Managers Part XII - Minimizing Your Boss-Imposed Time

Most people, no matter how high they are on the company organizational chart, have a boss. Even CEOs have a board of directors. Managers are generally looked upon as people who get to tell others what to do, which is somewhat true, but they also have others telling them what to do. The five levels of freedom apply to the manager in his role as managEE as well as in his role as managER. In the role as manager, the goal is to get subordinates as high as possible on the freedom scale in order to minimize the theoretically nonexistent subordinate-imposed time. Minimize, or even eliminate that theoretical ghost and you're left with the three valid demands on a manager's time: boss-imposed time, system-imposed time and self-imposed time.

Unless your goal is to get fired, you cannot evade boss-imposed time. In most companies there is a hierarchy, and the person above you in the hierarchy gets to tell you what to do. The starting point is the type of manager that your immediate supervisor is. Is your manager a professional manager, i.e. one who understands the principles of managing management time, including the five levels of freedom?  Or do you work for a micro-manager? Or perhaps even a hands-off manager? An example of a manager who manages at Level One would be one who gathers all of his subordinate managers together at the beginning of the day and hands out assignments. These assignments might include a to-do list and would definitely involve the managers' manager checking everyone's work at the end of the day, or maybe even at several points during the day. No one is ever given a chance to make a decision. A Level Two boss might operate in a similar fashion, but would dispense with the meeting, expecting all the managers to come to him and ask what they should do that day. 

In reality, no boss acts like this all of the time. Some might, in some areas of their oversight, hand out assignments, especially in the training phase of a new manager's career; or they might tolerate an inexperienced manager asking how to handle a situation. In my own management career, there have been times when my own supervisor acted as a Level One manager, telling me to undertake a task that had not been on my own self-to-do-list. Examples might include starting a new sales initiative, changing priorities in some area or just indulging the boss' whim. However, most managers do most of their managing at a Level Three or above, typically at a Level Four. At a Level Three, your boss is still micro-managing, i.e. still requiring a stamp of approval at every step. If your manager is not on-site, this is obviously a difficult situation. Level Four, where you make all your own decisions, but reporting after the fact, is typical for most management decisions. Level Five, where reporting is done only at regular intervals, is rare, except with very routine tasks. The reality is that most managers will have some areas where they will allow you free rein and others where they keep you on a tight leash, and most where you're somewhere in the middle.

So, how do you minimize that boss-imposed time? You have to manage your boss. How do you do that? That depends on the primary mode of management that your boss employs. If it's Level One or Two, honestly, you've got a lot to overcome. You've got one of those bosses who believe that it's the manager's job to "work hard" and to have his fingers in every pie. You've got one of those managers who believes "if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself". You've got one of those managers who views his subordinate managers merely as higher-paid grunts. Making your own decisions, or even suggesting actions, might be interpreted as insubordination. On the other hand, the manager who lets you operate at Level Five all the time probably doesn't exist in the wild! 

Managers who habitually manage from Level Four or Five can be categorized as "hands-off" managers. This isn't always a good thing. Very rarely can everything be put in these top levels. A true hands-off manager is often just lazy and doesn't want to actually manage, just sit back as a figurehead. Most managers are going to be in the Level Two - Level Four range, with occasional forays into Levels One & Five, depending on the task. To use a grocery store as an example, your daily & weekly ordering might be Level Four, or even Level Five, something your manager has no reason to get involved in. Your holiday displays and ordering might be in Level Three, where you make the decision on what displays to build and what to order, but he gets to weigh in and make the final decision. Staffing might be Level Two, you ask him what to do about hiring. Once in a while there might be a Level One moment, your boss gives you an assignment in area that you had not considered.

