Another one bites the dust, <city name> Style

[bean]

I don't know why we can't seem to hang on to front end managers.

The latest one, admittedly, was one hell of a micromanager - he was extremely unpopular with almost everybody, known to be very heavy handed, but was starting to lighten up quite a bit. On the other hand, he let a LOT of good people go over petty stuff. He was going by the book, but too much so (we're allowed to give some leeway, he gave none and oftentimes went far heavier than the company policy called for).

I never had a problem with the guy - hell, I went out to the bar with him once after work and we had a relatively good time, if not slightly boring time (I'm a very quiet person in general). As a person, I like him a lot. I don't like his management style, but I kept my head low and did my job, and my last job review with him was very positive.

But get this - instead of being outright fired, which is what normally happens - the store manager demoted him to cashier for a week, after that's done he's being forced to a month long leave of absence until he can find another position in the company. Apparently no other store really wants him either.

We call this the "Walk of Shame", something our store manager does when you really, really piss him off. A lot of people complained about him to the right people.

As a manager, I say good riddance (if you stumble on this R, sorry). As a friend and coworker, I'm really sad to see him go, he did bust his ass and was a hard worker. He's looked like he's been on the verge of tears quite a few times since this happened.

For what it's worth, i've done somewhat of a walk of shame myself - after coming back from rehab I got demoted to bagger, got a pay cut (which was quickly reversed after some words to the right figures), and wound up on the store manager's shit list for quite awhile.

Anyway, not sure where I was going with this - R, I wish you the best of luck no matter where you go. If he sees this he'll know exactly who wrote it.

[guywithashovel]

Back when I worked at the retail giant that everyone loves to hate, I had a manager who liked me from the very day he started working at our store. I actually liked him, too. He was very business-like, and always went out of his way to help meet associates' needs to the best of his ability. But then he got moved to another area of the store, and I moved to another area of the store. Then, as luck would have it, he got put over the area of the store I had been moved to. Things changed after that happened.

Evidently, he didn't want to manage this area of the store, and he wasn't about to make the best of the situation, either. He became very nitpicky and contrary about how the department was being taken care of. The harder we all worked, the less happy he was with how things were being done. Sometimes, several of us would stay an hour past our scheduled times to leave, only to come in the next day, and get bawled out for how "messy" the department was. Speaking of "messy," he was an absolute compulsive neat freak in our department. One time, we had been filling the floor, and the cardboard boxes got a little piled up in the back (yes, it's clutter, but when you're trying to keep the floor filled, you can't be trekking back to the trash compactor to dispose of boxes every five minutes). I'm not kidding you, he actually stayed back there and stacked each and every one of those boxes until we had this giant wall of cardboard boxes (instead of, I don't know, helping us get the freight out to the floor). Then, he went around giving us all the evil eye and telling us that we needed to keep the trash from piling up. Oh, there was another time when he gave *everyone in the department* verbal coachings for "not fufilling our job duties adequately."

Eventually, I transfered out of that department. Shortly thereafter, I left that job.

[nomorecarts]

guywithashovel-I hope people went to the District mgr(or store manager if it was a dept mgr) over that mgr

I had an assistant manager who was great for me, any time he could help me with anything he did, I had a day in my first 90 days that i was 3 1/2 hours late, he saved my ass from that, i had an incident with a customer that probably could have gotten me fired, he helped with that, and the customer pissed off his boss who actually handled the complaint so nothing was even put on file for that, when I transferred to cashier and was put on the scorecard he wrote in my schedule so i could get my maximum 35 hours(I was a minor at the time) instead of giving me PNA(potential new associate) schedules like he was supposed to. He had some issues with maturity, which got him transferred, but he was 20 when he became an assistant manager, so he will most likely still become a great manager.

[guywithashovel]

guywithashovel-I hope people went to the District mgr(or store manager if it was a dept mgr) over that mgr

I never did, though I was tempted to, and I probably should have. I'm not sure if anyone else did, though. It's possible that other associates did, because at that time, there were a lot of complaints going into our home office about a few other managers in the store===managers who wanted to do nothing else but get on people's backs and bully them about this that and everything else. I do know that eventually J (the manager I talked about in my previous post) got sent to another area. That was good, because he managed to do almost a total turnover in our department. By the time I left, almost eighty percent of the associates who had worked with me had either quit or gone to other parts of the store, and the department head stepped down from her position.

Right now, my mom works in that store, and she has had J as a manager, and she really likes him, and so do most other people. I guess he just didn't want our department, and he chose to take it out on all of us.