Paper Route StoriesManager(s)I had a number of managers over the few years I was a paper carrier. They were all young men and always inexperienced and ineffective on day one.
After a while I learned a basic problem about many managers. They had never done the job, had no clue what it took to get it done, and could NOT care less. As a kid, I found it very frustrating that I knew more than they did and nobody would listen to me, not even the bad manager.
(Later, as an adult, I found this problem was universal and it rarely got better. Again, too few bosses know what they are doing, care about what they are doing, or fail at both.)
Some of them were the absolute worst and never helped at all. Most of them could get the job done after a few weeks experience and only a couple were what I would call “good”.
The best would give you their phone number, so you didn’t have to wait until the Friday meeting to get anything started. I say started, because even after you explained the problem, it would probably be Tuesday of the next week before they could get anything resolved and often even later.
Regardless their effectiveness, if they didn’t show up at all or had some substitute show up, then the problems would go unresolved. I can only remember a few times when the substitute turned out to actually know anything and could get something done.
Those managers that “forgot” to fix the problem or didn’t bother to try would cause another week’s delay, having to tell them again the following Friday because that was the only way you could get ahold of them.
If the problem was about getting a paper stopped it would cost me money every day until they fixed it. Starting a paper was never hard, that could be done with a phone call to the circulation department. Anybody could do that, and it was a problem with dead beat, cheapskate, no-good customers. I would get a paper, be charged each day for the paper and there was no way in Hell I was going to deliver another paper to a dead beat that already owed me for at least three weeks of papers before I shut them off. |
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