Managing your boss in most cases involves anticipating what decisions he would have made before he makes them, and building a track record of making good decisions. If your boss' comfort level is Level Three, the way to get to a regular Level Four is for her to agree with most of the decisions that you run by her, and this requires that you know what your boss' priorities are and what she thinks is important. Eventually she will realize that every decision that you run by her succeeds spectacularly and will move you into Level Four. When you're at Level Two the role of anticipation is even greater, since your boss is expecting you to ask what to do; having a solution ready is a sneaky way to get yourself up to Level Three. The only to be slapped back down to Level Two is to be told to stop having ideas, which is very unlikely. Moving from a Level Four to a Level Five is in some ways the easiest - you already have the freedom to make decisions without clearing them with the boss, all you have to do is to negotiate the gap between reports!

The point of all of this is that there is one person who is responsible for the Level at which your manager manages you...it's you. It's not your boss' responsibility to make your life easier, it's your job to take the initiative. The reality is that you're never going to eliminate boss-imposed time, but by careful managing of your manager, you can minimize it and increase your self-imposed time.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XIII

So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part XVI

The King James Version of the Bible in First Corinthians Chapter 12, lists nine components of "the manifestation of the spirit". The Way referred to them as the Manifestations of the spirit; most denominations called them the "gifts of the spirit". 

They are:

• Speaking in Tongues
• Interpretation of Tongues
• Prophecy
• Word of Knowledge
• Word of Wisdom
• Discerning of Spirits
• Faith
• Miracles
• Gifts of Healing

In The Way's foundational class we learned about, and engaged in (or possibly "performed") the first three. Speaking in Tongues, Interpretation of Tongues and Prophecy were important parts of Way meetings and our spiritual life. Wierwille, The Way's founder, taught that Speaking in Tongues was a believer speaking in a tongue unknown to the speaker. It took two forms. One, when used privately, was prayer to God, or praise of God. The second, when accompanied by interpretation, was a message of comfort or exhortation from God, and was typically done if meetings of Way believers. 

There's a lot of opinions among Christians about whether Speaking in Tongues carried out today is the same as what is written about in the Bible. Some denominations have Speaking in Tongues as part of their doctrine and practice, others do not. Among those that do, there is disagreement regarding how it's done. One thing about The Way's practice of it was practice sessions. Those who were new to it were encouraged by established Way people to practice speaking in tongues out loud. Nothing odd about that, but part of the practice sessions included a leader shouting out a sound, or letter of the alphabet, and the new folks were expected to say a word starting with that sound. Even if speaking in tongues was real, if it were legitimate, if it were divinely inspired, how could you consciously choose even just the sound of a word in the tongue you were speaking? Another thing leaders would talk about was "getting more fluent in your tongue". Again, if what you're speaking is inspired by God, how can you get better at it? About all I can think of is that if it were a language with unfamiliar sounds and phonemes it might take some time to get comfortable with those sounds. 

Interpretation and Prophecy were usually short messages tended to generic versions of whatever was current Way-speak, or the prevailing Way priorities. If the "theme" of the year was Living Sanctified, a typical interpretation of prophecy might be "I the Lord your God want you to live your lives in a sanctified way, speaking the truth in love to all who would hear". Never any specific instruction. 

There was great pressure to perform. People who didn't often didn't last and left of their own volition. One misunderstanding about what The Way thought about Speaking in Tongues had to do with its connection to being born again. It was taught that it was the evidence, or proof that you were born again, but it was never suggested that those who didn't weren't.  In retrospect I believe most, if not all people faked it. How hard could it be to spout some gibberish? Nonsense syllables that had no apparent linguistic structure? This aspect of Way life wasn't necessarily cultlike in my opinion, unless you want to paint all Charismatic or Pentecostal denominations as cults. I brought it up to provide context for what came next: the Advanced Class on Power For Abundant Living. 

It was during the Advanced Class where we were supposed to learn about the other six Manifestations of the Spirit. Word of Knowledge, Word of Wisdom and Discerning of Spirits were referred to as "revelation" manifestations, i.e. God was directly giving you information. The final three, called the "power manifestations", were supposedly more action oriented. Miracles and Gifts of Healing are pretty much what the names suggest. "Faith" was one that I never heard an explanation for that made sense. For those of us who were not Advanced Class grads, that class seemed like the ticket to real spiritual street cred. It was the Advanced Class grads who were in the pipeline to become Way leaders, the real movers and shakers. And you go to wear the Advanced Class name tag. Let me digress for a moment to talk about Way name tag culture. 

