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.
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