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Bored Panda got in touch with McCaffrey to learn more about the story behind his famous tweet. "I was a server in Anderson, Indiana for 4 months in 2003," he said. "Was I happy with it? No, haha, but I don't blame OG. It was a good server job in the area, the employees were very cool overall."
McCaffrey doesn't really remember what the real reason was that day, but he has a theory. "The TV department at Ball State's activity fair (called SuperParty) where people sign up for what shows they want to work on for the year. I was the host and EP of a late night talk show, and they wouldn't let me take the day off. I wasn't gonna miss it, so fake grandma had to have a bad day."
The main thing McCaffrey took away from all the replies his tweet got was that "management, in every job, is delusional."
"They demand far more than they're willing to give almost everywhere, and expect people who are clearly working survival jobs to bail on everything in their lives to deliver unlimited salad and breadsticks for 2.13 an hour and an average of about 10% tip," he said. "I also learned that there are plenty of people very mad that I lied in 2003 at the Anderson Indiana Olive Garden and missed that shift."
A study by CareerBuilder.com shows that a whopping 58 percent of managers said they didn’t receive any management training. Let that sink it. Most managers in the workforce were promoted because they were good at what they did, not because they made the people around them better. This statistic might explain their lack of competence. Our leaders aren't trained to lead.
Here's another interesting fact for you. Leigh Branham, author of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave revealed that 89 percent of bosses believe employees quit because they want more money. I bet any boss would love this statistic to be true (because it basically pardons them from wrong-doing) but it is simply not true. Only 12 percent of employees actually leave an organization for more money.
A Harvard Business Review survey revealed that only 49% of full-time workers responded that they had "a great deal of trust" in those working above and alongside them.
That becomes a bigger problem when you consider their other research which has found that positive teams that trust each other are more productive, creative, and resilient and improve the organization’s overall effectiveness.
Recognition is the number one thing employees say their manager could give them to elevate their job satisfaction to new heights. Sadly, as you can see from the tweets, not every boss gets it. Global studies prove that when it comes to inspiring people to be their best at work, nothing else comes close—not even higher pay, promotion, autonomy, or training.
Gallup discovered that one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name manager. However, its analytics suggest they usually get it wrong. In fact, Gallup found that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time.
Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units, and this variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement. Gallup reported in two large-scale studies in 2012 that only 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and a staggeringly low 13% worldwide are engaged.
If only they listened more.