And you’re powerless to write her up for insubordination because… why? My boss is great, but I hate when he pussies out in these situations. Don’t be the pussy boss.
Sounds WAY more fun than being the Cake Boss though.
The fastest way to get from a technical to a managerial position is to be the one person in the department who can go out on a sales call and come back with a signed contract.
There aren’t many tech people who have the skill set for sales, and there aren’t many good salespeople who want to give that up and go into management.
Especially food service.
Although, being a boss means you have to put up with customers acting crappy, and frequent employee turnover.
And food service generally means crappy hours depending on the needs of the business.
His attitude sounds like mine was; and I was a terrible terrible manager. I was so glad to not have to do it any more when I found a nonmanagemant position that paid the same. AFAIK, being a good manager is much more about people skills than technical ability no matter what you are managing. Some management ability can be learned and improved upon, but also, unfortunately, a lot of success as a manger involves personality traits that either exist or do not. At least that is the experience I’ve had.
The Straight Dope comes through again, everything is black or white. And everyone knows everything about everyone else’s situations.
It’s a small mom and pop business. We don’t write people up, we just go and handle things. We’re also in at At-Will state meaning I can fire her because I don’t like the car she drives or because she’s been a great employee up until today when she broke the new rule I made up that you have to part your hair on the left or because it’s Random Fire Friday! She’ll be able to collect unemployment, but that’s about it.
How about instead of calling me a ‘pussy boss’ we call her an ‘asshole employee’ that’s just out to make my job harder. Seriously, I said to her “In the future, could you please do this this way instead of that way, because it was really confusing to me” and she snapped back at me LOUDLY “Well how am I supposed to know that, I don’t know that, I just did it that way because I thought it was just common sense”. Loud enough that most everyone stopped what they were doing to watch the fireworks while I’m sitting there thinking “the fuck? I know you don’t know, that’s why I’m telling you”.
Worst part is, I knew it was coming as soon as soon as I saw the mistake and I dreaded having to tell her because flying off the handle is what she does. I think she does it, at least in part, for attention.
For the record, I stay away from firing. If I fired everyone I had a problem with, the workforce would be a very efficient crew of just ME.
I can tell people what to do, I can correct them, I deal with issues, my problem is when they snap back at me. Typically when things get heated like that my default is to say “Punch out, go home” ‘but but but’ “Just punch out and go home, I asked you to do something and you decided to yell at me about it [or whatever the case is] go home, I’m not interested in dealing with your attitude for the rest of the day”
But she did something I’ve never, in my 22 years of working there seen done. She marched away from me mid sentence. I felt like I was talking to my 8 year old daughter…“GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW, I’m not done” and she just walked right back into the store and back out to the register. It was probably for the best, I was pretty wound up.
That’s when I called in the owner, I told him he needs to come down and deal with this because I’m in over my head. If she decided to come back and say another word to me I would have fired her. She has no idea how lucky she is to still have her job. We’ll see what happens in the morning.
Anyways, what this all comes down to is that there’s a price to pay for having the comfy chair and being ably to surf the dope during the day. It ain’t easy being the boss. As I said near the top, do you really want to deal with all the bullshit that comes with it. Look, it’s nearly midnight and I’m still wound up about it. It’s just part of my life now.
Oh God yes! I was a manager for about 30 years and it was 80% dealing with people problems and 20% getting actual work done.
Bob screwed up the Johnson account, whose ass is on the line, Bob’s? Oh, no, no, no, yours is. And you need to get Bob what he needs to improve his performance so this sort of thing doesn’t happen in the future. Because his lack of training or knowledge is your responsibility too. Never mind that Bob is a dipshit who can’t be fired for political reasons, his being a dipshit is likely your fault too.
Meanwhile Carol is in the office with problems relating to Ted and Alice. She wants to move to a new project to get away from them, but there is no spot available. So now you are a mediator too.
People are frustrating and as a manager dealing with people is going to be a major part of your job. Are you good at watching a room full of 2 year old children and keeping the peace and getting them all to work as a team? Then management is right up your alley.
For me, no thanks, no more. I am not applying for that big promotion.
Most tech people - who do the work - go nowhere near customers. Technical sales support people are in a totally different.
I’ve done, and been involved in marketing a product, but most of our good technical people were allowed nowhere near customers, and absolutely none (including me) could be expected to close a deal.
Join the good ol’ boy’s club. Have beers or go fishing with the boss. Get a good set of knee-pads and put them to use. I worked at a place where they promoted guys who did that.
I don’t work there anymore.
Enterprise N-Tier web application development
Interesting. What I’ve seen has been more or less the opposite of this. Managers churn through engineers trying to find one who isn’t a fuckup. I’ve seen it happen - engineer screws up, deadline is missed, engineer’s desk is cleaned out and soon a new H1B guy from India shows up, manager is inviolate, hail his glorious name and project charge code.
Managers seem to sit on pedestals here - I can’t think of a single case where a manager was fired for any reason, whether related to inherent incompetency or a subordinate failure. It’s the “shit flows downhill” story over and over again - upper manager tells middle manager to do something about the fuckup, middle manager tells level 1 supervisor to do something about the fuckup, level 1 supervisor can’t think of anything to do but fire the engineer that they failed to guide.