By the time I got involved in The Way, every class, every program, had its own standardized plastic name tag. If you were at a Way event you could tell at a glance where someone was in the Way caste hierarchy by their name tag. If they had on a paper tag in a cheap plastic sleeve, with the name written in Sharpie, they were at the bottom. A newbie. Advanced Class grads had a green name tag with white lettering; WOW Ambassadors wore white name tags with blue lettering and the "wave" in the corner. (The first wave of WOWS went out in 1971, 1980, when I went, was the tenth wave) Students at the Way College of Emporia had red tags with white lettering. Way Corps had a name tag that was a slightly different shape than the others with tags in either white letters on green or green letters on white, with their Corps number in the corner. (There were others, but you get the idea) Anyone who rated one of these special nametags made sure that they displayed them. There was a fashion for a while to create "name tag ties" where every tag that was earned was displayed on a necktie. 

In June of 1980 I would be travelling to Rome City Indiana to take the Advanced Class. I had committed myself to participate in the Word Over the World (WOW) ambassador program starting that August, so it would be a busy time my last few months in New York. At the time I owned a car, but it was in storage and I'd shortly sell it to my sister to help pay for my Advanced Class fee and my WOW Ambassador move. None of my Way friends were going, so I thought it would be cool to hitch hike from Queens to Indiana. In retrospect, not the smartest idea, but I was never accused of making smart decisions back then! I had Lori, my girlfriend at the time, drive me to the other side of the George Washington bridge in New Jersey so that I wouldn't have to hitch through New York City. Amazingly, I arrived in one piece and started the class. 

One of the hallmarks of Way culture was to promote everything as the greatest, the first, the most effective, the most "accurate" teaching of the Bible since the First Century. Classes and seminars were described in glowing terms by those who had taken them before, and new people were likewise expected to react similarly with effusive praise. Anyone who didn't was suspected as having not "got it", and were pressured to see "the truth". These people usually drifted away. Let's take another detour and talk about "brainwashing". 

Anti-cult activists and families of people who joined cults are often convinced that cult members have been subjected to mind control techniques, informally known as brainwashing and that people who got involved were somehow forced to do so. My experience in The Way does not support this view. Those who stuck around after their initial contact with The Way were typically people who were those who wanted to believe. In the earlier installments I went into to detail about why I got hooked. Other people had different reasons, but the important thing to note was that no one was forced to stay, in fact Way leadership was glad to get rid of the skeptics or those who asked uncomfortable questions. Over the years I saw many people leave voluntarily, with no real attempt to bring them back into the fold. My own cousin, whose involvement predated mine, left with nary a ripple. The people who signed up for the Advanced Class, or to serve as WOW Ambassadors, were a self-selected group who were very likely to buy in to whatever The Way was selling. They were also predisposed to keep any doubt and skepticism to themselves.

I arrived at the Rome City Indiana campus primed to learn. I was ready to learn how to receive revelation from God, discern the presence of devil spirits, and perform miracles and heal people. (And do whatever the manifestation of "faith" entailed) In Part XV I talked about how we saw a lot of apparent miraculous healing during my final year as a Twig Coordinator in New York. I was convinced at the time that it was all real, and I was excited to be able to "kick it up a notch" and become just like the Apostles in the Book of Acts. Boy, was I in for a surprise. The operation of Speaking in Tongues, Interpretation and Prophecy in the PFAL Foundational Class was something that was taught practically as well as shown from the Biblical text and was practiced in groups and coached by the leaders. We didn't just read about it, we did it and worked out our spiritual muscles. The Advanced Class was all theory, with no practice. We read Biblical passages, we listened to theories about devil possession, we heard anecdotes about miracles and healings, but we didn't do anything. I was disappointed, but I kept it to myself. 

