. He constantly got things backwards, but ended up covering things that needed to be covered, like sales contests and changes in subscription price, in a humorous manner. The first few issues were a battle to stop the editors from spell checking me, since I made up a lot of words! I was once involved in a seminar where the facilitator was trying to demonstrate the value of consensus in putting together a mission statement, rather than simply a vote of the majority. My thinking was that the bigger the group, the less likely it is that consensus could be achieved. So during this consensus building exercise, I decided that I would be a contrarian and refuse to agree to the nascent consensus. The moderator tried to negotiate with me, but I dug in my heels and wouldn't agree to anything. Was I being a jerk? Absolutely, but I also effectively debunked his idea of the inevitability of consensus. I believe they abandoned consensus and decided to outvote me!

One of the things I learned participating in all of those committees was that there is an ideal number of people on a committee. Too few and you get groupthink; too many and you never come to a conclusion. Once a committee gets too big the best thing that can be done is break it up into subcommittees. Have that subcommittee do the work of crafting a plan, then present it to the larger group and have them vote on it. 

There were a lot of other projects and committees that I volunteered for, but despite all the work I was putting into these activities that were adjacent to my regular job description, they weren't really valued by management. Every year State Circulation had an annual meeting where awards were given out for outstanding achievement. There were cash awards given out in conjunction with these recognitions as well. One particular year I was sure I'd be recognized for something like team player, (for which there was an award) or for all the committees I was recruited for, but every award, like every other year, went to the sales reps whose sales went up the most. I had an epiphany. I realized that I was spending hours upon hours every week on projects that simply weren't valued and resulted in no reward or even recognition. Not even a pat on the back. The next day I resigned from every single committee and program that I was involved in and spent my time on the things that would bring me recognition, and more importantly, more money!

The most interesting thing I was involved in was an 18-month management training course. At least part of it was interesting. Honestly I can't remember most of what they covered, but we would be at training two-three days a week a couple of times a month. One class that stood out was one where we were supposed learn how to let go of our stress and to relax by means of guided meditation. I didn't get much out of it, but one of my fellow trainees fell asleep and was snoring loudly. I guess he was relaxed! The part that I learned the most from, and have carried to this day, was a week-long class called Managing Management Time. I had taken my share of time management courses before, including one that was a thinly disguised front for a company selling pocket calendars. (This was well before the days when everyone had a multi-purpose supercomputer in their pocket) Managing Management Time was a theory of management that I had never heard before. The premise was that management was a skill like any other, and separate from the skills of the people that were being managed, the ranks of whom the manager had presumably arrived from. The time management tips were really corollaries to spending your time as a manager, not just another one of the guys. One of the main nuggets of wisdom was the saying "The job of a manger is not to do things, but to get things done.  The course covered a lot of the management fallacies. One was the "Pride of Craft" fallacy, where a new manager was so attached to her pre-management job, that she would spend a large portion of her work week doing the job that she had just been promoted out of. This was in addition to all the new management responsibilities. This was why many new managers end up working 60-70 hour weeks! Other topics included the responsibility of a manager to train his subordinates to do their jobs independently, instead of micromanaging them; and knowing what things were actually her responsibility - knowing who the "monkey" belonged to! A piece of practical advice included procrastination: if nobody follows up on that task you were given, it probably wasn't that important! The main nugget of wisdom was that there was management time and vocational time. As managers we were being paid to manage, not to do the tasks that we were paying other people to do. Your subordinates might think you were a cool guy for getting your hands dirty working side by side with them, and occasionally that might serve as a morale builder, but it wasn't your job. I still have the book from this class on my bookshelf and have applied the principles consistently over the years. 

