As
he sat taking notes from a voicemail, RB heard a noise in the break room. When the voicemail was finished, RB went to
the break room to see who it was and what the commotion was about.
Matt
looked up from his work and greeted RB with a hearty, “Good morning, RB. How’s it going so far?”“No complaints so far.” Then RB thought a moment and said, “Well, I did have one complaining voicemail already. So that makes one complaint so far. What’s the occasion for this?”
“Can’t
a guy do something nice without people questioning his motives?”
“I’m
not questioning your motives. Just
making sure I didn’t miss a birthday or anniversary or something.”“Actually, this is a bit of a celebration. We dropped 4 days off our response time in the last 2 weeks. I think that deserves pancakes.”
“Well,
I’ll take a blueberry one when you get everything up and running.”
“No
chocolate?”
“No,
I got sick once as a kid eating chocolate pancakes. It was too sweet. Glad I didn’t throw up or it may have ruined
chocolate for me. That would have been
bad. You need any help?”
“No,
I just need the skillet to warm up and I’ll start cooking in about 30
minutes. I need to get my office going
now.”
“Thanks
boss!”
“Don’t
mention it.”
As
the two went to their offices, RB thought of how much he liked Matt. Even though he was the one who told RB he had
no choice in taking the job working executive correspondence without a pay increase,
RB had no hard feelings. Matt had always
been straight with him. This was a
contrast to some other managers or supervisors he had had.
Many
years ago, RB had a job in a warehouse.
The supervisor’s office had a window looking over the warehouse. RB’s supervisor would sit in the office
talking with someone on the phone. He
would lean back in the chair and put his feet on the desk. The man would talk for about an hour (the
rumor was it was with his girlfriend, not his wife) while watching the
activities in the warehouse. When his
call was finished, he would enter the warehouse and point out things he wanted
done. The man had a superior attitude
and it rubbed RB and his coworkers the wrong way.
Just
a few months later, there was a new manager.
Everyone was happy for the change.
How could anyone be worse than the last guy? The next guy was. In his own way, he was worse. He didn’t act superior. In contrast, he acted sheepishly while on the
job. This wasn’t such a bad thing but he
seemed totally ignorant as to what the purpose of his job was. Also, when he pitched in to help, which was a
pleasant change for the previous manager, he made mistakes.
One
company regularly brought shipments for Calgary and Edmonton, Canada. He knew which truck on which they were to be
loaded since there was only one that went that direction. However, when they also started shipping to
Montreal and Toronto, Canada, he continued to consign them to be loaded onto
the same truck. After this was caught
the third time, someone asked why he was using the truck going northwest. He replied they were going to Canada. When someone explained Montreal and Toronto
were east, he asked, “Well, it’s still Canada, isn’t it?” After a few tries of people correcting the
load manifests, it was decided to let one go and see if he would finally understand
his mistake. It didn’t help.
Matt
was a pleasant contrast. While he came
from a maintenance background in an area that was mostly men, he adapted to an
office that had mostly women. Also, he
made it a point to say he didn’t know the ins and outs of the jobs of people under
him and would let them do their job. He
expected them to do their best in their performance and wouldn’t accept
anything less.
RB
liked that about him Matt. It was fair
in his mind. Still, RB knew he would
never go to Matt with help about a complaint.
He would bounce thoughts off trusted coworkers.
No comments:
Post a Comment