Workin' Man - Part XXIX - Chain of Command

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Human Resources often acted as if they were completely separate from store chain of command as well. In theory, Human Resources Coordinators were responsible for hiring entry level employees, setting up interviews for management openings, processing vacation requests and payroll, and keeping the paperwork flowing. Technically within the chain of command of a store, in practice they answered to Donna, the Corporate Human Resources Director. With a few exceptions, the Human Resources people had not come up "through the ranks" and usually had limited actual hands-on retail experience. Also with few exceptions, the Human Resources Coordinators were looked at almost as spies from corporate and not fully trusted by store management. There was also a turf war waged between Corporate Human Resources and Operations. This came to a head about halfway through my time in B&R.  Tom, the Vice President of Operations decided that the position of store level Human Resources Coordinator would be eliminated and replaced by a second Assistant Store Director, who would be responsible for human resources.  Donna was implacably opposed to this, but it went forward anyway. This resulted in two related problems. You had some Human Resources Coordinators applying for Assistant Store Director positions, thinking that it was the same job with a different title, when in reality the second Assistant Store Director was responsible for Human Resources and several "center store" departments. Most of these people had no retail or department management experience. The other problem was Assistant Store Directors suddenly being in charge of human resources with no previous experience. Dan, the first Assistant Store Director to be be thrust into this role asked for help from corporate HR, but received none. Donna, the Human Resources Director, forbade any Human Resources Coordinators from helping him, setting him up for failure. It didn't help that at the same time Ron, the Operations VP's assistant, was embedded in the store and mandating how much time Dan could spend in each of his new roles. 

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

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

You Don't Get to Decide When I'm Insulted

I encountered a situation today where I was insulted. The insulter may not have initially thought he was being insulting, but after I informed him that was, he doubled down, accusing me of being "combative" and subsequently engaged in some straw man arguing, goalpost moving and other logical fallacies. 

The subject that engendered this exchange was politics, but since it's a situation that occurs in all walks of life and in all scenarios, I'll discuss it on the non-politics blog. 

Being able to look at the facts and draw conclusions based on those facts and not on preconceived biases. Do I always succeed at this? Of course not. But it's something that I work on and attempt to stay silent when I don't have enough information to make an intelligent contribution to a conversation. Now, staying silent is not something I'm particularly good at. I often am compelled to speak up when I hear bullshit being spouted, which doesn't make me the most popular guy in the room. This doesn't mean that I will insert myself uninvited into conversations, but oftentimes the line is not clear when a public forum is really public. 

In responding to a Trumper friend's post about Trump's "accomplishments" I commented by debunking several of them and agreeing that one of them was indeed a positive accomplishment. (The specifics are not important). His rejoinder to me started off by allowing that some of what I said were probably facts, but it also sounded like typical left-wing narrative. And there it is. You want to insult me? Suggest that I can’t think for myself but get my pre-digested opinions from the mainstream media. But I don’t want to head on down the political rabbit hole. 

I know that it’s popular to rant about how no one can take a joke, everyone gets offended at everything, and people these days are nothing but overly sensitive snowflakes. A case can be made that sometimes we go too far in demonizing those who say offensive things and as a society we don’t always make allowances for inadvertent offensiveness. Sometimes we’re just not as funny as we think we are. But I’m not referring to getting offended at public figures or collectively words or behavior as objectionable. No I’m talking about insulting someone personally. 

If I tell you that I am insulted by something you said — assuming that you didn’t mean to be insulting — you can salvage the situation by simply saying “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way” or “I didn’t know” and my gracious response should be to accept the apology and move on. You DON’T suggest that my feeling is invalid or that I didn’t understand what was said, or claim that I’m the one in the wrong, am being unreasonable or “combative” for challenging your words. 

Even though this isn’t the political blog, I’ll circle back to politics since that’s what started this. Today’s politics has made many of us nastier. And within that nastiness is a insistence upon being right, no matter the contradictory evidence. 

Kind of like a cult.

 

Workin' Man - Part XXVIII - Loss Prevention

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wonder if these guys ever actually prevented any loss. 

Christians Battlin' Over Popes

Papal elections seem to flush a lot of the anti-Catholic prejudice out of the bushes. They say they're simply pointing out the unbiblical nature of much of Catholic doctrine and practice, but the vitriol appears to be reserved exclusively for Catholics, and not fellow Protestants who, it could be argued, are equally unbiblical. (I'm not talking about legitimate criticism of the Catholic hierarchy for covering up pedophilia among the clergy, or the other abuses by the church or in its name, just doctrinal disagreements). I'm going to limit today's thoughts to the office of the papacy and whether or not it's biblical. 

There's a few verses in the Gospel of Matthew (which I will quote shortly) which the Catholics claim establish Peter as the leader of the church and imply that he will have successors who will fill the same role. Protestants have a differing interpretation. There are a number of possibilities:

1. Jesus didn't exist, so it makes no difference
2. Jesus thought that the end of the world was coming soon, so there's no way he was engaged in succession planning and the whole section was added later
3. Jesus didn't think the world was ending soon (amuse yourselves by going down the dispensationalist rabbit hole) but this section was added later to support the evolving reality of Bishops of Rome as the top leaders of the church
4. Jesus didn't think the world was ending soon and was quoted accurately -- and was engaged in succession planning (basically the Catholic position)
5. Jesus was quoted accurately but was really saying that he, Jesus, was the rock on which the church would be built (basically the Protestant position)

Since Protestants, at least the more fundamentalist flavors, believe that the Bible doesn't contain errors, or that sections were added by unauthorized hands, they're stuck with the text as it is. 

Matthew 16:18-19 New International Version

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

The text looks pretty clear, although the Greek word for "Peter" is not the exact same word as "rock" (The Greek word that is translated "Peter" basically means "rock" or "stone"). Let's substitute "Rock" for "Peter": "And I tell you that you are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church...". It's even clearer when you construct it like that. And that next phrase: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. -- it seems inarguable that Jesus is naming Peter as his successor. And that's what the Catholics believe it means. But wait! The Protestants disagree! 

The main Protestant argument against Peter as a Pope is presented here in a quotation from Oswald J. Smith:

The Greek word for Peter is ‘petros,’ meaning ‘a little stone.’  The word for rock is ‘petra,’ meaning ‘The Rock.’   What Jesus said was, ‘I will build my Church on The Rock.’  He himself was The Rock.  He never said He would build His Church on Peter, ‘a little stone.’  That would be too faulty a foundation.  In 1 Peter 2:5-8, Peter himself speaks of believers as stones and of Jesus as a rock.  So, in Eph. 2:19-21, Jesus is the Corner Stone, the Foundation.  The Church, therefore, is built not on Peter or his successors but on Jesus Christ Himself—The Rock.

I was exposed to this argument many years ago, and I believed it, mainly because the minister who related it sounded like he knew what he was talking about. But it all rests upon making a distinction between"petros" and "petra". I'm no Greek scholar, but I do know that word endings are much more significant in Greek than they are in English. Petra, translated "rock" is, in Greek, a feminine noun. Giving Simon (Peter's original name) a feminine nickname doesn't sound likely to me, so the "os" ending made Petros a masculine name. There's also the matter of the language that Jesus was speaking - it wasn't Greek. The word translated "Peter", as well as the word translated "rock" are both kepha in Aramaic, the common language in Jewish lands. The Protestant argument, like a lot of attempts to make the Bible coherent, twists logic into a pretzel and makes language and grammar sit up and beg. 

