Im a manager at a wholesale retail we get two dry trucks a night and 1 perishable about 50 pallets each. We have a guy whose whole job is the backroom. Trucks only, no aisles, no projects. He keeps saying the truck is too much and that everybody should be putting it up. Problem is I hold my floor guys accountable for their own aisles. Every time I pull them to put up the whole truck I'm kicking myself, because now they have an excuse for why their aisle isn't done and I can't really say anything about it. So my rule is first truck all hands, second truck is his. When I've covered that spot myself it's about 2.5 hours start to finish, tags, unload, put up.
He went over my head and told my boss there's no support from management. Is one 50 pallet truck a night too much for one person, or is that normal at your stores? And how do you handle it when someone escalates over you on something like this?

Hello,

When I got promoted from IC to manager of 2 teams, 2 directs reports and 12 IC below them, I got a 34% salary increase.
I was quite happy as the company matched my request without discussion.

After getting promoted I addressed various long lasting issues that helped increasing morale, increased our revenue and profit. My boss and all the stakeholders feedbacks are absolutely positive and it completely changed how my team are perceived. They used to be the complicated child, now they are seen as cooperative and knowledgeable.

My contract stipulated that my salary could be reviewed after 6 months. After 4 months my boss told me it would be reviewed immediately. However the ajustement is only +3%. To be honest after demonstrating my skills like I did, I feel 3% to be quite low.
Since I am a internal candidate, I know my comp is slightly lower than external candidates. I estimate the other managers (both external without prior management experience) to be paid 5-10% more than me. I don’t mind having people better paid than me, but their performance is far from being stellar.

Now, I am building my case for asking a minimum of 5% adjustments. But I feel like I may be pushing my luck too much.

I am delusional or do you feel a post promotion salary revision can also be within the 10% if the manager is showing an exceptional behavior and results?

Thanks for sharing your opinions. I am really wondering and maybe I need a hard and cold reality check.

For me it was "always have an open door policy." Sounded great in theory, but in practice it meant getting interrupted constantly with things that could've waited, and I never had focused time to actually do deep work or prep for the bigger conversations that mattered.

Switched to specific office hours instead, still accessible, but people save up questions instead of interrupting every 20 minutes, and honestly the quality of those conversations went up too since people come with actual thought-out questions instead of knee-jerk ones.

Curious what advice you followed early on that eventually backfired or just didn't work the way it was supposed to. Feels like a lot of "classic" management wisdom doesn't hold up once you actually try it day to day.

Here is my situation. I'm working as a Manager with a growing company with about 300 people. I was hired to find existing issues in the company and provide solutions since I was working for a company of 5000+ people and they needed a new eye on the current situation.

Right now the company's structure is client-based and after a few months of research, collecting data and analysis I made a presentation to direction, in this case the Managing director who is the business owner and the director of operations who has been there for 12 years. I showcased exactly how the company is losing a ton and I kid you not, a ton of money by not correctly organizing resources. The solution consists of reorganizing the company by departments rather than being client based, effectively optimizing the work distribution with the existing resources and workforce.

The managing director loved it and told me to start putting it in place. Everything is prepared for the roll out which will be about 6-8 months based on the current activity so as to not disturb the operation. However on the other side I got a meeting with the operations director who is saying that this is a bad idea and I should not focus on it. Instead I should focus on finding immediate solutions to the existing structure to which I explained that these solutions are already being worked on as they would be in parallel to the new restructuring.

Despite all my explanations, he still disagreed with the idea saying I wasn't hired for that etc. Later that day the MD asked me if things are advancing on that restructuring project.

My question is, how do I deal with the conflicting instructions from them? I mean the owner is still the owner but the other person has been there for 12 years and me just 7 months.

We'll be mixing people from different teams and specialisms, and the aim is to:
Build stronger relationships across teams
Better understand each other's roles and challenges
Encourage new connections and collaboration
Create a shared sense of purpose
Leave with practical actions, not just conversations
We'd also like people to reflect on:
What they want to get from the day
What success would look like by the end of it
How they can work more effectively across the Directorate
Has anyone run a successful leadership team-building day? What activities, icebreakers, or challenges worked particularly well for senior leaders?

