Losing a member of the Crew

   Monday, August 2nd

    My work crew (aka parts group) got thrown for a loop Monday. Our boss came in and put in his 2-weeks notice. Now, while I’m not overly surprised, it was definitely a shock. Now, let me tell you, I have a fantastic boss. He’s kind, attentive and protective over our crew. There are only 4 of us including him and we are a tight-knit group. We work together like a well-oiled machine. None of us get in trouble very often because we know how to do our jobs & our boss lets us do our jobs without micro-managing us. We all have our own personalities and work styles, and yet each one of us compliments the other. Every morning, as my boss comes through the door and past the parts counter, he says "Good morning kids". This is because we are a family here and he's been the figurative "father" as the manager of our crew.

    There has been a lot going on in my company the past 2 years and while I don’t agree with a lot of it, the worst part was last year, during the height of the pandemic, they told us to do more with less. Then they cut our hours, just the hourly employees though, not salaried people like managers. This resulted in a lot of the locations losing people who really couldn’t live on 32 hours a week. This being said, the business never slowed down. As an “essential” business, we never got any downtime. No days closed. No outbreaks of that stupid virus. Nada. Just fewer hours, less in our paychecks, and still having to show up 5 days a week. 

    My boss did his best to shield us from a lot of the junk coming at us from corporate, but there’s only so much he could do. I am going to miss my boss. He’s been a good mentor and manager.

    About once every couple of months, we would meet outside of work to have a drink, discuss work, and just relax while we talk about life. Sometimes these meetings were just us complaining and airing out our grievances about work. Sometimes we didn't even talk about work. 

Not the best pic of all of us, but it's all I've got!

    While our team won't ever be the same now that he's gone. He will never be forgotten. As a boss, he killed it. It would be hard to ask for more from someone and it'll be dang hard to replace him with someone half a good.

Processing It All

I can run the emotional gambit pretty quickly when it comes to processing grief.

Shock.

Denial.

Anger.

Acceptance.

Guilt.

Reflection & Depression.

    Monday, was all about shock. I was shocked that J decided to leave us, as well as I felt some guilt thrown in there for harboring bad feelings towards him for not talking to us about it first instead of turning in his notice & then telling us. I mean, I get why he did it that way, but I'm still irate about it. I don't hate him. That's not who I am, but I was shocked and a little hurt. This is normal.

Tuesday, August 3rd

    Tuesday, I am just angry. I'm angry about the way this happened. I'm angry at the company for enacting such stupid rules. I'm angry at everybody. I'm just angry.

    Walking into work on Tuesday morning, I could already tell that it's going to be a rough day. The GM looks grumpy, my cohort D is grumbling at his screen....this is what we deal with on a daily basis. No-one is really happy about any of the changes that the company is going through. This is mostly to blame on the corporate big-wigs. There's such low communication from them on what is coming, what to expect, what is going to be expected of us. They just throw new rules and policies at us, expect us to have time to read and understand it all, and then gripe at us if we ask any questions or push back on the "stupid". I call this stuff stupid because some of it really doesn't make any sense. It adds steps to processes that don't need micro-managing. These have been the biggest offenses lately. They are also adding KPIs (Key Point Indicators). Basically, these are reports that they are going to be looking at to see if we are selling as many parts as we should. Not gross profit or gross margins, lines per hour. Yep, that's right, they are measuring us like they do the cashiers at Wal-Mart. So basically, I can get a better score if I sell the 4 parts needed for a small generator service twice an hour than if I sell 1 overhaul a day, despite the MASSIVE profit difference. This pisses me off.

Wednesday, August 4th

    Wednesday I was still angry. A little more so, since management basically said to my boss "no need to work out your notice". I presume it was something like that anyway, I can't be sure. After that, the rest of our crew (all 3 of us) were called into a meeting with our GM, DM & RM. They sang us a line & did a pony dance about being here for us as we transition. That's a bunch of malarky, but whatever. We already know how to do our jobs, lucky for them.

    While we make this transition to working without a direct supervisor, I can't help but think about some of the other branches that have gone through similar changes in the last 18+ months. My heart goes out to them, just as it does to my boss & his wife. Change is hard sometimes, especially when it's not wanted. 

Can you hear me now?

    This is the communication age with multiple social media platforms, but how often do you actually connect with people? Sure, you might be connected online, but have you talked to any of those connections? Or did you just jab a "like" on a post and scroll on by? In this age of social media connection without actually connecting to each other, how connected are we really?

    In my experience this year with online schooling, people aren't actually willing to connect with each other and have a conversation. What's that all about? Is everyone so vain that they just want those likes and shares?

    Where is all of this vanity and lack of physical connection coming from? It is stemming from lots of places, but most commonly, I hear people say that their parents let them spend too much time online, watching TV, playing video games, etc. Most of these people don't even realize that this is what has caused such a disconnect in their lives. What they do say is actually very little. I've asked dozens of 18-30 y/o's and they all did say that their parents both worked all the time. They spent hours alone before and after school. Many had parents that worked more than 1 job, meaning they were alone as kids/teens on the weekends too. With no one at home to teach them how to interact with others, this younger generation has been crippled into being so independent that they won't even look up from their phones to talk to each other. This solidarity and "hermit"-like behavior is not good for people, nor the overall economy.

    On top of over-worked parents, how many parents do you know that willingly, and often, hand an iPad or phone to a child (sometimes as young as 2 years old) just to keep them quiet? This has become so commonplace, to placate your child until they are quiet, instead of taking the time to interact with them. Sitting them down in front of a TV, video game, or iPad just so that you can have some quiet time. Once in a while isn't so bad, it's the everyday occurrences of this that are the root cause of the problem.

For example:

     I conducted a social media experiment using my own profile on the book-of-faces. I went into all of the groups that I am a part of and posed a question to the entire group. Some of the groups I got answers to my questions, some got no answers at all. Of the posts that got no answers, I had at minimum 50+ "likes" or "following" comments on each of my posts, but no actual answer or attempted answer to my question.

    In the group posts that did receive answers, almost all of the substantial answers came from users that range in age from 35-75 y/o. These answers not only provided exact names of products they were recommending but also links to those items. Most importantly they were answers that included information about why that particular user likes that particular product. There were a few short answers to those questions from the under 35 crowd, but there was no substance to those answers.

    To expand on the lack of substantial information: One of my questions was "Does anyone have a recommendation on a daily planner with moveable pages?". The few answers I got from the under 35 age group were quite literally just a link to an Amazon sold product with no information about the product in their own words. 4 of those links were within the top 10 when you search on Amazon for "customizable day planner".

    The younger generation's lack of ability to communicate with others face to face is astounding. I'm not saying that the entire generation is handicapped, but there are far more people under 30 that don't know how to conduct themselves in an interview, much less how to properly speak. How do you kids expect to get a job if you can't even use the most basic communication skill? And it's not just speech either, there's body language, facial expressions, and your perceived presence.