This doesn't mean that I think that Matthew 16:18-19 is legitimate succession planning. Even if Jesus existed (I lean toward the existence of someone upon whom the biblical Jesus is based) the Synoptic Gospels portray Jesus as preaching that everyone should get themselves right before God because the world would be ending very, very soon. 

As I said in another article, there is nothing in canonical scripture to indicate that Peter was the sole leader, or even that he was ever in Rome. Paul is documented as having much greater influence in building the church through missionary activity and James, Jesus' brother, is implied to have been the leader in Jerusalem. It seems likely to me that Matthew 16:18-19 was a later addition to lend support to the evolving reality on the ground which had the Bishops of Rome asserting themselves as first among equals, if not absolute rulers of the growing church, and retconning an unbroken line of bishops stretching back to Peter. It makes sense that creating the idea that someone was spiritually in charge was a way to reign in the various sects and the contradictory "scriptures" (at least more contradictory than the ones we ended up with) that were all competing for attention. It looks at odds with how things operated in The Acts of the Apostles, but how long could that "all things in common" small-scale churches in people's homes continued? Things change and evolve to fit changing circumstances, and somebody cooked up some quotable quotes to baptize what they already decided to do. 

Granted, there is no scriptural model for the top-down hierarchical structure with a Pope at the top. But it's in The Bible now, and the Protestants can either accept it or accept that the Bible isn't inerrant. 

Battlin' Christians

The death of Pope Francis and the upcoming election of his replacement has instigated a flood of social media chatter about Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general. Mostly the conversations revolve around how many Christians think other Christians aren't really Christians. The broad strokes come down to Protestants thinking Catholics are idolaters, worshipping Mary and the saints, and the Catholics smugly believing that the Protestants are all rebels, or possibly heretics, definitely Johnny-Come-Latelys. Catholics largely pin their superiority complex on the belief that the Catholic Church was the original church and that all others are offshoots. The Protestants claim that Catholic belief and practice contradicts scripture, which they claim that they follow -- even when various denominations disagree with each other. 

Even if we accept that Matthew 16:18 is referring to Jesus installing Peter as the leader upon which the church will be built, there is no evidence that this actually happened. I'm not even referring to secular history, but to the New Testament books that record what went on in the early years of the church. The Acts of the Apostles starts out focussing on Peter and his fellow apostles' ministry in Jerusalem and the rest of Judea, but about halfway through switches the spotlight to Paul, someone who hadn't met Jesus and starts his preaching before ever meeting one of the apostles who had. There is also no reference in scripture to bishops who oversee a whole city, but to a more collegial system akin to a board of deacons. Evidently the system did eventually evolve into a single bishop model, as some of the apocryphal books make reference to it. 

There is every indication that the decades following the death of Jesus saw multiple strains of Christianity, some which would barely be recognizable as Christian today. The Bible didn't yet exist as a source, so various groups of followers were left to create their own belief systems and pictures of who and what they thought Jesus was and what following him consisted of. This should be expected -- we take for granted today's instant worldwide communication, but this was more than a millennium before the printing press. Any standards disseminated by the leaders would be in laboriously handwritten, or depended on personal visits. 

One of these groups was founded by Marcion, who believed that the God of Jesus and the God of the Hebrew scriptures were two different deities. His canon of scripture included only the gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles. For years Marcionite Christians were the dominant form of Christianity in many cities. Eventually the form of Christianity that became the Catholic Church became the overwhelming majority, and since history (including the Bible) is written by the victors, competing Christianities were tarred as heretics and false teachers. It's easy to look back 2000 years and see how some of these factions taught things that didn't line up with the Bible, but there was no Bible. The writings that make up our New Testament took decades if not centuries to become widely available. And the decision regarding what would be included in the Bible and considered Holy Scripture was made by the winning faction. It's not difficult to imagine a very different Bible if one of the other sects had prevailed. 

By Constantine's reign there was an entity which was recognizable as the ancestor of today's Catholic Church, but it still was far from obvious what form it should take. During that time there were five Patriarchs -- think of them as Super Bishops (the position of Cardinal hadn't been invented yet) who presided over the churches in Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria. Due to Rome and Constantinople being the capital cities of the empire, the patriarchs of those cities enjoyed the greatest prestige and the greatest influence. The Bishop of Rome at some point began to claim Matthew 16:18 as the scriptural basis for his position as leader of the entire church. The Patriarch of Constantinople disagreed. By the 600's the other three Patriarchs were in Muslim lands and therefore didn't figure into any power plays. For the most part the Eastern and Western churches were in sync on doctrine, but began to drift apart regarding ritual. But once the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople excommunicated each other, they didn't need to take the other's opinion into consideration any longer. By this time the retconning of the early church as an unbroken line of leaders starting with Peter had become ingrained. Is it possible that Peter really was the leader of undisputed "true" church, and that there was an unbroken line of successors? Maybe, but I think it's equally likely that what we see in the Fourth Century was a result of several centuries of evolution in faith and practice, with competition for souls and power among various factions. Once Christianity became legal, the Catholic hierarchy had legal authority, as well as spiritual, to back up their views.  

Despite this surface unity, there were many so-called heresies that sprung up, mostly about the nature of Jesus. One thing is evident from reading the Bible as an historian and not a theologian is that the Synoptic Gospels portray Jesus' message as one of how to act while the Pauline epistles and other New Testament books focus on what to believe. This led to heresies and schisms over deep theological issues, and relegating Christian practice to prayer and ritual, rather than to loving your neighbor and doing acts of charity. One "heresy" that had remarkable staying power was put forth by a clergyman named Arius and involved (as most of the arguments did) the nature of Jesus. The Arian teaching was condemned at the Council of Nicea, but persisted until the 800's, mostly among the Germanic people. It finally withered away when Charlemagne decided to hitch his wagon to Orthodox Catholicism. 

When the Protestant Reformation began, its leaders didn't at first reject the Catholic Church or its theology, although they gradually moved away from the idea that truth was determined by the church leaders' interpretation, and began to encourage ordinary people to read the Bible and defer to scripture first. Their position was that the Catholic Church had moved away from the ideals of the early church and that by going back to scripture Christians could recreate the atmosphere of godliness that existed back then. What they didn't consider was that the scriptures that had come down to them were the product of the embryonic Catholic Church. The early church didn't have the Bible. If they had any gospels or epistles, different cities had access to different versions. The Protestants, by claiming to obey only scripture and not human authority, were putting their stamp of approval on the Catholic version of what Truth ought to be!

