Sticking To His Department
Reddit user bradland realized that he was a good sales rep at the technology department he worked in because the shift manager kept trying to push him out so he could take all the sales glory. But he stayed at his post and didn’t let himself get bullied. Eventually, the store manager came to his defense.
“When I was in high school I worked at a popular warehouse club selling computers on the weekends. I was hired by the store manager via referral of a friend. I loved computers and they thought I’d make a good salesman, so my job was to stay in the computer department and sell computers; nothing else.
Well, one of the shift managers didn’t like that, and started insisting that I needed to go fold clothes for a while. As in, half my shift. I told him that the store manager had instructed me never to leave the technology department, but he insisted. This went on for several weeks.
The store manager showed up one weekend when both the power trippin shift manager and I were working. The store manager walks up with the shift manager close behind. Store manager slaps a stack of greenbar paper (this was a while ago) down onto a shelf and points to some highlighted numbers.
He looks at the shift manager and says, “Do you see this? This is our average technology sales numbers for the weeks you are on shift. See this number over here? This is our average technology sales numbers for weeks you are not. At this point, it would be more cost effective for me to simply fire you.
What do you think of that solution?” The guy stammers and stutters like a toddler caught bullying another kid on the playground.
Fortunately, the dude wasn’t fired, but the store manager made it clear that when I was on shift, I was not to leave the technology department unless I was on break or there was a fire in the store. That shift manager never said another word to me.”