As I mentioned in the previous installment, my old manager Dave was once again my manager. He was much easier to work with this time around. Maybe he had mellowed with experience. Maybe he was thankful he had a veteran like myself on his team. Whatever the reason, it was considerably better this time around. After I had been back in my old district for a while, Dave decided to make a change. Dodge County, which included the city of Fremont, had recently been detached from its district in Region 4 and added to our region. Fremont had two busy distributorships as well as a number of large motor routes, both seven-day and Sunday only, as well as routes in all of the smaller towns. Dave asked me if I would consider taking over that district, along with a decent raise. I agreed. On my first Sunday in the county Dave and I both were out delivering papers in a blizzard! I also had my first visit to South Dakota when I was assigned to convert all the racks in South Dakota to new settings after a price change. 

Outside of Dodge County, things were changing in State Circulation. A lot of the managers who had been in charge were leaving the company. The last several State Circulation Managers had risen through the ranks within the newspaper, but one by one they were being promoted into Metro, transferred to one of our subsidiaries, or leaving the company altogether. The new State Manager was from outside the company and had already brought in a few of his friends from his previous newspaper as Region Managers. Like many new executives, he was keen to shake things up and make changes. He and Dave did not get along. The friction got so bad that Dave eventually resigned. It was funny - after Dave left a lot of the other sales reps asked me if I was worried since "my buddy" had left, not realizing that Dave and I were far from "buddies"! 

Jerry, the new Region Manager had come from our competitor, The Lincoln Journal-Star. He convinced me to transfer districts again, this time back to the Lincoln Office as the Single Copy Manager. This time around I also had some responsibility for single copy throughout all regions of the state.  This involved putting together an inventory of every rack in the state (outside of the Omaha metro area) and ordering and delivering new racks when needed. I conducting training classes on rack repair and changing pricing mechanisms. It was amazing how many sales reps had no idea where the racks were in their districts or in what shape they were in. In dealing with the Region Manager and his sales reps in the Western Nebraska Region I also got a taste of how small town Nebraskans viewed people from the urban areas - with barely concealed disdain. I remember trying to get an address for a storage facility in Kearney so I could deliver some new racks and being told that this wasn't the big city, we don't have addresses out here. (Spoiler: there was an address)

Around this time, in order to pay off my credit card debt I took a part-time job working the night stocking crew at the Super Saver on Cornhusker Highway. I'll discuss that job more in a future article. I got the job because one of the guys who worked on my crew at Food 4 Less was a manager there. He introduced me to his Store Director whose only question was "Can you work nights?" - I was hired. 

As Single Copy Manager I was always looking for ways to sell more papers. I hustled around town looking for new locations for racks, and worked on maximizing the number of papers in each location, paying attention to sales and returns. On Husker Football Game Days we rented a parking stall at the old Greyhound Station and parked a pickup truck there full of papers. We sold a paper-spirit card combo for the price of a paper (then 25¢) which counted as paid circulation. The big win was when I convinced downtown restaurants to commit to paying for hundreds of papers at a reduced rate that I would give away at the stadium with a map to the restaurant stapled to the sports section. We did this for every Lincoln sporting event and it was a great success. My circulation numbers skyrocketed. Since increased circulation was one of the things that our bonus was based on, I was making some extra money!

Like at many places, when you succeed, you're expected to keep succeeding. In an industry where a 2% increase was almost unheard of (I used to say exceeding 2% will result in a temple being built, devoted to your worship) I achieved a 20% annual increase in paid circulation. The company set my goal the following year for another 20%. I achieved a only 10% increase (still, 30% greater than 2 years previously) but received no bonus, even though sales reps with 1% and 2% increases did. I was extremely unhappy. By this time, there was a new State Circulation Manager (again), this time a transplant from the Lincoln Journal Star who Jerry didn't get along with, so I got a new, new boss, a guy named Kevin. Kevin was able to get me a salary increase, (no bonus recalculation though) but I thought it was a case of too little, too late, and resigned to take a management job with Super Saver. This meant that I needed to quit my part-time job with Super Saver and get a new part-time job to pay off my debt. I took a part-time job with the Omaha World-Herald!