Catholic doctrine is that scriptural interpretation should be filtered through the clergy, especially the head of the church -- the Pope. As mentioned earlier, there were competing versions of Christianity in the early days, each with its own epistles, gospels and acts of the apostles. Most falsely claimed to have been written by one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. (None of the canonical Gospels claim authorship within their texts, several letters attributed to Paul most certainly weren't written by him, and several other epistles attributed to Peter or John are without a doubt pseudonymous). The early church leadership claimed the authority to decide which of these numerous tracts and letters were legitimate, and how the canonical ones should be interpreted. This is related to the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, which posits that Jesus taught the Twelve, who taught others, who then taught others in an unbroken chain. The assumption was that the teaching originated with Jesus and was therefore perfect, and was perfect transmitted from successor to successor. As the successors of the Apostles, and therefore of Jesus, the idea was that they were uniquely qualified to determine Biblical Truth. And they had a point. Although anyone who has played a game of "telephone" knows that information doesn't remain intact as it passes from one person to another -- someone had to sift through all myriad contradictory "scriptures" and decide what was legitimate. The idea that anyone who had access to a Bible could determine the Truth hasn't led to a return to first century paradise, with every ploughman able to discern the will of God, but to hundreds, even thousands, of competing contradictory versions of Christianity. And they all "know" that they're right. 

Some of the divisions aren't even about doctrine. There are some denominations that are organized around an "episcopal" model, with bishops overseeing large areas; some are a congregationally organized, with a board of elders or presbyters making all the decisions, still others are independent, led by a charismatic leader. Denominations split and regroup, local churches change denominations, and individuals hop from church to church. You hear people who have been raised in one church describing a change in their church as "becoming a Christian", as if they weren't really a Christian before. And they all can all point to something in the Bible to justify their opinions (except the Catholics, they just say they've been around the longest). The rise of Christian Nationalism has exacerbated the problem, although the alliances have changed. Conservative Catholics and Protestant Fundamentalists have made common cause against liberal Catholics and mainstream Protestants and there appears to be a contest to see who can be the toughest sonofabitch around, rather than who can live like Jesus. 

Ironic that the faith supposedly based on "love thy neighbor" is usually of the opinion that their neighbor is destined for Hell.

Workin' Man - Part XXVII - Interregnum

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 

"The best work-related thing that ever happened to me" was how I described the day that I was fired. I never understood why they had me work the whole day getting trained for something that I wouldn't need...since they were going to fire me! I called Carl, the head of Loss Prevention, so he could be present when I cleaned out my office, and headed home, feeling like a great weight had been lifted. After taking the weekend off I started my job search in earnest.

From the Monday following Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve I worked a seasonal part-time job as a delivery helper with UPS.  It wasn't much, but it brought in some income while I was searching. After my first day every muscle in my body ached. I had twisted my knee and had to wear a knee brace the whole rest of my time with UPS. I had serious doubts whether I would even be able to walk and be able to work the second day. I was on-call, so I never knew for sure when I would be working. I'd usually get a call around 10:00am if I was going to be working, but no call at all if I wasn't being called in. For most of the four weeks I worked on a delivery route in the Havelock area, working around four hours a day. The last week or so I helped on a rural route near Denton and worked 8+ hour days. The driver on the Havelock route was very quiet. He hardly said two words each time I worked with him. The driver on my last week was a lot more talkative. He would start the day complaining about how the truck was loaded, or about his supervisors and then say "fuck it, we have a lot of work to do", and off we'd go. 

UPS had specific instructions about how we were to carry boxes. They also would send inspectors around to follow us and observe if we were in compliance. We were supposed hold boxes in front of us, which I found hard on my back, so I would hoist them up on my shoulder, which was against policy. I was caught and got a talking to. My driver also was reprimanded for letting me do it. We had a lot of dogs in rural Denton. My driver would distract the dogs with a treat while I ran up to the houses. He always had a steady supply of snacks that he would share with me.

UPS was very clear that we would not receive our final paycheck until we turned our uniform in. We were issued brown pants and shirt, a brown coat and a winter hat, all with the UPS logo. On the day before my last day I was told by the dispatcher that I had to turn in my uniform at the end of my shift, which meant changing in the truck! My driver and I agreed that I should just wear my regular clothes and the UPS hat. They also didn't allow any facial hair other than a moustache. I had grown a beard after being fired from B&R, so I had to shave. I started growing it back during my last week. My driver said that if any inspectors said anything he'd swear it was five o'clock shadow. 

We were by no means living paycheck-to-paycheck, but the amount of money in the bank would not last indefinitely. My 401(k) was available, which we decided would be withdrawn in an emergency. A related issue was that with the loss of employment, I also lost my insurance coverage. Since we had reached our out-of-pocket maximum we elected to utilize COBRA coverage through the end of the year and switch to coverage through the PPACA marketplace in January. Job hunting became my full-time job. I sent out a lot of applications throughout the month of November. Around the beginning of December I started getting called in for interviews. I interviewed at a few retail stores, including Walmart and Fresh Thyme. I'm glad I didn't get hired at Walmart, not because of the horror stories that one hears about them, but because of the schedule. The days off for the position I was applying for rotated. You would work four days, then two days off. So Week One would be Monday-Thursday, Friday and Saturday off, work on Sunday. Week Two would be Monday-Wednesday, Thursday & Friday off, work Saturday and Sunday. Week Three schedule would be work Monday and Tuesday, Off Wednesday and Thursday, work Friday-Sunday. And so on, your two days off rotating backward through the week. This would give me only two Saturdays and two Sundays off in every six week cycle and only one complete weekend off. With the wedding officiating business needing me primarily on Saturdays, this wouldn't work. It was difficult enough at Russ's when my promotion to store director meant working Saturdays. I was offered a job as a merchandiser for the local Coca-Cola distributor. I accepted that one, but backed out after receiving an offer for a less physical job. I had applied for several positions in state government. I was called back for one -- a Fiscal Compliance Analyst with the Nebraska Department of Revenue. 

My interview with the Department of Revenue was scheduled for a time when I was on call with UPS, so I can to call them and let them know that I would not be available. The dispatcher was very annoyed, insisting that it was an on-call job and that I was breaking my agreement with them. I pointed out that (1) I sat around every morning, my day on hold while I waited for them to call me, which didn't happen every day and (2) UPS was a temporary job and I sure wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to secure permanent, full-time employment when I had no guarantee that I would even be called in that day. I thought that my attitude would affect my schedule, but it continued as normal, my hours even increasing the final six working days. 

I went in for the interview, and received a job offer a week later. The job was supposed to start on December 26th, but was changed to January 11th, since the person who would be doing the training would be on vacation. On January 11th I started what would be almost nine and a half years working for the State of Nebraska. 

As of the day I'm typing this I'm still with the Department of Revenue, but will be retiring on June 13, 2025. I'll detail my nine and a half years with them after retirement. 

Workin' Man - Part XXVI - The End of Retail

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 had survived, barely, six months of excruciating uncertainty, but it wasn't the only problem, however. Tim, the assistant store director, had applied for an ASD position and was moving to the Super Saver at 48th & O. Right around the holidays. If I remember correctly I was able to keep him for Thanksgiving, but he would be gone by Christmas. I had to hire and train a new ASD. Right around this time Susie's doctor found a tumor in her eye and had to have surgery to remove it. While she was in Iowa City recovering from surgery I had to drive back to Lincoln to conduct interviews. I don't recall who was handling HR duties at the time, but I had that person set up interviews, one after the other, on Saturday. I believe I interviewed eight or nine candidates. Like HR Coordinators, Assistant Store Director openings usually attracted people with little to no qualifications for the job, mainly because no one really knew what they did. Of all the people I interviewed I considered two to be qualified. One was Todd, my Night Manager, but he declined after I offered him the position (why do people do that?). My second choice was Jamie, who had been the assistant grocery manager when I was at Pine Lake. 

