Weekend Kindness
Reaching Others Through Kindness

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It’s always difficult to train someone new.  First of all, they may or may not be aware of your culture.  The nomenclature is different, and sometimes you have a propensity to use big words or jargon that you have to define for the new person.

And then there’s training your future manager.

You see, as you probably cannot imagine, I’m a creative guy that sees things in the big picture and can organize activities to come to a logical end.  I like to think I’m a vision guy.

Micromanaging

So, part of the new boss’ training is to become a part of every team to see how work is carried out during that function.  That means that he’s with me and my crew a few times during the week, and that I must make sure he’s involved not just as a team member, but actually seeing the mechanics behind how I operate.

Fair enough.

The problem is that I’m constantly tweaking the formula.  I’m always looking for a way to get an edge, some way that I see time is wasted, and then improving it to make it better.

When my new boss takes charge, he starts implementing as required procedure some of my enhancements that may not be the right way of doing things.  And he tightens the clamps on some of the leeway I used to enjoy by actively directing the crew to do as he desires, rather than leaving it to us to figure out.

While that might work for a new team, it makes my experienced team chafe—or at least me.

Competition

And now the competition begins.  Since I’m not on every evening crew, the boss (with more authority than this student worker) begins to take advantage of his connections.  He’s able to direct the female workers (traditionally line servers) to do some of the things the male workers (traditionally line runners) and he starts mandating some things that I saw no reason to be mandated.

He started coming up with charts that had to be followed, and taking some of my shortcuts (which I believed were the equivalent of “trade secrets”) and making them mainstream.

I was losing my edge.

No One Was Happy

I wasn’t the only one that was having trouble with the new boss.  Many were.  It wasn’t that we had problems with him personally—it was his management style.  He was more intense than I was, if you can believe it, and he was not a team player, but a dictator.

And I had it worst because I felt I was part of the team that trained him.

Looking back, I’m probably part to blame, because watching the way that I worked probably gave him some inspiration on how he could do things as well.  Except I was part of the crew doing the work, I wasn’t sitting on the sidelines.

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