I recently wrote a post asking for feedback on an interview process we’re working to improve. One section focused on asking questions to determine whether a candidate would align with our company culture.

What interested me most was the response to that specific topic. Several people said that “cultural fit” is often used to hide personal bias; or, frankly, as a convenient way to describe someone an interviewer or leader simply doesn’t like.

That made me want to explore the subject more deeply.

Do you believe culture is genuinely important to a company’s success, or is it often used to disguise bias and personal preference?

Have you ever worked for a company where the culture was clearly defined, consistently modeled, and supported at every level? If so, what made it feel real rather than just words on a wall?

Hi all,

I’ve recently been promoted to manage a small and new team within the business. I’ve never been a manager before in a corporate setting.
Our general workload is helping other business units throughout the UK with project bids and tenders.

Autumn is a strangely quiet time for us, I know there will be work in the coming weeks but during the weeks where no new projects come in, I don’t really know what to provide for my team. Especially my apprentice, who is still in his first year so I don’t feel like I can just throw him into doing menial jobs by himself just yet, he’s still in the learning phase of our methods of working.

I’ve made sure they’re caught up with training, our file systems are still new so there’s not a huge amount to organise, we’ve gone through all the previous projects and talked about how to improve our outputs (we help with providing CAD based solutions for other teams).

I think any advice from managers who have been through this sort of thing would be great. Thank you!

I have a team member who **loves** to talk. he’s currently my only report for a small side project so the project meetings are 1-on-1s. Every single project meeting he tries to turn into a chat about his private life like vacation plans etc.

I eventually have to cut him off and redirect the conversation to the actual project plans but at the same time I cannot be overly rude. it’s a challenge.

He‘s also quite inefficient and easily gets sidetracked or stuck with small problems that are easy to solve.

If I entertain his chattiness then he’s happy but he’s not getting stuff done. If I try to pin him down on a deadline he starts bringing up excuses on why he has to delay.

Fellow managers, do you have any tips for managing someone like that?

For managers covering multiple locations, how do you handle last-minute open shifts? We can post the ask in a group chat, get a few thumbs-up, and still not know who actually took it.

Curious what works for others: one channel, a spreadsheet, a formal on-call rotation, or something else? And who owns updating the schedule once someone says yes?

You guys were very helpful with my 1:1’s post so now I have another question.

For context, I manage a full office, where 15 team members are my direct reports. (My leadership is based out of our head office which isn’t local, so it’s all me here). The issue is I also work with doctors and I am not their supervisor so I have no authority over them in terms of disciplinary measures.

One of my doctors is extremely argumentative in meetings. Now, there is a difference between constructive or a healthy discussion, and what I’m describing.

A recent example is I had brought up a suggestion for a more accurate way to record communications in a patients file. She immediately, before I finished my sentence, interjected with “how am I supposed to remember that?” I had gently explained it’ll take practice but I think my suggestion will really help the inconsistency we’ve been experiencing but I was open to other ideas. She didn’t have any other to offer, just kept telling me my idea wasn’t going to work, and how even if she does it other people won’t.

I will also bring up general reminders that truly are not directed at anyone and she’ll say things like “who’s doing that? I don’t do that,” or “are you talking to me? I always follow that policy”.

I’m almost never speaking directly to her. And if I was, she’d know it.

I can see her shake her head, roll her eyes, or she sighs extremely loudly. Last week she got up ten minutes before we were done, announced “I have an appointment” and ran out the door.

I don’t expect everyone to give input. Some of the staff is quiet, and some genuinely have great ideas or present issues I hadn’t thought about. This one particular woman is so disrespectful during these meetings, and I can’t do anything about it.