Even though it was natural and logical to expect more from the Advanced Class than what we got, anyone who expressed their disappointment and criticized the lack of practical application was "reproved". It was suggested that those people just didn't understand "Doctor" Wierwille's wisdom in how he presented the class—did they think they were smarter and more spiritual than he was? We were encouraged to hold any doubts or lack of understanding "in abeyance", assured that we would eventually understand. (Probably as we got more spiritual) There was a lot of peer pressure to not only keep one's doubts to oneself, but to act publicly as if it all made sense and was, in fact, God's Word as it hadn't been taught since the First Century. Even if it made no sense at all. 

I went back to New York with warring impulses fighting for attention: the part of me who saw this as a red flag and the part of me who couldn't admit that I had been involved in something that was less than what it purported to be. I didn't want to be one of the people who drifted away, admitting that I had been duped, I wanted to be one of those hot shot Advanced Class grads who knew more than everyone else. 

And besides, I was leaving for a year as a WOW Ambassador in a few weeks.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XVII

Workin' Man - Part XVI - New York Block Party

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

One advantage to being at a new store was that we weren't right next door to the corporate offices. Before B&R built what we called The Taj Mahal over near 45th & W their corporate headquarters was in the strip mall next to the 48th & O Super Saver, where the Dollar Tree was until recently. (Interesting fact about the B&R headquarters, it's not owned by B&R, it's owned separately by the Raybould family who collect rent from B&R). With the corporate overlords so close, we had frequent unscheduled visits; lunch time stops to the Deli, after work grocery shopping and more. We could always count on Richard, the VP of Operations, coming in at 5:00 to buy a six pack of beer, so we made sure the path from the front door to the beer case always had full shelves. 

Russ was still active in the company then. I could always expect him to come in early on Friday evening and rudely yell at the top of his lungs that we needed more checkers. Every Monday morning Russ would gather in the conference room at 48th & O with some of his old cronies to drink coffee and eat doughnuts. This coffee klatch was so sacrosanct that he once kicked out the HR Coordinator who was conducting an orientation for new employees. I always thought it was funny how people thought Russ's abrasive manner was considered a positive trait, good ol' plain speaking, while my own was looked at as a problem. A lot of people idolized Russ. I thought he was a bully and an asshole. Though for good or bad, you always knew where you stood with Russ. If he yelled at you, as long as you fixed the problem you never heard about it again. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XVII

Managers Part XVI - The Monkeys

The class and book Managing Management Time described the responsibility to take some kind of action as a "monkey". If it was your responsibility to get something done, then "the monkey" was on your back. Before we get deep into the jungle, let define some terms. Most people define "delegate" as any action that someone else has to do so that you don't. We, however, are going to define "delegate" in conjunction with "assign". When you assign a task to someone, you have told them what to do, and when to do it. Sometimes you even tell them how to do it. (Rarely do you tell them why it's being done.) For example you tell your janitor to clean the bathroom, when he is done you tell him to sweep the sidewalk, when that is done you tell him to organize the storage closet. Or you can give him a list at the beginning of his shift:

1. Clean the bathroom
2. Sweep the sidewalk
3. Organize the storage closet

Or...you can give him the responsibility to keep the store clean and organized and let him determine how to do that. 

The first example is assigning; you give your subordinate tasks. Think back a few lessons to the Five Levels—this sounds a lot like Level 2 or even Level 1. But when you give someone responsibility, then you have delegated. This is more like Level 3 or 4. But in order for delegation to be effective, i.e. you get the results that you desire without a lot of hands-on involvement, you have to train your subordinate to the point where they completely understand the responsibility that you have given them and you have to give them the authority to carry out their delegated tasks. What this means is that you have to be confident enough to let go of the responsibility and let your delegated subordinate handle it without unnecessary interference from you. In the case of our janitorial example, you don't even want the janitor checking with you before cleaning or organizing, you want Level 4 freedom! Now, when you have passed this responsibility on, taking away any but routine involvement, then the metaphorical monkey has been transferred from your back to his.  

