In the military, the officer rank O-1 (Second Lieutenant for the Army, Air Force and Marines, Ensign for the Navy and Coast Guard) has a bit of a bad reputation. When you have E-1s (enlisted), they are brand-new troops, mostly kids between high school and college age. Care to take a shot on how old that first officer is? Take the age of an enlisted E-1 and tack on four years for college, and you’re in the ballpark. Here’s a question for you guys: how would you feel if a twenty-two year old, fresh from the company’s managerial school with about six seconds of experience under his belt in the real world, walked up to you and proceeded to start ripping you apart, telling you that what you were doing was wrong and that you’d better change or you’d be fired?
I’m honestly curious: how long would you listen to that before you shoved him head-first into the dumpster and announced your intention to leave? I’ve done the military gig…and while “leave” wasn’t in the program, there were a couple of “butterbars” that I may or may not have threatened. Yes, UPCG has been an aggravated soul long before the counter. When the underwear you have on has more experience than the brand-new guy barking off orders, you tend to have a chip on your shoulder.
But does that translate into the real world of the parts store? Let’s take a look at this in a hypothetical situation. You’ll pardon if I constantly compare store position to rank, but it helps me explain this well. The STORE is Headquarters, and the CEO is the four-star general. You’ll never see them. Your store manager is your Platoon Sergeant…the one that you deal with pretty much day-in and day-out…they are the first line of authority you have to deal with. Then there is the Regional position. This would correlate to the first commanding officer…a Captain or, for you boating types, a Lieutenant. Your store manager gets nervous when they appear, but as a store minion, usually this means that they will spout off a bunch of bullshit about how you are “doing a great job” and that “we need more people like you here at the store.”
Now picture the brand new guy taking over for the old Regional manager. He’s been through Corporate’s manager training regimen, but honestly, he’s as fresh as a newborn baby when he appears in your store. As a minion, this is even scarier for you than it is for the store manager, and he is sweating buckets. Why? Because this fresh-faced, well-intentioned individual is about to completely and utterly screw up your world. Do you have the kinds of customers that you can joke with? Don’t do it around this guy, because he doesn’t understand personal relationships. He only knows “Thank you, sir, and we hope to see you soon!”, not that Bill from Shop X just came in and spent $800 on parts after a ten-minute long BS session, and that unless you were just hammered with customers, he would honestly feel upset if you didn’t chat with him for a minute. A little bit of laughter between counter clerks? To you two, that’s just venting off a little steam to make a difficult day better…or maybe there was something funny, whatever. Laughter is good, right? Not to the new guy. You two must obviously be screwing off back there, so you will now be required to sit at your post at the counter, and you will only leave for restroom breaks and your allotted meal time, because you two have cut efficiency in the name of a laugh.
Store manager gets the shaft, though. Imagine being told that since you don’t work open to close, at least six days a week, that you are slacking and are in danger of losing your position by someone who has been in the workforce six minutes. Imagine being told that your payroll is too high when you are working your part-timers at full time and have been battling the old Regional for months to keep what little flexibility you had in overtime so that you could get your full-timers some of what they truly deserved. Imagine having to re-train new people because your hiring pool sucks out loud, and because you can’t keep in good workers because there are better opportunities elsewhere, or because they are sick of not having time off during the week, or because they always have to cover someone else’s ass. You don’t have enough people, part or full time, yet here is Dennis the Menace, Manager Edition, telling you that you are wrong. Even though this is his second day at your store.
I wouldn’t put him in our dumpster. I’d duct-tape his hands and feet and haul him down to the dumpster behind the sketchy-looking Oriental food joint…you know the type, the “all-you-can-eat for $3.99” restaurants…and would heave him head-first into that one. Then I’d go home, throw down a glass of whiskey and start preparing my résumé.
Man,that sounds like a shitty deal all around but I believe it. Sounds like that is the problem in all corporate retail today and why shopping for anything sucks too.
I had to deal with a Bosnian punk kid as a store manager once when I worked a Autozone, the punk kid thought that he was in charge of me outside of the store after he would purposely cut my hours, I would work at other Autozones.
What this punk kid didn’t know was that I was taking notes on him on how he treated me, I compiled all my notes with dates and times and sent it to the regional manager.
One week later, I was transferred to another store, while he has a corporate bullseye on his back because of me.
He later wanted me to come work for him back at his store, I politely told him to fuck off.
God do I feel blessed having never worked for a company store. Life ain’t long enough to have to put up with that kind if crap.
“Corporate structure”s the same in many, many industries. While enjoying and agreeing with your rant (well referenced, by the way 🙂 ), I have to say that it’s already nearly universal. And that, from privates to pipe fitters.
I am beyond glad I don’t work at a corporate store. In fact, our store is far from being a corporate micromanaged parts store, and I hope it never changes.
When I was manager at blockbuster years and years ago, we got a new district manager. We actually met in person the second time he was in our store. He told us later that after he was promoted, but before getting into the position, he drove to each store in the district (stillwater ok, enid ok, ponca city ok, ark city ks, independence ks, and bartlesville, ok) which were not entirely close, and he spied out each store. That left a nasty taste in my mouth and I never felt comfortable around him. Didn’t care for the sneaky approach.
I work at a uni, some of the time at a counter helping students and academics with admin stuff…and you’re right, you can have a good rapport with your ` clients’ – but we get bosses coming down from our overlords who have no contact with students at all – and they’re the tools that decide how we work… hows this? the other night, ( well 5:45pm) there are two of us on the ` late’ closing shift. Front counter’s under the pump and we have a buzzer if the person out there needs help. I’m on the phones out the back, no calls coming in – but the buzzer goes off so I log off the phones and go help the actual clients out front. Next day I get in trouble from the big bosses because I wasn’t on the phone ( and yes, they can see whether you’re on the phone or counter) so I have to front up to the boss. Conversation basically went like this me: ` so… you want me to wait for a phone call which may or may not happen, while ignoring a staff member who needs help and students who can see me sitting at my desk, not on a call’ (bearing in mind the students may either come in or phone up, so they are the exact same customers). I said to the boss ` with the greatest of respect, that is some illogical, utterly fucked up thinking, if you could call it thinking’ While the boss was trying to pick his jaw up off the ground I said ` I have work to do – perhaps you should find something useful to do with the rest of your day LIKE PICKING UP A PHONE AND HELPING US RATHER THAN CRITICISING US’ wITH THAT I WALKED OUT… that was a week ago and I still work there so I guess I got away with it..
Amen to that rant parts guy. Ive been there and ive seen others go through that garbage and it slaps my nuts everytime. He gets too lippy set the punk straight.