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!"