Jamie was very rough around the edges. There had been several complaints about him from other employees, but Nick, our old store director, and I always tried to see beyond the gruff exterior -- he was a misfit, just like the rest of my crew! But I remembered how Jamie was able to at Pine Lake motivate the grocery clerks, who are typically the laziest bunch of anyone in any store. How I could always count on him to follow through on assignments and come up with out-of-the-box solutions to problems. Since the position would combine that of grocery manager, I thought, given his grocery experience, that he'd be ideal. I sold the idea of promoting Jamie to my supervisor, District Manager Scott Ruth, who was on board, but when I checked with corporate HR about what pay rate he could be offered, they reacted as if I was planning on hiring Satan...or Pete Hegseth. Ah yes...Jamie had the HR target on his back. Around the same time the assistant store director at 66th & O Russ's had quit suddenly -- remember, we're right around the holidays. Tim (not my former ASD, but the Tim who turned down my offer the previous year to be Front End Manager/Human Resources Coordinator) was helping out and somehow impressed Scott Ruth, who recommended to me that we bring him on board as ASD, which we soon did. The problem was that Tim has absolutely no experience in grocery. We sent him out to a few other stores to get trained by experienced grocery managers and ASDs, but he was still pretty green going into Christmas week. Looks like it's time for another Pat Raybould story.

It was probably about a week before Christmas, on a Sunday. I had decided that after working with Tim in the morning I would turn him loose to manage the store solo for the first time that the afternoon. I gave him a to-do list, which included restocking the Christmas candy display. About 30 minutes after I left, Pat showed up. Without checking in with Tim he found a pallet of Christmas candy in the back room and brought it out to the holiday aisle. He then spent some time berating Tim for the display not being full. Then he began the great fruitcake fruit hunt. For those who don't make their own fruitcake, grocery stores stock the dried cherries, pineapple, apricots and citron ( nobody really knows what citron is, but we carried it anyway), but they hardly sell any. You usually can find a stack of it marked down in January. If you sold out you considered yourself lucky and didn't try to procure any more. Pat wandered over to the Christmas baking display and noticed that there was no fruitcake fruit. He started asking employees where the fruitcake fruit was. Of course since none of them, like meat cutters, produce clerks and floral department employees, had anything to do with stocking these items, not to mention the fact that we were out, no one could tell Pat where the fruitcake fruit was. Tim tried to tell him that we were out. Pat couldn't believe that was true and embarked on a quest through the back room to find the fruitcake fruit. Of course he didn't find any, because we were out, and happy about it. The next day he called Scott Ruth and told him to tell me to get more fruitcake fruit in the store. I got some from one of the other stores and didn't sell even one unit and had to mark them all down after Christmas. 

At some point during the year Tim was transferred to another store and Bill, an experienced ASD came to my store. I was also given permission to hire a grocery manager. For once I thought that the corporate executives actually wanted the store to succeed. I was wrong. There were a lot of hints that the store was going to close. The barely functioning air conditioning unit that required a sprinkler on the roof to keep it cool, the stinky drain that should have been dug up and repaired, the department managers who were being transferred out one at a time. But it was all confirmed one evening when an email that was only supposed to go to the executive committee went out to all store directors and assistant store directors. It clearly stated that the store was closing soon and a date needed to be set. News travels fast. Scott Ruth came out to our store and met with all the managers and lied to them, that the store wasn't closing. Bill and I kept our mouths shut. 

At some point I got another visit that didn't bode well. Tom Schulte, Operations VP, was accompanied by Donna, the corporate HR Director. They had with them a pile of printouts from my Facebook page. I had made a comment that they didn't think was appropriate, and others had made further comments that they didn't like. Someone from B&R had seen these comments and reported me to corporate. A friend had brought up how many customers acted terribly to service sector employees and I responded with something about abusive customers. I was written up again, and had to attend counseling sessions through our employee assistance program. This is when I realized how much of a target I had on my back and how closely my actions were being scrutinized. At my counseling sessions the counselor brought up incidents from years in the past that I thought had been resolved and forgotten. I was on thin ice with B&R.

The incident that I am sure was the one where they decided I would be fired came in the Autumn of the year. Two customers, friends of one of my managers, wanted to getting married in the store. This was something that I always thought would be cool -- the store director officiating a wedding in the grocery store! They ended up buying their flowers and wedding cake at the store, as well as a lunch for them and their witnesses. Melissa, who was in charge of promoting store events on our internal social media site, took photos and posted them. Soon after I received a call from Donna telling me to take down the photos of the wedding. She claimed that she had received complaints from several of my peers and at least one store employee. The complaints were supposedly that I was doing personal business on store time, but in reality they were about the fact that it was two women getting married. This was confirmed for me when Donna mentioned that the internal employee called the wedding an abomination. I took the photos down, but once again, a meeting that involved Donna took place. I was criticized for doing the wedding on my 15-minute break, but Donna maintained that since I still had my nametag on, I was working. I was criticized for leaving 30 minutes early at the end of the day since I did not take a lunch break. Donna maintained that since I was in the Deli area I had taken my lunch break. (Which is it Donna? Was I on the clock or on my lunch?). I was written up again, although for some reason it was worded as an extension of my previous Performance Improvement Plan. I was told that I had a track record of making bad decisions and if another problem arose I would be fired -- no discussion involved.

I believe that the real reason for me being in trouble was the fact of the same-sex wedding, but they didn't want to be on record for firing me for being homophobic. I knew that there was no chance that nothing would ever come up which they could use as a pretext to get rid of me. I was not wrong. Not long after this Bill and I observed a cashier have a long conversation with a customer while a line was forming. I went over to ask what was going on and was yelled at by the customer, who ended up elbowing me in the ribs as he left the store. I followed him outside and took a photo of his license plate, thinking I should maybe call the police (I ended up deciding against it). He called the corporate office to complain. I never found out what he said, but a week later I was fired. 

During that week Scott Ruth avoided talking to me and would not return my calls. The day before a scheduled vacation we had what was called a "Holiday Show" at one of the stores. This was a day where we were trained on how the corporate executives wanted us to merchandise our stores for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I went through the whole day, until at the very end Scott said he wanted to talk to me before I left for vacation. Then he and Donna fired me. Even though being unemployed was not something that I looked forward to, it was obvious for a long time that the situation wasn't going to get better. Even if I hadn't been fired, with the store closing I doubt that I would have a job. In similar situations managers had to apply for open positions. I was actually happy that I was fired. The pressure was off, the other shoe had dropped. 

I was fired on Thursday October 29, 2015. I took the weeknd off and made job hunting my job. 

Workin' Man - Part XXV - Target On My Back

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 

 Overall, that first year went well. I had finally earned a position as a store director. There was a lot more stress -- you never really know all the details of a job until you're in it -- and even with a raise I was making less money due to a lack of a bonus. But I had achieved a long-term goal -- I felt that I had finally proved that I could do it; that I was "worthy". I thought that, even though the store was still losing money, and I wasn't bonusing, I had gotten the place running smoothly and in some ways on autopilot. We did some fun things, like the chili contest, where Jamie, the Scanning Coordinator, won third place with a crock pot full of canned chili. We brought in a band to entertain the customers one Saturday. We had a group of regulars, retired guys who had breakfast just about every week day (one of whom made a point to tell my boss how I was doing a great job running the store). 

