From past posts, you know that I served as an Assistant Store Manager at Walmart for a number of years, so from that you might guess the number of conflicts I've encountered are innumerable. And you'd be right! But I'm not going to tell you about the daily conflicts I had with customers about not validating returns or associates that were upset by the instruction I gave them. Instead, I will describe a conflict that ran much deeper and over a longer period of time. And, as you might have guessed from the title, one I didn't know existed until after I tried to reprimand an associate for his actions.
The Background
To set the scene, so-to-speak, you should know I ran the night shift at the Champaign store where I successfully changed work performance of associates by improving shelf stocking accuracy and speed, in turn, directly impacted the sales to reflect the increased attention to detail. As a result of this success, the Market Manager requested that I be transferred to the Urbana store. The store experienced significant sales declines over the previous three quarters and managed more inventory than we housed at the Champaign store; a store that sells four times the amount of product. When I arrived, I took time to determine the problems by observing tendencies of associates and performing private follow-up evaluations of their work. The responsibilities of the overnight manager are extensive and his/her knowledge must be equally as extensive because s/he must oversee every area of operation, from maintenance to stocking to checkout procedures. I took these responsibilities very seriously and noted that maintenance concerned me more than anything else in the store. More often than not, daily tasks went incomplete without punishment, and the maintenance associates consistently distracted the folks responsible for stocking the shelves. While I did not perform teach/train moments like I did with stocking associates, I typically gave them goals and expressed my disappointment when they went unfulfilled. Looking back, I realize now, the lack of teaching/training brought me to the conflict.
What was the conflict?
The two maintenance associates, we'll call them Joe and Lucy, worked side-by-side, day in and day out. They talked while they slowly pushed brooms, they stopped to talk to stockers, they even stopped to watch TV, and worst of all, they were negative Nancys. Shelf-stockers were constantly influenced by Joe and Lucy, always being told that it didn't matter what we did, we'd still get in trouble, and that I was a terrible manager because I was too young to know anything. Reflecting now, I don't take offense to that, because I was young, I didn't know everything, but I worked darn hard to learn as much as I could (and I was a manager, while he continued to push a broom around). I tried repeatedly to make Joe and Lucy understand the importance of everyone's jobs and the reasons we needed to put our best foot forward. When I would have such discussions, I received little to no response, so I assumed they heard me and yet I still observed no improved performance.
Finally, one day, a shelf-stocker (call him Eric) came to me and told me that he observed Joe and Lucy standing in Pharmacy talking to another shelf-stocker. He indicated the topic of conversation was my managerial ability and style and from the sound of it, they were unpleased and trying to convince the stocker to think the same way. In an effort to halt the poor attitude and attempt to stop it from spreading, I pulled Joe and Lucy in to the office (separately, due to Walmart policy) with one of my support staff managers. During the conversation I explained to each Joe and Lucy, that I had information that they had been disrespectful and trying to undermine my authority. Lucy seemed extremely receptive to the conversation (I was visibly upset and strongly encouraged her to communicate her understanding with me). The conversation ended very cordially and I felt I achieved my goal. Then I pulled Joe in to the office, and that's when it happened. For the first time, Joe responded to my frustration with his performance, but not how I had hoped. Joe used a wide variety of "colorful" language that I will refrain from posting. The long and short--clearly he had been upset with me and the general operations of the store for a very long time (it turns out the length of time directly correlates with the beginning of a new female store manager). During the course of all of my interactions with him, he never once communicated his disapproval of my actions or managerial style, but during this conversation, he seemed to blurt out all of the pent-up frustrations. Because it was pent-up anger he was very disrespectful, spoke erratically and with unclear thoughts filled with angry emotions. In the end his disrespect in the meeting earned him a formal write up. I intended to resolve the problem by discussing with him, my disapproval of his actions as I had done in the past, but because he never spoke his concerns in the past, he couldn't control his emotions. Naturally, the formal write-up only made him more angry and I took the heat of several nasty threats.
What next...
Coincidentally, the Store Manager determined I fixed the problems in her overnight crew, shortly thereafter, and I was moved to the day shift to correct issues happening there. This occurred only two weeks after the "blow up" and I was thrilled to be rid of the responsibility for Joe. He never once spoke to me again, I tried to say "hi" when I arrived in the mornings, and was greeted with a cold stare. Fortunately, I grew extremely thick skin while working for Walmart and reactions like this fail to affect me the way the delivery is meant.
What could've been different?
There are many things that could have gone differently, most notably: Joe should have voiced his concern during the multiple opportunities I gave him throughout our working together. I think I could have been more "in tune" with his feelings in order to understand that he felt this way and was very upset, but I think that would've been far beyond my formal training in psychology, which is nil. If I had known he was going to be so angry, I could have met with him and Lucy on the floor in a more informal fashion to decrease the chances of him becoming so vulgar. I think the biggest problem though, was that he was purely unhappy with his job, and there were, more-than-likely, personal problems happening which I was blithely unaware of. Overall, communication would have done each of us a huge favor in reducing the level of stress we created for each other.
Before getting to your post, you had a phrase, "they were negative Nancys." I didn't know what that meant. If you could explain that it would help.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of your story, I'm afraid is all too typical. People with poor attitudes who shirk a fair amount at work get little supervision and their attitudes harden. They end up poisoning the work environment. It is unclear to me whether you could have done anything with Joe had you identified the issues earlier, but if that was even remotely possible then you might want to consider the following. As a young manager, you probably want to go into a talk with an employee like Joe having your ducks in order. But if you wait in doing this, the situation worsens in the interim. So while there are risks either way, and earlier one-on-one with Joe and with Lucy too might have been warranted. Indeed having such one-on-ones with your stockers might also have been appropriate. Of course, I don't know if this runs afoul of company policy so I will assume here it doesn't. The goal is to set expectations clearly. You can try to do that in a group meeting. But you can't really get at whether you are getting buy in until you have a one-on-one conversation and see how the person responds.
The message here is that when things are heading south you need to reverse course as soon as possible. You can't always do that, but you can try. A younger manager might not be willing to take that sort of personal risk. It is understandable, but it is probably an error.
On the other hand, there are situations that can't be solved and one needs to recognize that as well. Things are just too far gone. In this case you need to discuss it with your supervisor to see if her diagnosis concurs with yours.
Sorry...Negative Nacys is the term I use for people with poor attitudes. They typically have nothing nice to say. Like Debbie Downer from SNL.
DeleteI'm most certain the attitude was a pre-existing condition. Most of the folks that worked for me were happy (maybe sometimes too happy) working with me because I always did my fair share of the work, even as a manager. I was never one to bark orders or ask something be done I wasn't willing to do. There were many times I even tried to work with Joe on maintenance; I cleaned the bathrooms while he cleaned the floors. It was discouraging to me that I continued to put effort forth in the "relationship" and seemed to get nothing in return. Company policy is very interesting at Walmart. They encouraged "coaching by walking around" which was their way of allowing us to have one-on-one conversations with our employees without a witness. They said that being on the salesfloor was fair game for "coaching our associates." At the same time, they use a system called "coaching" which requires a verbal and two written "coachings" before an employee is terminated. I was not one to terminate my employees (unless they stopped showing up for work) so I tended to have more verbal, undocumented "coachings" and I felt my tactics produced much better associates. Despite this one bad apple, my associates were very loyal to me and I maintained the lowest turnover rates and highest sales in my departments on a consistent basis. It was frustrating to have this one associate that I just couldn't harness in. He was let go about two months after I left the shift.