I am not great at leading meetings and I’m trying to build my confidence. How do I hold my ground on this? She also does not read the minutes (I use Google Docs so I can see who views the file), yet when I ask for suggestions she sends me a fully written agenda of her own issues (never ideas, just complaints like the clock in the waiting room was seven minutes slow on Tuesday).

It is exhausting and I need help redirecting the energy and having an actual productive meeting. I wish I could tell the doctors not to come but then she’d complain she has no idea what’s going on, and I genuinely appreciate the other docs perspective on things. Help.

Hey everyone, I posted recently looking for advice on moving into a management role, and things actually escalated a lot faster than I expected. My boss recently approached me and wants me to step away from my current position to go off and run one of his other businesses that isn't being managed to his liking as the general manager.

For some context, my background is a mix of tech and heavy civil construction. Lately, I've been pulled into the office to focus on the operational side of our current company. I've basically been leveraging my tech background to move our business off of paper and cell phones by identifying new software, handling the implementation, and training the staff. I also spend my time refining our company-wide workflows, writing SOPs, and building out RACI matrices to identify process gaps and redefine job descriptions.

I feel really confident in my ability to fix broken workflows and optimize operations, but stepping into a GM seat where I'll be owning the entire business strategy is completely new territory for me. I'm currently reading the book 'The First 90 Days' to try and prep for this transition and get my head right, but I'd love to get some real-world advice from folks who have made this leap.

I'm curious what kind of blind spots I should be watching out for. I'd also love to know how you guys actually structured your first 30, 60, and 90 days when taking over an existing business, and if there are any harsh realities of being a GM that the books don't really prepare you for.

Any insights or hard-learned lessons would be hugely appreciated!

What keeps you going?

My whole team has 7 distinct categories our tasks fall into and we are all super on board with tracking time as data collection for future workload management.

I do think the entry needs to be easy with a specific UI in order to make it effective. I want them to log their time either by task as they go, or once a day and I don't want them getting bogged down by making their timesheet add up. I just want an entry form that allows them to fill the following and hit submit:

Date - Category (dropdown) - Hours - Minutes - Description

Examples:

9/7 - Marketing - 0 - 30 - participated in a reel with social team
9/7 - Admin - 0 - 45 - mileage reports for August
9/7 - Internal Meeting - 1 - 30 - All team meeting
9/7 - Client Planning - 3 - 45 - worked on X planning deliverables for Y client
9/7 - Client Planning - 1 - 15 - call with Z client

This is exactly the level of info I need, just a rough break down. The main reason I want it to be an entry form and not a basic sheet is because they are all kind of perfectionists who I think will overthink this and turn it into a bigger task than it needs to be. I'm hoping to set up a slack prompt to remind them 1-2 times a day to log their time and it aggregates somewhere they can review, while everyone's data lands somewhere for me.

A google form is not really doing it for me, and my spreadsheet skills are kind of rusty. If a google sheet is the best tool for this I can probably make it work, but I'm wondering if y'all have ideas?

So for the past three weeks, I moved up to management and a manager dropped down to sales assistant, but this sales assistant still thinks she is a manager and keeps doing all the manager Work and I’m stuck doing the sales assistant Work. To some people might think this is great having a higher pay and doing less work but it’s not because I have no clue what’s actually going on with management or HR cause I’ve received practically little to no training. I come into work and I’m stuck doing all the sales assist Work while this one girl is stuck in the office doing calls emails etc. She’s doing stuff that I’m supposed to be doing now. I have no issue with her helping out for instance if there’s a day where there’s no management at all of course she can help out with emails etc but if I’m there, she shouldn’t be doing that.

I understand that this girl is more trained than me and I barely understand what’s going on, but that’s why I need to be trained so I can continue doing management and not her and she can continue doing her sales assistant Work. Every day that I come into work it’s just her and my head manager doing management work and I’m just stuck packing shelves like a sales assistant the reason why I moved up to management was not because of higher pay but it was because of getting the experience so I then can move on and find a job in a different place with that experience. For instance, I’ve been begging my head manager to hire staff for three weeks she kept telling me that she wanted to wait for a day that me her and this girl we’re all in Work together so she could go through the hiring. I didn’t understand this because this girl is not part of management anymore so there is no need to wait for her to be there but I agree agreed anyway. I then come into Work to say that the hiring has already been done by my head manager and this girl. And I was very pissed about this as I wanted to be part of it since I’m a manager now.