This is a really interesting point. Can you tell me a little more or direct me to some more information? It does seem to be similar to my own attitudes - e.g. I walk into a retail store, try to buy something, but the clerks can barely speak English, don’t know anything about the products they sell except for their names, and don’t care. I think, “If only I was in charge of this place, I’d straighten it up right away. Hire some people who actually know a little shit (hell, unemployment is still high here, surely I can find a few college grads who can speak articulate English and know a little about a whole lot), set up a knowledge base of product knowledge (so staff know what the hell this stuff is), and run regular internal seminars to improve performance.”
Like this then?
I’m not saying I agree or disagree with it, but it popped up on facebook the other day.
About seven years ago they made me a “project manager” where I work. I was put in charge of a project, and I oversaw the budget, personnel, deliverables, meetings, reporting, etc.
I discovered I was horrible at it. I had the wrong personality for the job… I hated telling people what to do. As a result, much money was spent and little progress was made. Because I did not closely monitor the performance of some of the employees reporting to me, they took advantage of the situation and charged lots of hours to the project without really doing anything.
I was losing sleep over it. The project was way behind and it was my entire fault. I soon took another job within the same organization, and another PM took my place. She picked up the pieces and somehow got the report out on time.
I am now back to being a regular, hand’s-on engineer. I never want to be a manager again.
Yes. Including grocery stores and fast food, there is a high turnover here. If you stick it out, you will eventually make it to shift leader, which is a position where you can start to act bossy.
I have been a retail manager. I think it would be a good thing to try. For me it involved many challenges I was not expecting. For starters, hiring good, knowledgable people is much harder than I expected. And keeping those employees can be even harder, even in a bad economy. Second, I found having accountability without responsibility to be very frustrating. What I mean is I was responsible for sales, I was resposible for shrink I was responsible for customers being happy, yet had little budget to work with, and little recourse for disciplining employees. It came down to sometimes having to work far more hours than I was originally told, which were already long.
Another thing that happens, and this depends on the size of the organization, people above you may not like you, even if you do a great job, if they see you as a threat. I found there to be a lot of politics involved. It is a very political position, even at the low level management of low skill jobs. By that I mean you are spending your time on trying to make things palatable to those above you and those below you. You are trying to understand what is going on in the minds of those above you and below you. If you are highly educated, this may actually make it harder because your ability to relate to the uneducated and the difference in background may mean the gap in understanding would require the constuction of a very long bridge to cross
This can present a lot of challenges to the technically focused person. You are entering the world where perception is reality. How results, policies etc. are perceived is more important than what they are. To put it simply, the are leaving the area where logic reigns and entering a world where emotions and subtlety are the bigger concern. The reason for this is the amount of unknowns involved. For example, store sales can go down for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with a manager and the decision of how much blame to assign in the situation rests with the person above the manager and often comes down to how that person ferls, and not what can be proven.
Personally, I’d rather hold a junior position that paid more with my intellectual peers than be King of the Morons. Why does the OP think anyone would make him the boss of anything? Typically they put people in charge of stuff they are already experts at doing.
You work in software programming? Do they not have “project managers” where you work? You don’t become a project manager by being the worlds greatest coder. You become a project manager by learning project management. Then you get to be the boss of a project. You also have to deal with all the shit when it goes badly.
Joey P - Sorry, but that does sound like text book “pussy boss” to me. People get into heated discussions with their boss from time to time, but what you described is unacceptable in any workplace I’ve heard of. And the fact that you are unable to confront her about it because she might snap at you or sue the company. What kind of manager lets a bad employee hold the rest of the company hostage with their behavior?
I don’t know much about places where you “write up” employees like they were kindergarten students who skipped class. But I would go with a basic three strikes rule. Just calmly and firmly tell you asshole employee:
Strike 1: “Your behavior is inappropriate. Screaming and throwing temper tantrums in the work place is not acceptable and will not be tolerated. Consider yourself warned. If you are having problems with the work, I can provide you with help, but the outburst and temper tantrums have to stop.”
Strike 2: " You had been warned that this behavior is inappropriate. This is the second time. The next time it happens, there will be serious consequences, up to and including termination of your position."
Strike 3: “Based on these three documented incidents, we have decided to terminate your employment.”
An unemployed clock-puncher with a documented history of insubordination and outbursts would be hard-pressed to find an attorney to take her case in an at-will employment state.
Amen! I was fine as a first level manager, but I became an acting second level manager, which was all about budget spreadsheets and other stuff I hated. I was lucky enough to find out before I actually got the job, and kept my old one. Not everyone is good at everything.
There are a lot of reasons, but people who are really smart and educated and good at problem solving tend to get frustrated by people who aren’t. Often it seems like they won’t or simply can’t grasp complex issues or see solutions that to a smart person is right in front of them.
It’s sort of like asking a chimpanzee to drive you to the mall and getting mad at it because all it does is throws it’s feces at you.
You’re saying you’d rather fire her than write her up? That’s eminently *ridiculous. *It’s not easy, I get that. But you’re the boss. Do it anyway. An employee that’s allowed to get away with this kind of shit is disturbing everyone and potentially poisoning the entire work environment. It’s your job to stop it, unless you just don’t care.
There is so much wrong with this, I just don’t even know where to begin. I actually considered encouraging you to go this route just so I could be entertained at the thought of a newly minted officer trying to order around their subordinates - that is if you could make it through your training.
Just don’t. Trust me. You don’t have the right attitude for it.