The Best of Bad Examples--My Horrible Manager Story
- Nov 10, 2020
- 6 min read
Your first semester of college doesn't always run smoothly.
I'd known that, of course. But even after moving into what was probably the seediest apartment in the small college town, severely blundering some of my first class choices, and not having any friends because I didn't know any of the handful of students from my high school that went to my university, I was determined that something was going to go right.
Work was not that thing.
My prior work experience began and ended at a small dairy farm about a mile from my childhood home. While that job had taught me a lot about grit and self-mastering, none of its skills directly translated to the industries available in my new town (and even if it had, I was done with the dairy business), so I started at a low-level job: customer service.
This is the story of the utter Hell of that job--not because it was customer service, but because of its management.
Structure
The first red flag of my first non-dairy job should have been how hazy the structure was. When I started, I didn't really know who owned the company or who my boss was. To this day I still don't really know, other than I'm pretty sure his name was Terry, he drove a pristine white Cadillac, and he was that blond man that occasionally rode across the service floor on his electric hoverboard.
No, I'm not kidding.
The only people I did know who were above me were Rylee the HR Manager (literally the most terrifying woman you've ever met, and not someone you'd ever want to go to for anything HR related) and Morgan, my team captain, who was in charge of training me.
In summary, I didn't know who I was working for, who my captain reported to, who signed my paycheck, or who I could go to if I had a problem that needed reported (because I wouldn't be going to Rylee--I think she was hired because people would be too afraid of her to turn in their two weeks notice. Just a guess).
Supplement: Why Organization Charts are important.
Work Environment
Perhaps worse than not knowing who I worked for or who I could report to if I needed support was not truly knowing the rules of where I worked.
Security at the agency was tight. You needed a key card to get into the building and onto the customer service floor (and if you ever forgot that key card, you'd suffer the wrath of Rylee, who didn't appreciate leaving her desk to let you in). It gave the feeling of starch officiality, but it was never outright advised what was permissible and what wasn't.
For the six months that I worked there, I had no idea if it was ok to check my personal email, work on homework, read a book, or surf the internet when there weren't incoming calls--and the strict feeling never made me comfortable with asking or trying it out until I was reprimanded.
I checked my phone in the bathroom, sat quietly at my workstation during slow call periods, and couldn't help notice the infrequent computer glitches caused by Rylee viewing the content of my monitors from her office.
The entire feeling of the office was sterile, untrusting, unfeeling, and uncaring. I was never asked my opinion. I never attended a meeting--company-wide, department-wide, or team-wide. I never did anything past the strict job requirements, and my performance was never acknowledged past the regularly scheduled performance reviews.
In short, it was a cold, authoritarian, and dehumanizing work environment.
Supplement: How to create a positive work environment
Coworkers
The year after I'd worked at the agency, I took a group research class. A few short weeks before the end of the semester, one of the girls in my group suddenly lit up and exclaimed that she knew me (aside from being in a group project together during the entirety of the semester). She'd sat behind directly behind me at work for months, and had finally put together my face with the "Thank you for calling, my name is Cassie," she'd listened to hundreds of times.
Twelve weeks into class, and I'd had no idea.
She wasn't the only person that I encountered at school and felt a strange familiarity with, only to find out we'd been coworkers for a good amount of time.
The only coworkers I knew were the team captains and Liberty, the latter of which only because I knew her from school. Everyone else were names on the Microsoft Teams chat box whenever they had a question and discordant voices on (typically irate) phone calls.
My separation from my coworkers had nothing to do with personal isolation desires or bad social skills. Fraternization between coworkers was frowned upon. No one spoke outside of the team chat. There were no between-call conversations. New employees were never introduced (and considering the turnaround rate of the agency, trying to do so would have been exhausting).
Work was never a community at the agency. We weren't a family, and even calling us a team would be a vast stretch of the imagination. Looking back on it, I think this might be the most emotionally damaging aspect of my experience.
Supplement: The importance of good coworker relations
What I learned
Despite how horrible of an experience the agency was, there are important lessons that I learned worth sharing.
They are all examples based on what not to do. But as my first boss--the one from the dairy-- once told me: a smart person learns from his mistakes, while a wise person learns from the mistakes of others.
Make sure your employees understand your company. What is your origin story? What are your company goals? How is upper management structured? Who should they go to if they experience specific problems? What is acceptable and unacceptable behavior? Understanding a work environment is paramount to being secure in it.
Coworkers exist for more than just getting more work done. Don't ever make your team feel like they are doing something wrong for getting to know their coworkers. Yes, there is a time and place for conversations outside of work, but make sure that time and place is recognized and utilized.
Make sure your employees are involved. Employees that aren't involved in a company aren't invested in it. What's more, employees that aren't involved can't offer their thoughts and feedback. Their information is crucial because they truly understand what is happening in day-to-day operations. Missing out on it is not taking advantage of resources you're paying for.
Always acknowledge progress. I'd been working at the agency for two or three months before I realized that Rylee was dropping Amazon gift cards on my desk because I had earned them through a pre-defined reward structure. She never said anything--just dropped them on my desk and walked away. No one ever told me "good job." What would have been motivating is hearing directly from my team captain that I was appreciated, or that a certain action I was doing was a good one.
If nothing else, the main lesson my bad experience taught is that managers need to be present with their employees. Constantly touch bases, follow up, and form relationships with your team--and encourage them forming relationships with each other. As a leader, it is your job to set the dynamic that creates a positive work environment that leads to employees staying with your company.
Epilogue
To be clear, I'm in a better place now.
To anyone wondering why I kept working at the agency, or thinking it can't have been that bad if I worked there for half a year when I was only 18, please keep in mind:
My previous job was at a dairy farm. Prior to the agency, a bad day at work was something akin to a cow stepping on my foot or hand, kicking me, or pooping down the back of my rubber boots. Given my experience, I figured that if I wasn't waking up at 3 AM to milk cows in negative degree weather, things couldn't be that bad. It took perspective to realize that some jobs can still cover you in crap, crap that can't be washed off, and maybe that's worse.
I was naïve. I had no concept of how the cooperate world is supposed to function. As the only girl on a dairy farm, I was used to not having real relationships with coworkers because they just didn't know how to interact with me, or they felt uncomfortable being around a girl while shirtless (something I was uncomfortable with as well).
I wasn't a quitter. That dairy job had lasted me four years--from age fourteen to eighteen--and that job was literally crappy. Just like back then, I was determined to make the agency work.
Most importantly, I was desperate. College is expensive, and small towns don't have many job openings. I was living on my own miles from home, and needed a steady job that would pay for my groceries and rent.
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