Who is the Boss?

Part of a series of fictitious dialogues designed to help explain ideas.

Jon Vincent Deacon: I went into a Wal-Mart with my wife about one and a half weeks ago. I never felt so disgusted with the leadership there. We had stopped in to pick up a quick item. It was around the 10th to the 15th of January 2013. It was the store in Bedford, PA. Dr. Greenwich Hekima: How so? JVD: A person was talking over the radios that all employees are required to carry around. She was going on and on about the returns at the service desks. You couldnt but help to hear her voice all over the store. I watched the dour expressions on the employees faces as we walked through the store. Not one was smiling or showed any signs of being worth anything. The person was talking to them as if they were nothing, as if they were little kids incapable of any thought. My wife said, Can you believe that? I walked over to a nearby employee and asked, Who is that? He replied, Thats Paulette, she is one of our Assistant Store Managers. I said, So much for the respect of the individual. He just laughed and said, Yeah, right? Dr. H.: What did you do? JVD: We left it was embarrassing. I felt that if I stay there and bought something that I was condoning her behavior and agreeing with her treatment of these people. I refused to be a part of that. I had been a manager for years some time back and I would never dream of talking to a group of people that I was trying to lead and develop into a strong producing team like that. That was so amateurish, so unprofessional. Dr. H.: Well, you do know that they teach leadership via a computer program. Tactic such as that are just easy short cuts for the short termin the long term, they can create dire consequences for any organization. I know that you have been interested in Wal-Mart for some time. JVD: When I was in school, Wal-Mart was a much talked about subject. Sam Walton had gone from zero to one hundred in no time flat, cashiers were retiring millionaires, people were all talking about how great of a place that it was to work for, of how possibilities for the individual or team were seemingly unlimited. People actually enjoyed and looked forward to going to work. Sam Walton was one hell of a visionary leader who had penetrated a saturated market of aging giants such as Sears, Kmart and so on and made a huge splash actually causing a lot of the giants to panic and scream, No Fair! I thought that the interesting thing was that he was using a lot of the leadership skills that I was taught while in the U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps; I found out that he had

actually been an U.S. Army Officer during WWIIa captain, I believe. He paid attention to his customers, his employees, you know the people who are actually in the trenches, and he respected them both. Managers had the freedom to try new things and gave them room to develop as managers. A Human Resource Professor I had the honor of learning under, Mr. Heckert at Millersville University, always said that the most interesting part about Wal-Mart would be seeing what happens after Sam retires or is no longer with us. Now, they look forward to getting to their paycheck and going home. That is in the order of most popular that I have been able to ascertain from the many I have talked to. It seems that Wal-Mart has lowered itself to the level of the aging giants in the industry. Dr. H.: What else have you learned? JVD: Well, it seems that threats, intimidation, pressure, and spying are the main forms of motivating people; at least, at this store in Bedford, PA. I ran into a former employee by the name of Brent. He had just got his job there right before he and his wife had their second child, a beautiful young lady. It seems that this young lady had some major health problems when she first came into this world. His wife was an emotional wreck and he had to call off several times to help her with emergency room visits, be with his daughter and wife at the hospital, and ask for time off for appointments. Dr. H.: What happened? JVD: Well, the young lady is doing fine now and enjoying life, but Brent was written up several times for missing work even though he had all the papers from the doctor. He was constantly being threatened with termination and finally, he quit and found a far happier place to work. He and his family are all doing much better and the little girl is out of the woods celebrating her first birthday soon. Everyone I talked to said that he was one hell of a hard worker. It must be truehe has already received several raises at his new job which is far more labor intensive. Dr. H.: Are there any other stories that you have uncovered? JVD: Actually, I have heard several others about this store. There is this one young man named Seth. He worked in receiving. One day, a truck arrived with one skid collapsing on another. If Seth had followed procedure, it would have resulted in numerous items being damaged. He asked the manager if it would be alright to try somethinghe was going to stand on some empty skids to unload the collapsing skid down to a level that they could move it with little or no damage. The manager gave her okay it after coming out to see what he was talking aboutit was actually shocking that a manager would actually do a recon before making a decision. She told him to be careful and said that it would be alright. He did it and it all work like a charmnothing was damaged. To protect her butt, she wrote him up claiming no knowledge of the incident after someone mentioned it.