Things came crashing down Memorial Day weekend 2014, my second year as store director. 

I was working on Friday night, theoretically scheduled until 5:00pm, but still working at around 7:00 because we were swamped and I was helping out by checking, filling displays etc. I managed to get off my feet for about five minutes when one of the cashiers found me in my office -- he had forgotten to scan a customer's loyalty card, which meant that the customer wouldn't get all the points that his large purchase had earned for him. When I arrived I saw that there was some alcohol, so I rang it up since the cashier was a minor and couldn't legally sell alcohol. As I finished up the order I realized that the previous customer was still there and was glaring at me angrily. The cashier then let me know about the loyalty card not getting scanned. Correcting this could be done at the register, but it was a multi-step process that I wasn't totally sure that I knew how to do, and with the lines starting to build up again, I asked the cashier to take the customer over to the customer service counter, where I knew they could solve the problem pretty quickly and efficiently. I knew this was the quickest way to get the issue fixed. The customer refused, suggesting that I was sending him over there because he was Black. 

Yikes.

That was not a response I expected. I was already on my last nerve after being there all day, and the lines not getting any shorter. My father had passed away a couple of months previously, and I probably hadn't fully processed that yet. In retrospect I was probably a bit curt, but having the customer service clerk handle the issue was the best way to handle it. Frankly I was more than a little pissed at being accused of being a racist; I always felt that if you're going to lob that bomb, the discussion is over -- I'm done talking to you. There was shouting. There was more shouting. At one point I got into his bubble and asked him who he thought he was talking to, but immediately backed up, realizing that this was not a good look. He continued to yell and demand that I fix the problem at the register, but we were well past that point. I threatened to call the police. He finally left, but we weren't done. 

The next morning I was forwarded an email from this customer that had gone to the corporate office. The email wildly exaggerated what had happened, accusing me not only of bigotry, but of threatening him and using profanity. I quickly sent off an email giving my side of the story, but his email, if even partially believed, would have ended my career then and there. Words like "sinister" peppered his account, and his opinion that I was going to use violence against him. I couldn't function the rest of the day, I couldn't sleep that night. Initially, my immediate supervisor thought that I had handled myself professionally, but I found out that without my knowledge the Director of Loss Prevention had conducted an "investigation" on my day off and interviewed any employee who had been present. None of them contradicted my version of events. Scott Ruth, my boss, called the customer, apologized on my behalf, added the appropriate amount of points to his card and gave him a gift card.  Scott let me know how the conversation went and I breathed a sigh of relief. 

But we weren't done. 

The customer, after talking to Scott, called back the next day. He had changed his mind. He wanted me fired and would accept nothing less. This engendered more investigations. It dragged on. I had no idea if I would be fired. Then one evening Scott Ruth and Tom Schulte showed up at my store and presented me with security footage showing me stepping close to the customer. I pointed out that the video showed me stepping close to him, what is there to talk about? I certainly wasn't going to deny what could clearly be seen on video. After going back and forth over this issue for week, I felt that they were looking for an excuse to believe the customer. After rambling on for awhile I was told that they needed to decide what to do and they would let me know in the morning. I lost it. I pointed out that this had been dragging on for weeks and that they needed to make a decision: either fire me or not, but make a decision right now! They told me to give them fifteen minutes, so I walked around the store for a quarter hour. When I returned, I was told that I still had my job, but that I would be written up for what they said was bad judgement in the whole situation. Tom showed up the next morning and presented me with a write up. I still had my job, but it continued to drag on. 

My annual review was due in August. At B&R you were reviewed in 15 categories and scored from 1-4, with 4 being excellent and 2 being usually as low as anyone went. If you were really screwing up in a category, you received a 1. If you got a 1 in any category (or your total score was below a set amount), that automatically triggered a PIP -- a Performance Improvement Plan. A PIP gave you 90 days to resolve a performance issue or you were fired. I got a 1 in communications for the Memorial Day incident. So, even though the situation was supposedly wrapped up with the write-up in June, it was going to drag on for another 90 days. 

During those 90 days your immediate supervisor was supposed to give regular feedback on your progress toward improvement-- which I wasn't getting, so I went to Scott and asked why. I was concerned that I would be canned after 90 days without any warning, which would have been par for the B&R course. I figured with regular feedback, at least I would be able to see it coming. After that I had weekly meetings to discuss my progress, which he said he was happy with. At the end of 90 days in November 2014 I passed my PIP and wasn't fired, but this process had dragged on for almost six months. 

What I found infuriating was that at one point Tom Schulte had a conversation with the customer's employer (he was a UNL professor) and was told that he did this all the time. Nonetheless, B&R executives had long memories -- your "sins" were never truly forgiven. 

I had a target on my back and I was closely scrutinized. 

Workin' Man - Part XXIV - The Misfits and the Consultants

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 Corporate definitely viewed the stores hierarchically. The Super Savers were at the top of the pyramid, with the busier Russ's Markets in the middle, with the small and money-losing stores at the bottom. ALPS, and later Save Best, were below the bottom. The idea was that the operational difficulty was linked to sales volume and square footage. The stores on the lower end of the continuum were viewed almost as training locations for store directors and department managers. The truth was that the smaller stores were in many ways more challenging than the larger stores. Part of this was the higher turnover in the smaller stores. Because managers were always on the lookout for better paying opportunities, the smaller stores always had a lot of managerial churn and unfailingly had the least experienced managers. This included the key position of assistant store director. Despite the unwritten rule that store directors would "do their time" in a smaller store before being "promoted" to a larger store, this wasn't applied to assistant store directors. Promising department managers wouldn't even apply to assistant store director positions in a small Russ's, waiting for a Super Saver opening. This left the pool of applicants for Russ's assistant positions disappointingly shallow. Department managers were notoriously difficult to keep as well. They were often on the lookout for better bonus prospects. 

For some reason for my first 18 months at Van Dorn the management positions were pretty stable. Part of it was that most of them were happy with the small store and didn't want anything bigger. Part of it was that most of them had some kind of HR target on their backs that made them unsuitable for promotion opportunities. My assistant store manager, Tim, had been a store director for another company, and eventually moved on to a bigger store and became a store director of a Super Saver, but for reasons of his own, never applied for promotion during that first year. While during my last 18 months corporate took several of my managers away in anticipation of closing the store and the expansion and remodel at 66th and O. I only lost one manager through corporate raiding during my early days. My Meat Manager was transferred out to a bigger store, and as usual, they didn't replace him -- I had to run an ad and interview for one myself. I had one manager, in the Bakery, quit after I was at Van Dorn for just a few months, but it ended up being an opportunity for a young assistant department manager to step up, and for me to hone my training and coaching skills. 

