Through my three different jobs I’ve seen a large number of people come and go between each job and when I really think about it the number one cause is probably the lousy managers.
My first job we went through three managers and two districts in a year and a half. Which may not seem like a lot, but when every couple months you have somebody new trying to change up how everything in the store works you can’t really get set into the way everything is supposed to run before it’s changed, again. The district managers were both actually very good at their jobs. One was really strange, but he knew what he was doing. If the district managers were in the store more I’m sure everything would have been at tip top shape, but 99% of the time we just had the general manger (GM) or no manager.
The GM’s were all slightly different starting with not caring, just being a push over, and then leading to the last that in a way just came in too late to change anything. By the time she became manager all the people that were there before she started were set in their ways and most of the new employees follow their seniors or create their own ways. The store was full of a mess of people all behaving in manners most act like only teenagers have. You could say I was ashamed of my coworkers.
Not only did she come into the game late she didn’t necessarily have the right approach and didn’t like to deal with some. For example: I’m not the type of person to really complain about too much, but one of my coworkers bitched her way into getting anything she wanted. She acted as if she had seniority over everyone there and deserved everything.
When it came down to pleasing the complainer or me, I received the short end of the stick. I dealt with this for almost a year at this job before I began complaining too, but apparently my complaints weren’t as annoying. This was one of the major reasons I left this job.
My second job, which I took because I was offered a shift manager position. At eighteen this was the most exciting thing for me. Never had I pictured myself being in charge in any way.
For those that don’t know, a shift manager job is usually the person running a shift. Usually more than one per store. At the store I was at the shift managers only covered when the general manager wasn’t there. And our manager was there, too often working twelve hour shifts. In my opinion, this is part of what made her a lousy manager. She didn’t trust her shift managers to do their jobs correctly (even though when she was there all she really did was sit on her ass), she didn’t really get sleep leading her to be cranky and rude and disrespectful to her managers and crew and back to mistrust. It was a never ending cycle. Her disrespect towards her staff is probably the major reason people quit. Usually by no call no show. Another was one of the shift managers. She had to be the most immature twenty-four year old I’ve met. She was jealous and determined to get rid of anyone she thought of as a threat.
Both the manager and my fellow shift manager were the major reasons I hated this job. I didn’t feel welcome at my work place to even work. Doing my job was a challenge and toward the end the GM didn’t even gift me any shifts as a manager, just crew and . This job was 30 minutes away from my house and I was spending probably around $100 in gas every week or biweekly. This job wasn’t worth it for me when all this added together.
I’m now at my third and current job and although it is a lot better there are managers disrespectful to their crew. More than there should be, but over all this place treats it’s people better than my first two jobs. So even though the managers can be disrespectful I’ve realized that this seems to be the way things are run in most jobs. Most managers at jobs seem to get full of themselves. I don’t know if it starts when they become a manager or if they are just that full of themselves, but either way.
Fighting to Stay Afloat 