I am an assistant mgr at a local fast food chain. I make fair money, and I don’t see other options right now. So, the problem:
The District Manager moved me to another store today. I went in, and it was hell.
The employees are fast and efficient, but they walk off at the drop of the hat to do other things. The manager’s pet does the money count, which is not allowed by corporate. The employees spend much time on cellphones, which is also not allowed, either, but the manager’s big plan to stop that is to have them sign the cellphones not allowed memo that came from corporate. I will be held responsible to bring order to the situation.
So, I realized I was in Crap City, and I also realized that it will never change until the manager get’s serious about the whole thing, but he doesn’t appear to be the type, since he has known the rules all along, but nothing has changed yet.
I called the DM and asked him for a new store. He told me that since I am new to the org, he was thinking that I would be able to be ‘fresh blood’ or something like that, and would have some power to change the situation. (I didn’t tell him the old Vietnam War axiom: It’s always the new blood, 1st Lieutenants that try to change things and have them done by the book that got fragged!)
He is going to talk with me later, but I do not see this thing working out, i.e., changes being made for the good, in spite of his optimism. Oooops, I forgot to mention that the other Assistant Manager spent the afternoon with a Bluetooth hooked to her ear, and she was constantly talking on it, so she won’t be any help in cleaning up the situation.
So, if this is in anyway coherent, tell me what YOU would say to the DM, or what you would do. I want out of this store desperately, and quitting is not an option
Thanks,
hh
I would apply for a new job elsewhere.
Sorry, I’m just not terribly optimistic. It sounds like your District Manager’s strategy is to send new, good workers in to fix problems that he won’t deal with himself. That’s a crap strategy and it’s passing the buck completely. Everyone knows that if you put one good worker in with a bunch of shitty workers one of two things will happen: the good worker will leave or the good worker will become a shitty worker. It’s not like he made you store manager so you actually have control of what’s going on. You could be a shining paladin on a white horse, but ultimately the store manager is going to defeat you at any attempt to improve things.
The economy sucks but start looking. Do your job in the meantime as well as is possible, but don’t expect much turnaround from everyone else. After all, they’ve learned that the consequence of goofing off is to have someone better at their job come work with them and do it for them.
In perspective, I think you are right. I’m glad to know that my perceptions are shared by another Doper! I was wanting to keep this job, but, methinks the resume shall be resurrected tonight!
Thanks,
hh
One of the most stressful situations at a job is having a ton of responsibility with no power. This is what you have in this new store. I’d be tempted to bust your manager’s ass constantly to corporate - they want the store to make money, not be your manager’s playground. If you’re ready to quit, you don’t have much to lose.
Well, I tried the busting bit. He merely said something like “Yeah, I know there are definite problems there…”
Sigh…the responsibility part is what hurts. Obviously, the company won’t change, so I wonder if I could be promoted just by not rocking any boats…I think so, but don’t know. Also, even though I am a pretty wretched individual, I am a person of conscience, and being in a job with responsibility, I feel…responsible.
But, if I must be an effete, coattail-riding, toadying bootlicker, I am equal to the task!
Thanks for your input.
I agree. Without the store manager’s support, you’re toast. Honestly, the problem here isn’t the CSRs, it’s management.
Whoa Harry! Stop and take a deep breath.
You want to be in management and you have a store with fast and efficient workers.
Manage.
Weigh the strengths and weaknesses of this particular situation, pick the battles you feel you must win, and get ready to think of some new ways to handle the problems not worth fighting.
The manager acknowledging there are some problems is an invitation to do some of the things you want and form an alliance with him. But that’s a two way street.
You can get control of the money count thing and make it seem like you’re doing the manager and pet a favor. Set up a near miss on a previously staged threat then ride in and save the day.
Is the bluetooth really causing performance problems? If not then perhaps you can embrace it or exchange some acquiescence for her compliance to your will in other areas. If it’s important to her and not too intrusive it might be worth it to have her as a subordinate who knows how to motivate her team.
Co-opt these people. Then begin to mold and manipulate them around to your goals. Manage.
Also keep in mind the metrics being looked at 3 levels up. They don’t know or care about bluetooth usage if the numbers kick ass.
Call your DM back and tell him you not only want this store but he can expect to see good things happening. Then don’t bother him with any more whiny crap.
Manage.
Mongo’s got some good advice IF you can get through to the SM. Without his back-up, you’re just the asshole hotshot newbie and the SM will continue to subtly - perhaps unconsciously - undermine your efforts. But that’s not to say that *your *shifts can’t be great. You just have to either demonstrate why your (corporate) way is better or not care what your CSRs think of you.
