April 22, 2008

My Ex-Assistant Manager

For the past two months, I have been wanting to write about my assistant manager. However, I kept holding myself back because for the first time in my life I had too much to say about one person. Nevertheless, I fired him today, and I would like to highlight some of the classic moments I had with him over the past two months.

Cory- The 'Straight' Guy
Cory had no management experience at all and yet, my company decided to hire him as a manager anyway. At first appearance, Cory came across as a very intelligent, well-dressed, good looking guy. That first impression lasted about a week. Then I started realizing that Cory was only a little bit smarter than a door knob, and actually his greatest talent was standing there and looking good. I think his favorite part of working in my store was checking himself out in the mirrrors, which he did approximately 92 times everyday. Cory insisted that he was straight and yet, wore women's sunglasses and went through a week-long phase of wearing makeup to work. He never knew what time it was, what month it was, or what day it was. Actually, one day he was scheduled to leave at 1pm and told me at 11am that he had an hour left. I asked, "Don't you leave at 1pm?" and he answered, "Yeah, it's 11am, I only have an hour to go." That must have been a long hour. But why did I fire him? Well...
  1. He broke every policy possible. He played his own music during business hours (with curse words), broke the dress code, treated the sales associates unprofessionally, did not meet sales goals, used a rude tone with customers, closed the registers early, talked on his cell phone while on the sales floor, sat down on the counter, did not even try to clean the store, closed the fitting rooms early, opened the store an hour late twice, and basically did absolutely nothing while at work.
  2. And then lied to me about all of the above.
  3. The final straw came on Saturday when he was supposed to open the store and called me 15 minutes before opening saying that he lost his store keys.
So even though it was fun to watch Cory everyday, it was also making me lose my mind.


For the record, he was the first person I ever fired...and I have to admit that there was an overwhelming urge inside of me to say "YOU'RE FIRED!" like Donald Trump, but I somehow controlled myself.


I love my job.

April 2, 2008

Things I've Learned

  1. For every problem that is solved, two new problems are created.
  2. A day's work is never done.
  3. Plan for the worst so that any other outcome is a pleasant surprise.
  4. When one thing fails, everything else fails with it.
  5. Always stay optimistic.


I love my job.