Alex had been the Assistant Deli Manager, but wanted to transfer out because he didn't get along with Kathy, the Deli Manager. (The corporate office Deli Director was adamant that we refer to the Delis as "Delicatessens". Of course this is the full name from which "Deli" is derived, but he insisted that in big cities like New York, no one called them "delis". As a native New Yorker, I did not find this to be true) We had an opening for Assistant Bakery Manager and Alex was transferred. Before he could get much training the bakery manager left. Some positions in the company attracted people with a more generalist skill set -- grocery, dairy frozen, general merchandise etc., but you really had to know something about bakery department production to be able to run a bakery department. There were NO applicants. Eventually, with the agreement of the Bakery Director and Operations VP, I decided to promote Alex to the position, despite his lack of experience. It was a mixed experiment. There were definitely areas that were sub par -- he really had no mentor to teach him the "ways of the bakery" other than occasional visits from the corporate Bakery Director, but he did a good job of keeping the shelves full and the team motivated. 

A position that I lost before I even started was HR Coordinator. The previous HRC had been selected for an assistant store director position, and left Van Dorn on the day I started. Donna, the corporate HR Director told me that she would fill the position, presumably by transferring someone in, but when I followed up with her a month later, she denied ever saying that. Over the years there were many such incidents of gaslighting by Donna. I went through several months of sharing HRCs with other stores, but my store's needs were always secondary. Eventually I got permission to hire for a hybrid position: HRC/Front End Manager. I had a front end manager, so I had the difficult decision of telling her that we were eliminating her position. I had the more difficult task of telling her that while she could apply for the new position, I did not consider her qualified for the HR part of the job. I had two applicants who I considered qualified. (There are always extremely unqualified applicants for HR positions, since no one seems to know what they really do!) Tim, who was a clerk in the corporate HR department, and Joe, who had been an evening grocery supervisor for me, but had transferred to another store. Tim, on the strength of his HR knowledge, was my first choice. When I offered him the position, he did not accept, stating that he didn't think he was ready. I never understood people who did this. I can understand when someone turns down a job because the compensation is too low, or there were requirements that did not come out in the interview, but why would you apply for a job that you didn't think you were ready for. Well, the reason was that Donna talked him out of it. She had talked him down in very harsh terms when I asked for her for her input. I was shocked that she would speak so disparagingly about someone on her team. I can only assume that she talked him out of it, although no one ever admitted it. So I hired Joe for the position. If I remember correctly he was in that position through the end of my second year. 

One of the things I tried look for in potential management hires was someone who liked managing and was good at it. It sounds obvious, but most people who apply for management positions do it only because it pays more. Of course, a bigger paycheck is a legitimate reason for wanting to advance, but without the skill and desire to lead people and the organizational skill needed to administer a department, you're not going to get a good manager. If someone applied to me for a management job I would not consider them if their only reason was a bigger paycheck. I remember a guy who I promoted to Assistant Produce Manager, mainly due to his familiarity with the department and his people skills. It didn't pay that well and he was submitting applications for management positions for various departments and other stores every week. I tried to get him to narrow his focus, to pick an area that he "had a passion for" and set his goals in a less scattershot way. The next application that he sent out included the statement "I have a passion for the Deli". He was hired, but quit a few months later to take a better paying job outside the company. 

In a previous post I mentioned a management class called "Managing Management Time" (MMT). One of my projects that I initiated during my weekly department managers' meetings was teaching the principles that I had learned in that class. One of the key ideas from MMT was the principle of "Whose Monkey Is It?" A "monkey" was a task or responsibility. As a manager you had to recognize what things were your responsibility and what was someone trying to get you to do their job. As a store director, my job did not involve the scheduling or allocation of resources in each department, this was the department manager's job. Of course I could provide guidance, or assist in solving problems, but operationally the day-to-day running of a department wasn't my "monkey". This was part of an effort to foster independence, not only among the management team, but the non-management employees. Another principle was the five levels of supervision. Level One was the typical new employee on their first day who doesn't know anything and has to be closely supervised and has to be told what to do every step of the way. Level Two was the employee who completed a task and then went back to their supervisor to find out what their next task was. Level Three was an employee who was given a list of tasks, or maybe had the same tasks to do each day, and reported back to their supervisor and needed to be told if there was anything new to be added to the list. Level Four was an employee who was told what their goals were but determined themself how to achieve those goals, reporting to their supervisor regularly. Level Five was where the employee was told the big picture and had the responsibility and freedom to make it happen, with only occasional reporting to their supervisor. I forbade my management team from operating at Level Three or lower, and directed them to shoot for Level Five. This was uncomfortable for some of them, some people just want to be told what to do. I believe this instruction had the effect of causing my managers to think before coming to me to solve their problems and to have possible solutions ready. It also motivated them to encourage their team to function more independently.  

B&R loved consultants. They brought in one guy who ran some Food 4 Less stores in California who walked around our stores insulting the store directors and referring to our "chicken shit" displays. Kelly Coday, a long time employee and manager called him out in a meeting where he claimed to compare his prices to Walmart on "all" his prices. Mr. Consultant's bullshit became more and more obvious every time he opened his mouth. Then there was the "Better Basics" guy. He had previously worked for another consulting company (I can't remember the name) from which he lifted all of their ideas and repackaged them as Better Basics. This guy was a bit more subtle in his condescension -- no overt insults anyway -- but he thought he had all the answers. I remember one time him telling me we had the "wrong" Greek yogurt, as if there was such as things as the "right" Greek yogurt. Like most consultants his main goal was to draw things out so he could get paid for more consulting. It took 18 months for his Better Basics bakery team to change the recipe for hard rolls. His alleged sense of humor was misogynistic and crude. He made a sexually suggestive "joke" to a female member of the team at one of the meetings; complaints by her and a store director who were present fell on deaf ears, as did a childish response to the word "retard" (stress on the second syllable, in the sense of "inhibit", referring to an aspect of the proofing process). B&R, while coming down hard on employees who were accused of sexual harassment, tolerated it from vendors, salesmen and consultants, presumably because there was no legal liability if it wasn't an employee who was doing the harassing. (Refer to an earlier story about the HVAC guy, fired by his own company for making sexual comments to a teenage girl, but was subsequently hired by Jane Raybould to remodel a store). But the worst consultant of all was Harold Lloyd.

Harold did a lot of presentations on various grocery-related topics for managers, as well as for all employees. He facilitated conferences among similar companies from different areas who were not directly competing ("Share Groups"). He was a dynamic speaker. he knew how to get your attention and keep it. I learned a lot about how to present in meetings from him. He also had a lot of practical ideas that were simple and obvious, but made sense. The first time in a Harold Lloyd presentation was magical. You had dozens of new ideas to take back to your store, and actually felt smarter. The problem was that every Harold Lloyd presentation was almost exactly the same. The elements might be switched around, put in different order, but no matter what the topic was: fresh departments, sanitation, marketing, you got the same information every...single...time. A few of us had been sent out to Des Moines for a two-day seminar facilitated by Lloyd. A few months later store directors and assistants drove out to Gretna for a short presentation. Dan, a fellow attendee at the Des Moines sessions, and I brought our handouts from the Iowa seminar. Harold must have been fielding criticism about his repetitiveness and started out with a rant about people who criticized him for it. He used some profane, and frankly disgusting language to counter his critics. He then began his presentation...every bit of which Dan and I found in our notes. 