Unfortunately, it's not always clear who a monkey belongs to, and your subordinates and your bosses alike will attempt to get you to take ownership of monkeys that aren't yours. So how can you reliably determine who a monkey belongs to? It's all tied int to the Five Levels of Freedom, which we will look at in the next installment. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XV

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. He was so proud of his titles and the associated ability to lord it over people. But now he had been stripped of almost all of his precious titles. He still held the position of Way Home Coordinator, which was supposed to mean that he was the leader of the little group who lived in our house on Metropolitan Avenue, yet this was in tension with my position as the Twig Fellowship Coordinator based at the same house. There was no way that there wouldn't be fireworks. 

There were two parallel paths that I would take through the rest of the Way year. One was paved with red flags that in hindsight I should have heeded and got the hell out, the other path was crowded with what at the time looked like what the Bible calls signs, miracles and wonders. The problem was that I didn't see the red flags as red flags and I had been conditioned to look for divine intervention everywhere. We had been indoctrinated with the view that when bad things happened it was "the Adversary" (i.e. The Devil) attacking us due to our "stand on The Word of God". So both side-by-side paths were convincing me that I was on the right path. 

When I was still living at the first Way Home I had re-enrolled in college. I had dropped out during my sophomore year, and, due to some bad grades I had been put on academic probation. When I re-enrolled I was still on probation, which meant that I could not fail any classes and had to maintain at least a "C" average. I had also taken a job in Manhattan working for the stock brokerage firm, E.F. Hutton. I worked at Hutton during the day and attended classes at night. This meant that it was difficult for me to spend much time on Way activities. Way leadership suggested that, although I was living in a Queens Way Home, it might be better if I attended Twig Fellowship in Manhattan, where I worked and went to college. If this situation had continued, things might have turned out differently, but two things happened to change the course of my life. The first was that I failed a math class. It may have been advanced algebra, or maybe calculus, I don't recall. Even though I had aced every other class, I was still on academic probation, and this one failure meant that I was dismissed from Bernard M. Baruch College. Around the same time I was offered the position of Twig Fellowship Coordinator. I was virtually locked into a Way trajectory. 

I mentioned the two parallel paths—I want to address the one that was festooned with red flags first. As far as I knew, Eddie wasn't removed from his positions because higher leadership thought he didn't have leadership qualities. His branch responsibilities ended simply because there weren't enough twigs for three branches and the other two branch coordinators had more of the accepted credentials. His Twig Coordinator of the English-language fellowship position wasn't taken away due to incompetence or ungodliness or lack of leadership, but to allow him to concentrate on the various Spanish language fellowships. But with the 20/20 vision that comes from being 40 years in the future, I can tell you with conviction that Eddie was a sociopathic abuser. A characteristic that somehow escaped the notice of the supposedly spiritually savvy leadership. 

I'm not going to get specific about all of the insanity that Eddie engaged in. I mentioned in Part XIV that he believed that "casting out devil spirits" was the appropriate response to a roommate talking in his sleep. He constantly belittled the people around him, especially women. He drank to excess. We sublet a basement apartment to a woman who he coerced into sex. Several of us complained about him to upper leadership to no avail. The fact that Eddie was put in a position of leadership where he was supposed to care for other Christian believers and lead by example, should have suggested to me that upper leadership didn't know what the heck they were doing. But I somehow rationalized the situation. The "obey leadership" habit was hard to break. There must be some kind of plan that I was unaware of. Part of me thought that I just needed to up my spiritual game and commit myself more fully. More on that after I take you on a stroll down the other parallel path.

When I took over the fellowship on Metropolitan Avenue in Richmond Hill, Queens, there were four or five of us. By the time I left New York that August, there were easily thirty people crammed into our living room on Twig Fellowship nights. The main method of increasing membership was to "witness". Like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, The Way engaged in door-to-door witnessing. Since we started out with just a handful, we would have a short meeting and then hit the streets, the bowling alleys, the bars and knocked on doors. We also started seeing people who had been inactive in Way events start showing up. Maybe they didn't like what was going on when Eddie was in charge and wanted to give us a shot. Maybe it was just coincidence, but these formerly inactive people started bringing friends. And the friends started bringing friends.  The house started filling up. 