This is not me on a power trip or just wanting to be in charge or anything like that, it’s me just not having a clue what is going on with management or HR because my head manager and this girl just keep doing everything and I’m just lost. If someone from HR was to call me right now and talk to me about something, I would not have a clue what to say back to them because I have no clue what is actually going on. It’s like I was just there to fill the space of a manager. So is my job now as a “ manager” to just keep on packing shelves like I was before but now if anything is wrong with the workplace, it just falls back on me. I would’ve rather just stay as a sales assistant in packing my shelves without having to worry about staff and stuff like that.

’ve been with the same organizations for 13 years.  We have nine regional offices spread across the state.  My position is unionized and we have a strong union.

My boss announced his retirement in the spring, so I applied and was the only candidate given an interview.  The pay bump was approx 25k (it brought me from 186k to 210k).  We also have a pension system and I can retire in 10 years with 1/2 of my final salary.  

The job has 12 reports in one office.  Two years ago, the boss in another regional office retired and management made my boss the head of that office as well.  Since had leverage where he could’ve retired, management gave him an extra 25k to do the job.  I asked for this money but they refused when they offered me the job.  This office comes with 8 additional reports and has a completely different culture than the first office.  While I have no set schedule to be in one or the other, my prior boss balanced 2 days in one and 3 in the other.  My first office is 30 minutes from my home, and this one is 55.  I’m the only of the 8 other directors at my level with two different offices.  They each run different conferences, have different staff meetings, etc. so it really is like doing the same work twice.

After a long three month transition where we shared the job, I took over formally two weeks ago.  I began to feel funny during the transition, like this was not the role for me.  I was very independent and never needed my boss in the prior role, and then I realized how much my colleagues relied on him.  Additionally, there is the usual HR nonsense and drama to deal with.  

Here is the catch: under my old union contract, I have the opportunity to return to my old position within 12 months if an opening exists.  Lo and behold, someone in my original office has announced his irrevocable notice to retire in January.  They will likely post for his position by November 1, so I will have one window to return.  After that, it closes for good. I would return to my old salary, benefits, etc. It would be a 30k cut.

I’m trying to outweigh pros and cons.  Right now, the only pro is the extra 30k.  It an extra $500 a paycheck.  I met with my financial planner and while it’s always nice to have more, this isn’t life changing or necessary to pay the bills. 

The new role has really caused me to rethink my purpose and ambition altogether (I am also 46 and my oldest is becoming a HS senior, so lots of transition!).  I don’t have ambition to climb the organizational ladder.  I applied for this job because it seemed to be a natural progression.  Now, I wonder if my purpose and ambition can be spend doing other things (I am heavily involved in volunteering for my kids’ activities).

The organization seems to believe in me and there are no red flags about losing my position.  However, the mental drain of having two separate offices really weighs on me, along with being a manager.  In my prior role, I was able to essentially create my own schedule. In this new role, I still have significant autonomy but I will beholden to my reports because I need to be there.  But, I can’t be in two places at once and I feel like a 1/2 time director in two locations right now.  My prior boss did it for 2 years because he knew he was retiring and I can tell from the culture in the second office that he let things go pretty badly.

Right now, my heart is set on having the uncomfortable convo with my boss at the end of October about going back.  However, I work hard and I need to push forward as if I am here.  I would likely stay for the next 10 years in this job if I had to, but I can tell I would be miserable. 

I’m looking for some guidance, feedback, advice, etc. and appreciate anything you can offer! Under my old union contract, I have the opportunity to return to my old position within 12 months if an opening exists.  Lo and behold, someone in my original office has announced his irrevocable notice to retire in January.  They will likely post for his position by November 1, so I will have one window to return.  After that, it closes for good.