This wasn't the last time I encountered Harold Lloyd. He had been facilitating a program whereby various committees would focus on specific areas in which to improve the company. A day-long meeting with the corporate directors and the committee chairs would be followed by a presentation for all managers in a movie theater. The day before the first meeting Operations VP Tom Schulte showed up at Van Dorn with Harold in tow and asked if they could attend my managers' meeting which was just about to start. I ran my meeting in the usual manner. I always tried to keep my meetings short and to the point. Only items that applied to everyone were on the agenda, problems specific to only one or two departments were handled "off-line". At the time I was also spending a few minutes teaching principles from Managing Management Time. The meetings tended to be 30 minutes, sometimes less -- we all had things to do and for some managers they were the only one scheduled in their department that day. I always ended my meeting with "Does anyone have anything for the group?" rather than the more common "Does anyone have any questions?". I had learned this from a previous store director -- "anything for the group" could include contributions, not just questions, and often resulted in great insights from people. At the end of the meeting Harold asked if he could address the group for about ten minutes; I was a bit skeptical about what he could offer, but agreed nonetheless. His contribution lasted well over twenty minutes and may have been close to half an hour and consisted mainly of criticisms of how I ran a meeting. He started with claiming that my meeting was too short, it should be an hour...at a minimum. I can't recall every other specific criticism, but I wondered how closely he had really been listening and not just regurgitating an oft-repeated speech when he said I shouldn't have ended my meeting with "Does anyone have any questions?" - which wasn't what I said. As I looked around the room I saw how uncomfortable my managers were with the attack. Once we were done I stalked out of the meeting room and headed for my office. Two of my managers followed me down and asked me if I was okay. I replied that I was going to leave the store for lunch to calm down.

When I returned an hour later Tom and Harold were still in the store. I encountered them in one of the aisles and Harold asked me what my problem was with his remarks (I was very obviously angry at his words) -- unwilling to get into an argument in earshot of employees and customers I asked he and Tom to come to my office. Once behind the closed door he once again asked me what I was so mad about, and I responded that he was a guest in my meeting and started right out criticizing and attacking. His rejoinder, if I had been a few decades younger, might have earned him a punch in the face "Don't lie!" He said, "it wasn't the first thing I said", retreating in to literalism (the literal first thing was likely something like "thanks for having me at this meeting). I stepped into his "bubble" and snarled "Do NOT call me a liar" and once again, he hid behind literalism "I didn't say you were a liar, I said you lied". (Why do people think that's somehow better?) There was a lot of shouting after that. Tom attempted to insert himself a couple of times, but decided to let us both blow off steam. Eventually, after I explained several different ways why how he conducted himself was offensive to me and insulting to my team, he aplogized. He offered to speak to my management team, but I refused his offer -- I didn't want him anywhere near my people. I found out that he relayed this incident, without mentioning my name or what store it took place in, during the day-long meeting at the corporate office. He painted himself as the hero of the story, someone willing to admit his mistakes and humbly apologize. A few people figured out that he was talking about me and heard the true story from me. The following day, in the all-managers presentation he repeated most of the same stories and examples that I had heard at Des Moines, Gretna, and several other presentations. 

He was still full of shit. 

The funny part was after the dust settled, Wes, the Dairy-Frozen Manager asked me if I believed in the magic of taking something personal from someone in order to curse them, or something like that. I told him that I believed something similar. Wes smiled and said "I've got his pen!"

Workin' Man - Part XXIII - Van Dorn 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 at the Van Dorn Russ's as the store director for slightly under three years. The first 18 months went pretty well -- I felt that I had the support of Operations VP Tom, Larry, who was in charge of the corporate department directors as well as Scott R, the District Manager who was my immediate supervisor. The remaining time was a nightmare. 

One very important thing that I was not told was that the store was slated to be closed. It had been losing money for years. It was situated on a very busy road but was difficult to get in or out of. Hy-Vee had built a large store a mile south, which was impossible to compete with, and B&R had committed to expanding and remodeling the Russ's at 66th & O streets two miles north -- more competition. Closing the store was a wise business decision, but they hid the fact from the staff and even from me. 

Because the store was losing money it was difficult for managers to earn bonuses, and anyone with any ambition had their eyes on bigger and more profitable stores. There were a few managers who liked the slower pace, and a few who had sabotaged their careers and were stuck there, but between corporate transferring out managers they thought had potential and others applying for positions in bigger stores after being trained at Van Dorn, it was a constant revolving door of managers. The ones that were left were, like me, kind of the misfits of B&R Stores. In a meeting that I had with Patrick, the outgoing store director (who I had trained at Pine Lake) I was informed of the myriad problems with most, if not all, of my managers. My Bakery Manager had instigated an OSHA investigation over an accident in her department. She and her assistant manager had been involved in a relationship -- she lodged a sexual harassment complaint against him, which he disputed by revealing sexual explicit texts that she has sent to him. He was transferred out. My Scanning/Pricing Manager had been written up repeatedly for spreading rumors about other employees. The Deli Manager had recently been written up for having a multitude of out-of-date items on the shelves and was so difficult to work for that we couldn't properly staff the department. One of my shift supervisors wanted to quit during my first week in the store after running over her own foot with a pallet jack. The Cash Office Manager had suffered brain injury a few years before and was routinely rude to everyone in the store. I fit right in with this crew. 

Despite the difficulty in keeping qualified staff, I attempted to lead those who stuck around in focusing on being great at the basics and good customer service. The "basics" included obvious things like never running out of ad items and keeping the bathrooms clean. Good customer service included minimizing lines at the checkouts (this would eventually be my downfall). Several of us non-cashiers were trained to run a checkstand and would "jump on" a register when it got busy. This usually took up five minutes and virtually eliminated lines. Saturday morning checking became a regular thing for me, which was unusual, since the only cashiering that I had ever done was when I substituted for the Save Best store director one week. I set up next to Bev, an experienced cashier, so I could ask her questions. 

One of the things that corporate management never seemed to understand was how difficult it was to properly staff a store with low sales. As I explained in a previous post, the labor budget for the store and for each department was based on a percentage of sales. You multiplied the budgeted percentage by projected sales to come up with what you could spend on staffing, then divide that by average wage to determine the number of hours you could schedule. The problem which never would be addressed was that it took a certain amount of labor hours to simply prepare a department for the day's business, even if the sales turned out to be $0. For example, in the production departments, such as Bakery, Deli, Smokehouse, you were making product, not just opening boxes and putting items on the shelf. This took time and people to do it. Even non-production departments needed employees to keep the shelves stocked.  

While it's always a good idea to evaluate your staffing needs -- you don't always need as many people as you think you do -- there's a limit to how much cutting you can do. One of the more ridiculous recurring budgeting scenarios was departments whose budget didn't even allow for one full-time employee, (not even a full-time manager) yet since product ordering, stocking and basic customer service still need to be done, employees would be pulled from other departments. Week after week I would plug sales projections into the spreadsheet that I had developed years before only to see the depressingly low available hours appear. Some of the hours projections, if followed, would have made it difficult, if not impossible, to carry out our responsibilities. I made the decision to staff my store at a level that I believed was needed to be able to provide good customer service and meet the basic requirements to operate a grocery store. This meant that I was voluntarily forgoing any possibility of receiving a quarterly bonus for meeting the budgeted labor goal. But it also meant that my employees would not have their hours cut to achieve an arbitrary number. 