Dr. H.: Who was it? JVD: I didnt get a confirmation of who it was, so I am reluctant to report who I was told it was. But another thing is that this store uses numerous trailers to store stock. They have a very small and limited back room. I have been told that one manager is always adamant about the employees getting the picks out of the trailer at night. It doesnt matter what the conditions are and lately it has been well below freezing and they are threatened with termination if they dont spend the hour or so of digging through the trailers to get a few items. It doesnt matter if it is raining, thundering, or freezing cold, in the middle of the night, they have to be out there risking their health with no health benefits and only having three days they are allowed to call off if they are sick before being written up. Oh, they call it a coaching, but the form is nothing more than a signed confession with absolutely no place to defend themselves or their actions. It just has a part that says what you are going to do to stop the offense which to fill that out would be little more than confessing guilt. Dr. H.: Is that all? JVD: No, this store is of a different design than the others which are more conducive to productivity and the employees are held to the standards of the more productive stores such as super centers which have an entirely different configurationfar more superior for getting the job done quickly. Oh, and I heard that this tyranny basically started with a store manager by the name of Kim. Before, the store had a well-trained manager with real leadership skills. Kim was all about doing coachings for every little thing. People said when she took over was when most of the drop in esprit de corps started. Another story is of an outspoken employee. First of all, I find that most reasons that someone speaks up is because they care. She was constantly pointing out things that were unfair and disrespectful of the individual. She made the major mistake of standing up for a fellow employee that had been treated unfairly by management. Someone in management started changing her schedule without informing her. I have been told that once a schedule is posted, they are not allowed to change it without your consent, but the consent is by an electronic signature which is easy for a manager to look up. She would follow what she had thought was her schedule and was written up for no show, no call because she thought that it was her day off. Wal-Mart ended up terminating her. I was told by a seasoned employee who had witnessed this and others, that is why she always prints a hard copy of her schedule as soon as it is posted. One last interesting tidbit came from an elderly man. He was part of the maintenance crew. He used to have a problem with sweat getting into his eyes while pushing the floor machine around. He started wearing a baseball cap. It worked well and management didnt have a problem with it for years. It kept the sweat out of his eyes and

he was able to get his job done quickly and was able to move on to other tasks. Sam Walton was photographed a lot wearing a baseball style cap in the stores and at meetings. There were several of these photos in this store hung about. Around 2008, he was told that he was not allowed to wear a cap anymore. In a weird twist straight out of an Orwellian nightmare, all of the photos of Sam wearing a cap were replaced with him wearing none when the new dress code change went into effectI thought that this was of special interests to me. He was told that he needed a doctors excuse to continue wearing his cap. He got one. He was told then that he would have to take a sixty day leave without pay until they sent the excuse to Bentonville, Arkansas for a decision. He was told that he faced losing his medical coverage because they would not be paying in for it while he was on his leave. He declined to push the issue any further. He went back to the doctor and got a reversal from him. He gave it to them, they sent it to Bentonville, AR, and still made him take a sixty day unpaid leave. Dr. H.: Sure, they had to teach him a lesson while at the same time send a powerful message to others not to go against what they want. JVD: I was also told of a store in Canada that was tired of the abuse and disrespect. They unionized and the store was promptly closed down in spite of it being a highly profitable unit in the chain. Dr. H.: Unfortunately, when you have no leadership qualities, threats, intimidation, pressure, and spying are cheap and poor substitutes that people latch on to usually resulting in large amounts of money and time being lost with lawsuits, low productivity, poor morale, zero loyalty, and the constant rehiring and training due to employee turnover. JVD: There is one manager, Curtis, who does strive to build cohesion in teamwork and morale. He talks with the associates, he works with them to get the job done while at the same time to get to the bottom of problems to increase productivity. Unlike others, he takes in consideration the average of production and the situations. He doesnt, just write up someone because out of weeks of hard work, one day, they had a low productivity; he looks at their overall performance. Another one is Donna B.; she works with the employees and takes the time to actually train them to the point of explaining why something is done that way to help the employees understand. She does it very professionally and one on one. (In a previous publication, I had actually got a hold of a real coaching form and explained what was going on for that incident. It was titled a boot stamping on a human face. Curtis had been the manager to give the coaching but it was explained to me that he had been ordered by Kim to give it in spite of his attempts to stick up for the employeeto refuse or to stand up to a poor decision even if you have real legitimate concerns is to risk being labeled a non-teamplayer and ending your career quickly.)