I’m trying to outweigh pros and cons.  Right now, the only pro is the extra 30k.  It an extra $500 a paycheck.  I met with my financial planner and while it’s always nice to have more, this isn’t life changing or necessary to pay the bills. 

The new role has really caused me to rethink my purpose and ambition altogether (I am also 46 and my oldest is becoming a HS senior, so lots of transition!).  I don’t have ambition to climb the organizational ladder.  I applied for this job because it seemed to be a natural progression.  Now, I wonder if my purpose and ambition can be spend doing other things (I am heavily involved in volunteering for my kids’ activities).

The organization seems to believe in me and there are no red flags about losing my position.  However, the mental drain of having two separate offices really weighs on me, along with being a manager.  In my prior role, I was able to essentially create my own schedule. In this new role, I still have significant autonomy but I will beholden to my reports because I need to be there.  But, I can’t be in two places at once and I feel like a 1/2 time director in two locations right now.  My prior boss did it for 2 years because he knew he was retiring and I can tell from the culture in the second office that he let things go pretty badly.

Right now, my heart is set on having the uncomfortable convo with my boss at the end of October about going back.  However, I work hard and I need to push forward as if I am here.  I would likely stay for the next 10 years in this job if I had to, but I can tell I would be miserable. 

I’m looking for some guidance, feedback, advice, etc. and appreciate anything you can offer!

I’m early 20s M and recently finished an internship at a large law firm in TX. My direct manager was almost 30, and there was another male intern around my age.

My manager has a pretty intense personality. She’s very outgoing, competitive, unfiltered, loves gossip/relationship talk, openly says she likes attention.

Early in the internship she was unusually warm with me. She initiated chats, asked what my dating “type” was, asked whether I was a fuckboy, commented fairly often on my hair/clothes/smell/appearance, and asked questions about my dating life.

One of the weirdest examples: at an event, an attractive woman from another department happened to be sitting beside me. The next day my manager told me she had actually looked the woman up because she wanted to know who was sitting beside me, and then asked whether I found her attractive.

She also repeatedly (10-15 times) told me stories about guys hitting on her or asking for her number that were from the same-ish ethnic group. In group conversations she would occasionally describe the type of guy she was into in a way that basically matched my physical build, while I was sitting there.

She also seemed to expect little forms of special treatment from me: holding doors, hyping her up during games, bringing her snacks, etc. Once she asked whether I would have shared something with her the way the other intern had, and I jokingly said no.

The thing is, I was actually very nice to her professionally and personally. I brought her snacks/drinks sometimes, checked in when she wasn’t feeling well, offered help, complimented her work, invited her to socials, etc.

I was also very competitive and generally strong at the work. A few times I respectfully pointed out mistakes or disagreed with her on technical things, and turned out to be right. I always tried to do it politely, but given how competitive she was, I sometimes wondered whether that created some ego or status friction between us.

I was guarded around the personal/dating stuff because she was my manager. When she told me about guys hitting on her, I often just went quiet or responded neutrally. I also made comments about my own dating preferences that, in hindsight, may have made it sound like she wasn’t my type.

At one point she directly asked me, “Why are you so serious?” That confused me because she already knew I was very social and joking with everyone else. Near the end she also joked that it was my last day so I might as well finally “open up.”

After the first part of the internship, her behavior toward me changed a lot. She stopped initiating nearly as much and became much closer with the other male intern.

He was extremely quiet, introverted, and rarely approached her himself. She was also noticeably taller than him, although I don’t think that necessarily mattered. She would constantly seek him out, lead the conversations, show him photos/reels, talk about relationships, gossip and weekends, call him cute, make heart signs, and ask him to sit beside her. From watching them, it felt like his very passive/receptive personality let her completely control the social dynamic, which seemed to suit her and probably fed her need for attention/validation.

