Beginnings and Endings

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

On January 12, 1999, I started work at an office supply store. Within two weeks, I had called off work twice and was a “no call/no show” once. (In my admittedly weak defense, the schedule was handwritten in those days and it wasn’t super clear to me that I was scheduled on the day of my no call/no show...)

So I almost didn’t make it to the end of January 1999 as an office supply store employee.

A couple of years later, on my wedding anniversary, I was skating on thin ice again. I had become a backup delivery driver and was tasked with delivering over $1000 in merchandise to a new business about 40 miles away from the store. I helped some employees of the business unload the merchandise into a building that they then locked before driving away and before I secured payment. Phone calls to the owner of the business went unanswered. I returned to the store without the merchandise or payment, ignoring direct orders from my immediate supervisor not to come back without one or the other. The owner of the business made good on the payment the very next day, but I was written up for potentially costing my company a lot of money and for the insubordination of wanting to get home at a decent time to celebrate my wedding anniversary.

In 2011, I was in trouble yet again. By that point, I was an Assistant Store Manager. Sales and customer service scores for the district had been down. Our District Manager conducted a conference call which I took as representative for my store (my Store Manager was on vacation). During this call, the DM asked each of us to ensure that we had a “sales leader” (a manager who would stand up front and greet customers as they came in the door and direct them to employees for assistance) in place and that no non-customer related tasks were being performed during the high traffic hours of the day (11am-5pm or so). I told him my store would comply.

A couple of hours later, I was in the manager’s office and the only other manager in the building (another Assistant) was also in the back, in the receiving area. An employee called across the walkie talkie that “Matt” (not his real name) was asking to speak with me. Immediately realizing that this “Matt” was, in fact, my DM and not a customer or someone else with that name, I went out to the floor to receive my fate.

The conversation was, to put it mildly, chilly. No sales leader in place. Non-customer related tasks being performed by several associates. A pallet of chairs blocking an aisle of merchandise, making it inaccessible. I’m probably forgetting other infractions, but it wasn’t pretty.

I got another write-up out of that one. My DM told my Store Manager that he almost asked for my keys (i.e., fired me) on the spot.

Two years later, that same DM promoted me to Store Manager, so I guess he forgave me.

In January 1999, I’d almost been fired within two weeks for attendance. In January 2019, I celebrated 20 years with the company and had been a Store Manager for nearly the last six.

In August 2019, however, my luck had run out. After being on an “action plan” for a few months due to ever-shrinking sales performance, I was finally fired.

I had failed. It took me twenty years to do so, but I finally did it.

This is the story of what I learned along the way.