Dr. H.: Another point is that when you have a poor manager with poor leadership skills, they train the up and coming managers to do the same things. But Wal-Mart hasnt been your only recent experience. JVD: I had the opportunity to talk to the employees of a local personal care facility, Carrolls Rest Home, where the morale has taken a nosedive. Carroll recently passed away and her family members took over the business. One of the family members is a convicted felon and he has been making the employees shifts a nightmare. He is constantly leaving notes for them of what he expects them to donow, this may seem like what any boss would do but he is on them to do extra work that was never in their job description or what they were hired for. They are there to take care of the residents. He also decided to install security cameras all over and is constantly telling the employees that he will be catching them stealing and doing other things that they shouldnt be. He is constantly accusing them in a blanket way of stealing and he is going to catch them. Dr. H.: Interesting, I thought that recent convicts were not allowed to work in such places? JVD: I understand that Jeff is paid under the table and listed on the rolls as a volunteer. Dr. H.: Doesnt sound like a volunteer. JVD: Better hope that the state doesnt find out. Dr. H.: Ive noticed that in my studies that individuals like Jeff tend to do what they are doing because it is what was done to them and they do it to feel empowered and better about themselves. JVD: Well he definitely has an ego. It is getting bigger by the minute. I guess it will pop when the employees have had enough and leavemany of them have applications at other places. I dont think that hell learn the lesson though. Like most amateurs in manager positions, they tend to blame everything on the employees never realizing that the manager is actually contributing much to the problem. Dr. H.: That is very true. You did things a bit differently. JVD: I dont know why, maybe it was the military leadership courses I went through, but every time I had a confrontation with an employee, I would immediately try to think of how that could have been improved upon to the point that the confrontation wouldnt have happened. I mean that I could have taken the simple route of hiring and firing with threats and intimidation like the two examples above, but it seemed so much easier and rewarding to develop my skills, pull the employees along instead of pushing them, and working to create a very good team than constantly doing interviews, write ups, firings, going to unemployment hearings, dodging termination suits, worrying about some thug waiting for me by my car, and knowing that I could be so much better. I guess that was

the biggest pull to do what I did. I actually enjoyed learning new techniques and styles. I loved challenging myself to learn, understand, and experience more and more. I absolutely loved the results of seeing hi productivity and employees actually wanting to come to workthe results were well worth it. I had almost no employee turnoverthe biggest batch was when several left for college upon completing high school. I had hardly any call offs except when people were really sick. It was a lot of hard work and long hours in the first two months of taking over the position, but it was well worth the effort. I had actually made my job so much easier. Dr. H.: But you left. JVD: I did. Unfortunately, the business and many others were filled with old style, type X managers. These are managers who are like Kim, Paulette, and Jeff who believe that the employees are naturally lazy and will try to get over on whatever they can. I got tired of their closed minded nonsense of tyrannical approaches, bullying, and seeing the employees as an opportunity for blame for their inability to inspire. This, unfortunately, has been every business I have worked for. It is embarrassing to be part of something like that. People would think that I was the same and I got so very tired of the games and politics they would play all of the time. No, Im done being in the business world. Well, until I find something that I really could sink my teeth into and start my own. Dr. H.: Sounds good. But you know, management does what they do because the employees and customers do allow it. JVD: I know. Dr. H.: I know in a place like Bedford, PA where jobs are very limited, it would be very hard to convince people to make a stand but it is possible. For example; if several would just start their own mom and pop shops or cottage industries and stopped shopping the chain stores, others may be induced to follow. Every time they punch in on the time clock, they are giving consent to the abuse. Every dollar a customer spends in a place like that, they are giving consent to the abuse. It isnt only that. When you walk into a store that has ten registers and they only have three open and you are forced to wait in line up to ten minutes, you, as a customer, are giving consent to the way the business is treating you. It is the same with the return policy or shoddy products. But then again, as Ive said, when you trust your well-being, health, food, and products to someone who is driven by greed and the desire for ever bigger profit margins, you are taking yours and your familys life into your own hands. JVD: Like with Papa Johns; John Shnatter is spending millions on millions of free pizzas but you know this is coming out of the money that could go to keeping his prices low, quality high, and employees taken care of. It wont be coming out of his personal fortune. In fact, it is done to create an even larger fortune for him by buying the publics affectionate