One of the measures of success of a Way Twig or Branch was running a class. The Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class was for people who wanted to stick around, it was the first level of commitment in Wayworld. You needed seven new people to be able to run a PFAL class and typically several Twigs combined their new people into one class. We were able to run one all by ourselves. Then we were able to run another one. And a third—which was unheard of. Way fellowship meetings were beginning to tend toward formal at that time. We went in the opposite direction which seemed to draw in even more people. For some reason that I can't recall I started running meetings and teaching barefoot and sitting cross-legged on the couch. We were told to start running a 10:30 fellowship on Sundays—because Way HQ did. No one specified that it was to be 10:30AM, so, rebels that we were, we met at 10:30PM on Sunday and the living room was as full as any other time.  The biggest thing was that we started to get known as the place to go for miraculous healing.

As an agnostic who these days casts a skeptical eye on the miraculous, I really don't know what to think about this aspect of my time in The Way. We would pray for people and it sure seemed like they were healed of various maladies. There wasn't any eyesight to the blind or healing the lepers, but we were all sure convinced that healing was taking place. And it wasn't just the hardcore Wayfers, but people who would show up at our house for the first time and swear that their illness, or limp or whatever was gone. To me, this was some bona fide Book of Acts stuff...signs, miracles and wonders. These apparent miracles helped to convince me that The Way was...the way. After all, I didn't see anything like this when I was attending Catholic mass. 

The red flags were rationalized away as a sign that I needed to increase my own commitment. The Way's doctrine of The Law of Believing always put the blame for bad things squarely on the shoulders of the person that they happened to, so of course I needed to ratchet up my own believing. The huge increase in people who attended our fellowship and experienced miraculous healing confirmed it. What was the next step? I made a twofold decision: to enroll in the Advanced Class that was taking place that summer in Rome City, Indiana and after that to sign up for the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program. A decision that would take me from my home of New York City and deposit me in a town of 5,000 in the Nebraska Panhandle. 

 Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XVI

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

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

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

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

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

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

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

 I started as an assistant store director (ASD) in August 2001 at the 27th & Cornhusker Super Saver. The ASD position varied from store to store and the exact duties depended on who the Store Director was, the staffing level of the store, and the personality and priorities of the ASDs themselves. Some ASDs were basically glorified grocery managers, spending most of their time ordering groceries, working new items on the shelves, and building displays. Others viewed themselves more as trainers, devoting their energies to teaching customer service seminars and sitting in their offices a lot. As I alluded to before, my predecessor was the kind of ASD who was very hands-on and didn't delegate, but did everything himself. I saw myself as a trainer and developer of potential managers, but spent a lot of time on the sales floor as well. 

There was absolutely no training of any kind. If you were applying for this position it was assumed that you knew what the job was and how to do it! But no one really knew what an Assistant Store Director did, until they did it. It was a side affect of this ignorance that when an open ASD position was posted you might get a dozen people apply, most whom had no experience or qualifications. It was easy to see what a department manager did—they ran their department! But the work of an ASD was kind of like the drummer or the bassist in a band—most people never noticed them until they screwed up! My approach was in line with the theory of management where I was to get things done, rather than do things. I started out my first shift by just walking around and observing. One of the things that I observed was chaos.

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

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

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

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

One week the sensitivity of the staff versus my direct approach came to a head. There were several incidents where I felt I was enforcing company policy and received pushback. The employees all complained to the Store Director. Brian found me in the office and he, as they say, ripped me a new asshole. I had never heard him yell before, and I only did one other time. In his mind, I was terrorizing the staff, taking out my frustrations with my own crappy life (I was going through a divorce) on them. I'm sure it looked that way to a team that was used to the laissez faire management style and saw my direct approach as "yelling". At the time, I considered that maybe I was too tough with people, and signed up for some counseling through the employee assistance program. I tried to discuss my plan to soften my approach, but my conflict averse boss didn't want to talk about it—I think he was embarrassed that he lost his temper! 