At the same time, she would still make little bids for my attention. She might spend an event mostly talking to him, then suddenly ask why I wasn’t holding a door for her anymore, want something I had offered another woman, or ask some question that seemed to test whether I would treat her specially.

Eventually I got annoyed and pulled back because she didn't expect this from the other intern. I stopped seeking her out and started working more with other managers. She noticed and didn't like it. After that we barely spoke for a while.

She also chirped/teased me professionally a lottt, especially when I was confident or getting praised. Once she made a joke that crossed the line and I purposely went completely quiet. She immediately started backtracking and reassuring me.

After another tense social event, she asked me for a small form of special treatment. I responded more detached than usual, and the next day she told me, “I was thinking last night, and you’re actually really chill.” That stood out because it sounded like she had been replaying our interaction afterward and reassessing me.

There were also several times when, if I was giving another coworker a lot of attention, she would suddenly insert herself into the conversation, join whatever we were doing, or noticeably redirect her attention toward the other male intern. I couldn’t tell whether that was jealousy, competitiveness, normal attention seeking, or me reading too much into it.

What made the other intern dynamic especially confusing was that they never communicated outside of in person work interactions. Yet when I was physically there, she would make their closeness very visible by calling him cute, making heart signs, asking him to sit beside her, loudly asking whether he was coming to events.

Because so much of that happened directly in front of me, I sometimes felt like she knew it would make me jealous and was deliberately leaning into it to get a reaction if I cared. I can’t tell whether I was seeing intentional reaction testing or just overinterpreting a very public friendship.

Question:

1. Was my manager flirting with me, did I accidentally make her feel rejected, and did she start using the other intern to make me jealous?

1. Why did my manager go from being very warm and personally interested in me to distant and much closer with another intern?

Hi all,

I’m hoping for some advice here. I manage 2 teams of staff in two departments, 22 staff in total.

For the most part both teams are a pleasure to manage and although we have obvious run ins I’m well respected and have pleasant interactions with all of the team on every level.

There is one team member however who is inherently a difficult person, he has been in the company longer than I have by about 5 years and as I started in a junior role, he seems to have no respect for me or other senior members of staff who he has seen ‘develop’ throughout the company. When I took over his department, the old department lead pre warned me that this member of staff could be ‘deeply unpleasant’ and that he would do all he could do to ‘take the piss’ at every turn..

Throughout my 18 months of managing this team member, he has been very difficult to manage. He is constantly under performing and I have spent hours upon hours on training, mentoring, improvement plans etc. The main issue I have however, is that even when evidence based, he is completely unwilling to take any form of criticism and throws a tantrum when issues or feedback is raised in his appraisal. There have now been 5 occasions where I have brought both evidence based alongside generic ‘I’ve noticed this..’ feedback to him and he’s either cried, shouted or stormed off. Every time, he calms down and I explain he can’t act like this at work and we go through the follow up plan, and then every time he starts performing poorly and cites the fact I’ve spoke to him about xyz as a reason he isn’t performing.

Last week, I spoke to him in an appraisal about his poor performance in August (which is driven by KPIs) and how he will need put on a PIP after this month if improvement isn’t met. He cried, and then basically argued at me for an hour about how we don’t respect him and how other people don’t get this treatment (not true) . I noticed today he has barely done any work by mid day, and when I called him he said he’s been too distracted after our chat last week and he’s struggling to work because he feels under attack by me and the company.

I am fairly sure he is edging to go off on the sick as he has previously advised (verbally) that he believes he may be autistic and he struggles with anxiety, though he has only raised this when he’s been confronted about performance

I am unsure on where to go from here. I feel like I am doing everything I can to help him however he is making me feel as though I am ‘picking on him’ and has previously said that every time I speak to him about his performance it’s making his anxiety bad.. what am I supposed to do?

Heya, I'm not sure if I can post this, but I have made a tool that helps facilitate conversations, feedback, and meetings with retail staff using proven, effective methods. It helps new and experienced retail managers.
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