Open Letter to Managers

I've done something similar to this before - talking about my frustration with managers. I don't know if it's because I have a natural desire to delegate and make things happen my way, or if I just am my mother's daughter, but I have very strong feelings about certain parts of . . . any job, really. No matter what the situation, or the circumstances in the job, I get frustrated when people do things in a way that seem ineffective or inefficient to me.

It doesn't take long for me to feel strongly about the concept of "efficient," either; within a few weeks of beginning work - really, right about when I've found what I consider to be efficient for myself - I start to get frustrated when people do things in a way that makes them slower or less clean than me. Different doesn't matter - training a girl today, I tried to make it really clear that I mind when you don't attempt to be efficient, not when you do things differently than me.

But all that aside, my pet peeve for the day is when two people - who will go unnamed - do so much "managering" that they force me to carry the bulk of the work. I ranted a little bit to the third manager, who confirmed my frustration and then told me that it's just their ability to rely on me that leads to their inattentiveness. I understand that concept, and it's not a new one to me. Because I can do a lot of things all at once, and reasonably well, managers assume that I don't mind doing many things all at once for several hours at a time. Not the case, friends. Some days I would enjoy not having to push hard to keep up our standard of service. Some days I would really love to be the one who gets to chat people up rather than constantly be moving.

Moral of this story: when you have the same number of managers as you do hourly employees, there are going to be problems. I experienced that with great frustration at Chick-fil-A, where I trained several managers and then had to endure them telling me stupid things to do. I'm actually not great at masking my frustration with things that I could fix if given control of. Or being the one who's admired for doing things quickly and in a friendly fashion, but then not being listened to or helped.

And I know how all this sounds - like I'm really arrogant. But in all seriousness, Sean tells me every day how much of a void is going to be left when I leave, and I know it's true. I pay attention. That's more than I can say for a lot of people. I guess this is the other side of the coin from last week's blog - this is my I-love-you-but-can't-stand-you-sometimes letter to Drip.