My immediate supervisor at the time, Vice President of Operations Tom Schulte, scheduled an appointment with me to "show me how to write a schedule". I welcomed the input, because I sure didn't know how to cover all the departments with the labor dollars available. His input, however, was a huge disappointment. He started reviewing with me the math needed to calculate available hours for each department, which I already knew how to do. My method of sales projections were always spot on, and the math for calculating hours was pretty simple. I told him that I knew how to do the math, but what I didn't know how to do was write a schedule that would enable me to properly run a store with those hours. He didn't know what to say to that, he just mumbled something about none of the previous store directors could make labor either. 

I have to say that my relationship with Tom during my first year as a store director was pretty good. Despite having made some foolish mistakes in my career, I think he was impressed by the efforts I took to prepare myself for the job. He was understanding about the reality that the store was losing money due to circumstances beyond my control (we were budgeted to lose money -- but lost even more than what was budgeted) and focused on my efforts to improve the operational aspects of the store. Any time he stopped by for a "store walk" I received good feedback and no nitpicking when things weren't 100 percent. Company president Pat Raybould was another story. 

Pat had two idiosyncrasies that made his visits to the stores dreaded events. Whenever he was out of town he would bring back ideas that he saw in other stores and pushed for us to adopt them, no matter how inappropriate. After visiting a store in Texas that had a giant display of nopalitos (cactus leaves), he would decide that all of our stores need cactus leaf displays. On one trip where he stopped in a small town Casey's convenience store he noticed that the Casey's seemed to be the center of activity for that little town. From that, he came to the conclusion that we needed to make our stores the center of activity. To do this we were supposed to schedule "events" one evening a week. We started out with a kids' night that was well-attended, but didn't result in any measurable increase in sales, which was the whole point. Most of the stores did this for a few weeks and just quietly stopped, hoping that Pat wouldn't notice (he didn't). 

Pat's other bad habit was that he never forgot about someone's screw up. Another store director relayed a story to me about a visit from Pat on National Doughnut Day while he (the store director) was running himself ragged getting ready for the day's massive doughnut sales. Pat wanted to talk to him "upstairs" and brought up an incident from several years previous when the Dairy manager was doing a poor job at rotation. According to Pat, this incident was evidence that the store director was didn't have his head in the game. It didn't matter that this store director was a top performing leader, had taken action to solve the problem with the Dairy manager, eventually firing him, and it was several years in the past. In my store he would get it into his head that certain people were problem employees. He saw one of my janitors get a cup of water from the Deli soda dispenser and became convinced that he was always slacking off. Our evening supervisor didn't notice that lines were forming at the checkstands (and no one called him) and Pat became convinced that he wasn't doing his job, despite the evening supervisors having duties such as adding new items to the shelves and unloading the trucks that took them away from the front of the store. He would also quiz employees about areas of the store that they had no knowledge of and draw the wrong conclusion from that. 

One of my weirdest Pat encounters involved an odor that was detectable as you first walked in the front door. It was fishy, but not really that strong. (This was an old building with plumbing issues -- there were always odors) Pat was on a mission to find the source of the small. We ended up back at the fish case. We stood in front of the fish display and could not smell any fish. We went into the back cooler and found some fish where the paper covering the fish was askew. Pat determined that a fishy smell at the front of the store, which you couldn't detect right in front of the fish case was somehow caused by fish in a closed cooler at the back of the store. 

Fish...that reminds me of the stupidity of the full-service fresh meat and fish case. Hy-Vee was known for having a full-service meat case 24 or 30 feet long if I remember correctly, staffed by three or four employees all day and evening. In order to compete when Hy-Vee built a new store just south of us B&R decided that the Van Dorn Russ's needed a full service meat case. There were two problems. One was that our display case was a measly 8-12 feet long and we did not have enough staff to man the counter. In the evening we had one employee, who in addition to serving customers had to clean the back room. In a money losing store, this was a ridiculous addition. 

Another useless section that most Russ's Markets had was what we called Specialty Foods. It mainly consisted of "fancy" versions of mainstream products like mustard, or whole grain flour. Some of those sold well, but most of the specialty items went out of date before we could sell even half a case. It also included "international" foods. Some of those, like Mexican or Mediterranean foods sold well enough, but we also sold foods from the United Kingdom, a nation not known for their cuisine. One of these U.K. items was spotted dick. Spotted dick is a traditional British steamed pudding made with suet and dried fruit. I was at a conference in Florida with a several other Russ's store directors and Pat when I struck up a lunchtime conversation with a store director from another state about specialty foods. I used "spotted dick" as an example, and repeated the words "spotted dick" several times. Pat, with an uncomfortable look on his face, asked me if I needed to use that kind of language. I quickly backpedaled in my mind, scanning to see if I had dropped an "F-Bombs" or any other "bad words" -- nope, I came up blank. It turns out that he didn't know what "spotted dick" was and thought I was referring to another type of dick. Classic Pat. 

St. Patrick's Day: Green vs. Blue

Every year around this time you see lists of things that everyone supposedly gets wrong about St. Patrick's Day. Many of them are correct, for example the tradition of corned beef and cabbage is an American invention. But one just seemed off the first time I heard it. This was the supposed "fact" that the color of St. Patrick was blue, not green. The first time I heard it was from a know-it-all from the B&R corporate office. (The same guy who thought we didn't need to account for the different origins of Spanish-speaking customers when doing our Hispanic merchandising)  According to the Wikipedia article on "St. Patrick's Blue", English King Henry VIII was the first English king to declare himself "King of Ireland". He had an official flag designed that featured a gold harp on a blue field. The color blue in this case was not specifically associated with St. Patrick.

The color blue's actual association with St. Patrick only dates back to the 1780's and the Anglo-Irish  and Protestant 'Order of St. Patrick'. Yes, Anglo-Irish, the descendants of those who the English had settled in Ireland in order to keep the locals in line. In fact, the order had considered orange as their official color, but decided that the sectarian associations with the color would be too obvious. Orange was the color of militant Protestants who aligned themselves with the English. William of Orange was the Protestant champion in the revolt against the Catholic King James II. (For those who are unaware, the pro-English Irish tended to be Protestant while the pro-independence Irish were predominantly Catholic) There is no evidence that St. Patrick even had an official color and if so, what it was, but there is a large consensus that "St. Patrick's Blue" was an "invention of tradition" to bolster the choices of the tenuously Irish 'Order of St. Patrick'.

Native Irish societies, such as 'Irish Catholic Confederation' and 'The Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick' founded in  the 1680's and 1750 respectively, used green as their official color, partially as a counter to the English use of blue as an identifying hue. During the 1790's Irish nationalists adopted green as their color as well. The phrase "wearin' of the green" comes from a song from that era referring to Irish nationalists being persecuted for wearing green. As time went by the color green became more and more associated with Ireland and by extension, St. Patrick's Day, a day when Irish heritage was celebrated. When the mass emigrations to the United States took place in the mid 1800's to early 1900's green was firmly in place as the color symbolizing Irish independence, Irish culture and especially independence from England. It's doubtful that many Irish thought about whether green was specifically associated with St. Patrick, but knew that it was intimately associated with a free Ireland.

Wear the green...forget that blue nonsense.