image of him. He threatens to terminate or cut the pay of his employees because he would have to spend some money on their health care. Sad thing is that if he had been taking care of them, he wouldnt be threatened with the idea of having to share his wealth that he had generated from their labors. But it isnt all Shnatters fault. Oh, sure, he could be more of an intelligent investor and realize that if he takes care of his employees, shops, and customers they would gladly take care of him indefinitely or he could be more of a human being instead of some greed crazed egomaniac like Carnegie or Nobel, but at the same time, his employees and customers are consenting to his behavior. The employees show up for work and do their job and the public allows themselves to be bought and sold for some pizzasomething that is far better made at home, homemade and fresh anyway. Dr. H.: I remember reading about a study on a group of chimps. As they performed certain functions, they were paid in treats. The more they did the more treats they received. However, when the treats were cut back more and more, the chimps did less and less. I think that Wal-Mart and Papa Johns makes a clear point in demanding that employees do more and more for less and less. JVD: Since Sams death, less employees are full time, pay raises are smaller and further between, profit sharing has been eliminated, they used to give a ninety day raise, if you had a problem, they would give you a day off with pay to consider your job, they are no longer doing half the little treats and appreciations that they used tofor example: if you were named employee of the day three times, you would receive an actual share of stock, now, you receive a candy bar you must pay the tax on and actually that has been stopped. But, yet employees are expected to do the same job as before and so much more. Customers continue to enjoy paying more for less and less. They seem to enjoy running into hassles at the stores because they keep returning and buying more. I guess what this tells me is that the chimps are the far superior in intellect being. Dr. H.: That would be my guess too, considering all of the evidence. Any relationship is a two way street. JVD: I posted something some time back. It was concerning John Shnatters attitude. A person immediately charged back that we always pick on someone who is successful. I answered back that I was not at all concerned about him being rich and successful. I was upset about his attitude towards his employees and the worth of others around him. His contemptible approach to his employees just remind me of who people like Leopold II of Belgium, Hitler, Dr. J. Marion Sims, or Dr. Ishii looked down on others and they were expendable cogs to use and cast away when they got what they wanted or those teenage boys on the football team in Ohio in their overall attitude towards the girl they violated. I informed the individual that all he was doing with his excusing Shnatters attitude was robbing Shnatters opportunity to develop as a human, as a boss, as a business owner in ways that could even help his company grow stronger. I informed him that though

Shnatter has the right to do what he is doing, I also have the right to choose to not be a part of it or condone it in anyway. I will not buy a Papa Johns Pizza until he grows. I will not say that it is okay to treat others like that or to look down on those who have given of themselves to help him make his dreams come true. He didnt make all those pizzas or take care of all of those customers to earn all of that income. It was the hard work and dedication of his employees and this is their thanks? No, I for one will not contribute to that. Dr. H.: If Papa Johns doesnt make the income, wont they just close? JVD: Possibly, but in a true America as envisioned by the likes of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin, a Free Market economy, it would free up resources for those who know how to do it better and Shnatter has thousands of employees that know how to make pizza. Dr. H.: Very interesting point. Sounds very good and not to mention is that this bullying which has occurred since the Civil War and the rise of Big Industry and their puppets, the Republican Party, has created a disturbing trend. We have been conditioned to just shut up and do as we are told. In a country of equality, we are being taught through conditioning and human husbandry that there are those who call all of the shots and it is best to keep you head down and do as you are told, be that good little sheep. This is the worst thing that could possibly happen to a country that is supposed to be a Republic.