Everyone’s got a different management style. What’s yours? Mine is the “MAS*H approach,” as in, “We’re all in this together, me too, and as long as we meet our goals, I don’t much care how unorthodox we are about it or how crazy it looks to Corporate - who’s got an idea?” So if the cellphones worked for us as a team, I don’t much care that corporate doesn’t like them in theory. But if they don’t work, if they interfere with our goals, they’re getting locked in the office for the duration of the shift.
Words well spoken!
But, there are a few minor chinks, altho I well deserve your rebuke.
- It was the DM that acknowledged trouble, not the manager. The manager was telling me what a glorious team he had.
- I have no complaints with a bluetooth, but if an AM is using one nonstop, a. Everybody else will use one, and the AM will back them up. If you work with kids, you know that work SHALL suffer. Also, she’s not a subordinate, she’s an equal. I’m an Asst. Mgr., and so is she. Who’s been there longer. You see the difficulty.
- I say fast, and efficient, that’s kind of an exaggeration. They are faster than me, but I wasn’t hired to be fastest. They are fast and efficient WHEN THEY WORK, which is 80% of the time. Now, 80% isn’t bad, but if we cannot serve 20% of the people that come into our store because the employees are not to be found, that is less good.
All in all, you pegged me. I was whining/venting/crying. It was quite a shock, coming into a store that had been so highly touted, and my brain was in a jumble.
What WhyNot said. Corporate has Rules because they think the Rules will enable incompetent management to control unruly & incompetant workers. It works, but only a little. As you’re seeing.
But what they really want are results. Achieve the results (metrics) they’re watching, and everythng else falls into place.
A standard failing of new managers is to confuse enforcing the Rules with running the store. Following the Rules isn’t a necesary condition for sucess. It certainly isn’t a sufficient condition for success. Sure, tack towards them, but get results first.
And, have a careful talk with your SM. There’s a difference between lazy, incompentant, malicious, and dishonest. You need to know which of those he is.
Lazy may well let you clean the place up. He didn’t have the gumption to do it, and he may well lack the gumption to stop you from doing so.
OTOH, if he’s dishonest and he and the pet are skimming, there’s no way in hell you’ll fix that except by ratting them to Corporate with solid evidence, and maybe not even then.
I am, by nature, a regular Hitler, but I can control it enough to subordinate my natural feelings, and do like you, if the job is getting done. Of course, in the fast food industry, things don’t work like that that much. Maybe 1 in 10 is the norm. Also, cell phones are, of course, a ‘new’ phenomenon. With ever changing features, they will be a distraction nonstop. Also, they are a bit of a bigger problem in the fast food industry: who’s texting a friend to come and get a free bunch of burgers in the drive thru? Who’s texting uncle Larry that just got out of jail that the store made more money tonight than in the last 4 years put together??? And besides, how do customers like it when the guy with purple hair and pierced tongue is on the phone while giving him his product and change? Also, what just happened to me last week: I told an employee not to do something last week, and she bellowed at me: “I’m going to call the Manager!” and she did. On the job. How can I tell them, at this point “Cell phones aren’t allowed” if a blind eye had been turned for the previous 2 years?
Well, you’re still focusing on The Rule. How do their numbers look? Are they meeting their goals in transactions per hour, errors per shift, sales per day or whatever your DM tracks? Are you getting actual customer complaints? Or are you borrowing trouble?
I have no idea. But this is an example of what I’m talking about. Cell phones may or may not be an actual problem. They’re definitely a problem for The Rules, but you have to do some detective work to find out if they’re a problem for the store. The fact that you yourself thought of it as “so highly touted” before you got a view of the details makes me wonder if maybe their “problems” are actually their successes.
If the company has a rule about cellphones, even though your store manager doesn’t care and your district manager doesn’t care, somebody at corporate made that rule for a reason and they damn well care.
Now you don’t want to become the whistleblower since that would probably get you flack from the SM and DM.
However, every fast food place I’ve ever visited has some type of customer hotline to voice complaints on. These go directly to corporate, corporate notifies DM about the problem, DM notifies SM, problem is expected to be fixed at that level and corporate doesn’t need to be involved. Unless the complaints continue.
Forcing corporate to take some action to figure out why the problem hasn’t been resolved.
I’d suggest having a friend or relative call the corporate hotline and voice a complaint along the lines of “I like your food, I eat there regularly, however whenever I go into store #555 the employees are on their cellphones and I find this unprofessional.”
If the DM and SM don’t fix the problem have your friend make a follow up call.
“Yes, I called about store #555 a week ago. Their behavior at that store hasn’t seemed to change. I really don’t like going there anymore.”
Let me assure you that THIS customer doesn’t like it one bit when an employee is on the phone or talking with co-workers when I am waiting for service (or during service). I might be really old-school on this, but I expect employees to pay attention to ME, the customer, when we are involved in the transaction. After I take my food to my table, I don’t care what they do.
I think this is an important point. Figure this out before deciding on a course of action.