Being A Shifty Shift Manager May Result In A Shift In Employment

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 the 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.

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 d*** 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-tripping shift manager and I were working. The store manager walked up with the shift manager close behind. [Store Manager] slapped a stack of green bar paper down onto a shelf and pointed to some highlighted numbers.

He looked at the shift manager and said:

Store Manager: “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 stammered and stuttered 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.