They say that managers and bosses are paid, unlike ordinary employees, not for their skills, but for the decisions they make. Well, or for the decisions they don't make - after all, sometimes just waiting for everything to resolve itself is an absolutely invaluable skill. But sometimes the decisions of some managers are such that you don't need to pay for them, but perhaps take money...
Today, we’ll tell you a story from the user u/PetalHoneyBabe, who once had to deal with a typical manifestation of power play on the part of a supervisor. With a decision that, as it sometimes happens, brought nothing but problems to the whole work process. However, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.
More info: Reddit
The author of the post once worked at a retail store and had to scan the goods to enter everything into the CRM system
Image credits: Wavebreak Media / Freepik (not the actual photo)
They usually scanned the whole box of identical goods, but one day the supervisor came up with an idea to scan each item separately
Image credits: PetalHoneyBabe
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The manager didn't want to hear any objections and just said it was an order
Image credits: PetalHoneyBabe
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The second day, the whole workflow got stalled because of the huge number of items that needed to be scanned
Image credits: PetalHoneyBabe
The manager was fuming, so he had to backpedal and quit his own new rule in writing
So, the Original Poster (OP) says that they once worked at a big-box retail store, where the management was often dissatisfied with the staff's productivity and liked to make new, unexpected decisions to boost this productivity somehow. So this new rule directly affected the author's work.
Usually, if they came across identical products in large boxes, they would scan the entire box, and the system would correctly identify the product and the number of items in the pack. But now the manager came up with the idea that the author would have to scan each item separately. His reason? Inventory accuracy.
On the first day, the new rule worked pretty nicely, but on the second day, the original poster came across a pallet of canned corn, with 96 cans in 4 large cases. Usually, scanning and processing such a load took the OP about 10 minutes, but now they had to take out each can, scan it separately, and put it on the shelf. As a result, 10 minutes turned into 40.
The original poster did the same all day, and as a result, the backroom was a disaster already by lunchtime. The work of the entire store was stalled - because even employees from other departments were forced to come to the author's aid. When the boss came to sort it out, he was fuming. But the OP had simply followed his instructions exactly, so the higher-up had to cancel his own order in writing.
Image credits: Tiger Lily / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Well, on the one hand, the manager's decision in the described situation did have a rational component. It is widely believed that scanning each individual item from a large box is preferable to scanning the entire package, or scanning one item and then entering the number of similar items.
This actually avoids errors in the system, deters theft, and generally really improves inventory accuracy. On the other hand, if you make a technically correct decision that probably threatens to stall the store’s workflow, perhaps you should increase the number of employees who will be engaged in scanning, right?
People in the comments also massively supported the original poster, but their supervisor, on the contrary, received very unflattering comments from them. Someone wrote that the boss simply looked like ‘a heavy control freak,’ while another person openly stated that such a half-hearted decision was most likely just stupid.
By the way, judging by the stories of responders, such decisions on the part of the management, accompanied by an unbending will in promoting these decisions, are far from uncommon. Both in production and in trade, and in the office. “The ‘L’ in ‘Management’ stands for ‘Leadership’,” someone commented wittily (and wisely). By the way, have you, our dear readers, ever encountered such situations at work as well?
Many commenters supported the author and agreed that the higher-up acted quite unreasonably here