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

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

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

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XVI

Managers Part XV - The Holidays

When you're in management the holidays can be a joyful time, or they can be hell, it all depends on the kind of business that you're in. My last job before retiring I worked in an office for a government agency and got holidays (and weekends) off; the nature of the work was such that holidays aren't any busier than any other time of year. However, for almost two decades I worked in a retail grocery store—every holiday is busy when you work in a grocery store. In general it can be more than twice as busy as a normal week in the days leading up to a holiday, but no matter how clearly you communicate, there will always be people who want to take off during the busiest times. There are several types of managers, each handling the situation differently:

1. The "nice guys" who approve every time-off request. These are the managers who don't know how to say no and find that instead of "all hands on deck" they are actually shorthanded when they can least afford it. While the people who take off believe that these are "good" managers, somebody still has to work, and there is much irritation and low morale with those who get stuck working. 
2. The managers who believe that seniority or position entitles them to take off and leave the work to subordinates.  When the holiday, Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July etc. comes up, the managers and senior (i.e. most experienced) people all take off, leaving the store at its busiest to assistants, newbies and high school kids.
3. Some managers make no changes at all. In the company that I worked for, there were stores where there were no extra people scheduled on the day before Thanksgiving (one of the top three busiest days of the year) and no senior management in the store past 6:00PM, their normal quitting time. 
4. Those who demand "all hands on deck" and work the busy shifts themselves. No vacations, nobody leaves early, especially the managers.

I was always a Type 4 manager. I learned this gradually. My first holiday season as an Assistant Store Director I was usually scheduled until 5:00PM, but couldn't ever leave on time and ended up working 13-14 hour days due to poor planning. My boss was a Type 1 manager, so a lot of the work fell on a select few of us who were serious about getting the store in tip-top shape. I was able to fully put my Type 4 management plan into shape after getting transferred to another store where the store director was open to changing things up for holiday scheduling. Managers were required to work at least a half day on their weekend day off leading up to a holiday and were required to work later shifts. No one got the day before the holiday off or the holiday itself, depending on which as the busiest day. No vacations were approved during the busy times. We would allow occasional exceptions for employees who had unique situations, but it was definitely an exception and not the rule. The Store Director and I, however, scheduled ourselves for weekend and late night shifts, putting ourselves in the same boat as everyone else. Of course, not everyone liked this method of scheduling: one manager ended up getting fired because she took out her frustration at not getting the week of December 22nd-January 4th off at other employees, verbally abusing them until we had to let her go. Occasionally employees would seek transfers to other stores so that they could take half of the month of December off. 

As a retail manager, I didn't necessarily enjoy having to work every holiday, but I understood that it was part of the job, and didn't allow subordinates to act as if they didn't work in retail. One of the jobs of a manager is to communicate the expectations to his or her subordinates and require compliance with those expectations. Jobs, despite what some politicians believe, do not exist because business owners altruistically want to provide a living to those in the community; they exist because there is a need for people to carry out specific tasks at a specific place and a specific time; and there's more of those tasks at certain times. It is understandable that an employee would want to put family gatherings or personal needs first, but if that means that the job for which they were hired goes undone, perhaps they are in the wrong business. 

Update post pandemic:
The pandemic changed a lot of things, it certainly changed the employer to employee dynamic and power balance. The pandemic hit right after several years of historically low unemployment. Many people in food service and retail industries began getting better at setting boundaries and speaking up themselves. This was a good thing. But it was also a bad thing. Many employees refused to do what they were hired to do, and managers often were afraid to fire bad employees due to the difficulty in replacing them. Employees often became adamant that they wouldn't request time off, but were simply informing their employer that they would be gone during certain times, whether it was the busy season or not. I maintain that if there are busy seasons, and this is made clear upon hiring, employees should stick with what they agreed to do when they were hired. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XVI