I'm going to start this with a disclaimer- some parts of this story took place almost a year ago and most of it about 3 months ago, so my facts might be a little fuzzy! I've been sort of putting off telling it, just because the last thing I want in my life right now is reminders of all that stress.
OK, backstory time. Almost a year ago, I believe it was late April, my boss and I started having some... clashes. I could never figure out if it was my boss or the company, but he would always hound me on doing things and dealing with people exactly the way that he would. Apparently he felt I should stand and shake the customer's hand when greeting them. I'm sorry, but no one has ever stood to greet me, and whenever I did it, it was awkward. It just wasn't natural. And I don't touch strangers, that's just gross... I figured it was best to be myself because the customers always seemed to like it, he was the only person that seemed to have an issue with it. Apparently I should have just done it and shut up, because he wrote me up for it. I didn't even think it was possible to get written up for not standing and shaking a customer's hand, but you could. So yeah, that was the beginning to a very long and painful end. I just couldn't believe he didn't tell me before "hey, you really need to start doing this, because FYI- I'm supposed to write you up if you don't." No warning, no nothing, which I would have expected of him because we were friends at one point.
Fast forward to December: I've never been good at keeping my emotions in, and between April and the end of the year, he just kept nitpicking about the little things. My sales were pretty good, I wasn't habitually late, I didn't break any rules, I just didn't do things the way he wanted them. Which fascinated me because the place was falling apart around him, and he wanted to focus on my little booboos?? Right, that's responsible management. At the end of the day on the Friday before Christmas, I just lost it and told him how I was the only person with enough balls there to tell him I thought he sucked at his job and how much I despised my life working there. With as much emotion as I've ever shown. Luckily, he was on vacation the following week, so I had a week without him. I spent it wisely as I'd come to the conclusion that it was time to start seriously pursuing another job. I put in about 30 applications in that week and started laying the groundwork for my departure. I felt bad about my behavior, but this was the only way I could make it right because my hatred for my boss could not have been corrected. He was a douche, and I was not the only person who felt that way.
Skip to the first Monday he was back. I was dreading it, because I wasn't sure how the day would go seeing as it was the first day to work with him since my... outburst. We stayed out of each other's way the entire day, which was fine by me. At the end of the day, he brought the assistant manager over (who had my back anyway, we'd talked while he was gone, so his attempt at whatever was pretty useless) to serve me with a final write up. Basically a "you-screw-up-just-once-on-any-of-these-things-and-you'll-get-canned" notice. Now most employers require a first write up before a final write up. So he tied the previous write up from EIGHT months before into it just so he had justification to do so, even though it had nothing to do with the current situation. Disrespect, sure. Give me a brand new write up. Don't tie in a previous issue that isn't even part of the current situation. He also tied other things into it that had never been brought up before, so I was even more convinced he just wanted to get rid of me. I didn't really want to work with him anymore either, but he was the only one with the power to change that. Sure I could have quit, but need I remind you- I was trying to! I came home and wrote up my two weeks notice, as I was sure I was being set up to be fired. I wasn't about to lose 5 years of job history over being fired for some stupid, minute thing. So I gave it to him the next morning. Now let's pause for a second: a problem that I had with this man was that he didn't practice the 360 degree coaching the company clearly outlined. Basically a teller could "coach" the CEO on something that could be done better. Well he never practiced it. He claimed I didn't take coaching well, which wasn't entirely accurate. I worked at it and I had improved how I took coaching. He, on the other hand, deflected it with "coaching" of his own. He always had to have the upper hand. Which made me super unhappy with my job because the things I'd ask him to change were things that made my job almost unbearable, but he didn't care. Back to the story: when I handed him my two weeks notice, I told him he'd be well served to start listening to his employees better because they weren't happy, and I wasn't just talking about myself. I was nice about it this time, telling him that the branch would start performing where they should if the employees were happy, which they weren't. I was mostly looking out for my friends I was leaving behind at the shit hole. His response? Deflection. He said he'd received feedback from other associates, saying that they complained about how I took coaching too. I let it go, but in my head I was screaming Bullshit!!! Four of the employees had never coached me, one rarely did and we had an awesome mutual coaching relationship and the other and I never had problems either. So he was just lying for lack of a better "deflection" method. I just walked away.
On top of it, he knew I was leaving because of him and he announced the VERY next morning after my last day that he was transferring to another branch. Yeah, not to go all four year old on you, but... he did it on purpose. I don't think the transfer was his choice and I think the market team (his bosses) finally started listening to the fact that my branch really couldn't stand him.
Could I have done things differently? Sure. I learned a lot from the experience, see the post for December 29, 2010. I take full responsibility for my "outburst" but I feel that my boss could have actually looked after his employees a little better than he did. That place was a living hell for me, and he couldn't have cared less. He was almost malicious at times. He took pleasure in knowing his employees were miserable because he took already bad situations and made them worse and said we'd have to learn to deal with it. I even caught him smiling about it at times. He was a terrible supervisor, it was like giving a 16 year old boy a place to run and saying "do this however you want to." He'll get his one day, and I sure as hell don't want to be around when that happens, I just take comfort in knowing it will.
I really am better for this situation. I don't have a job, but I really don't need one. I'm focusing on school and my house and so far, things are looking pretty good. Regardless of my mistakes in the situation, I feel like I came out on top, because I really was the lesser of the evils, so to speak.
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