Meet the Managers

Store managers rule how stores work..or in every case I have seen - NOT WORK. Way back in the Woolworth days when I was hired the manager was Bernie, who we employees dubbed him as "Little Saddam".  He never talked directly to most of his employees. He would always talk to them through the assistant managers.  He did, however, talk to a couple of the employees, but was always sounded mean.  Only a couple times did he ever talk to me and when he did he addressed me as "Mr. Brown"...like I didn't have a first name.  His rudeness made him a very bad manager, but ironically he lasted with the company for most of its 25+ years at the mall.  Eventually, the company replaced him  because apparently he was ripping off the company with false inventory reports among other things

After a couple months of not having a store manager, we got Mikey...who was dubbed Mikey Mussolini.  As Woolworth was collapsing, he was brought in from being a district manager from the New York area.  There was 2 obvious things wrong with this.  First, he did not have retail store experience and secondly he had no idea on how to treat Mainers.  This led to many problems including many confrontations that proved his incompetence.  The only thing I really took away from all of his bad management and one piece of advice "Customers will fraud you if you given them the opportunity every time".  This is a lesson that showed itself many times over the next few years as I will explain.

During my short term at HQ, I did not have much interaction with much of the management staff, but when I did they always acted like jerks, which probably explains why there was always so much tension between associates and managers.

Now speaking of tension, we have Staples.  When I first started with the company way back in 1996, the first manager was Don.  He was a hothead, but he could also be very nice when he wanted to be.  Unfortunately, about a year and a half into working there, he had to quit for health reasons.

Next came Mark, Don's former assistant manager.  When he was assistant manager, he was sort of a nice guy and fun to be around.  When he became store manager, all that changed.  He got a big boy voice and decided to start acting tougher.  Sadly, he is still with the company, but thankfully not locally.

After Mark, we got Terence. Huge mistake.  He formerly was Mark's assistant manager and was very clueless.  His former position was as manager of Service Merchandise and we all know what happened to that company.  Note to any company:  NEVER HIRE SOMEONE WHO WAS A MANAGER AT A FAILED COMPANY -- THE COMPANY FAILED BECAUSE THEY WAS PART OF THE PROBLEM -- NOT THE SOLUTION!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!

Interesting Story on Service Merchandise


A few years ago at the South Portland Maine location, I happened to walk through the Service Merchandise store and saw sitting on a shelf in a corner a Packard-Bell computer.  Since nobody seemed to be around, I wanted to look inside the unit.  I easily was able to get the side panel off the unit and began looking around inside the unit.  While I was doing that, several employees had walked by me and not a single one asked if I needed help.  After I was done looking inside the machine, I left the machine opened with the parts sitting on the shelf beside the unit.  I went back to the store a week later and the computer was still sitting there in pieces.  Another week later, I went back again and the unit was gone, but the price tag was still sitting there.  Ironically, the unit never returned to the shelf and there never was another computer again in Service Merchandise to sell.  Apparently, this store never cared enough about this machine or the customers enough to want to sell it.  Just another sad reason why that company is no longer with us.


After Terence, we got Amy.  Apparently, according to stories I heard, she came to our store as manager with the understanding that at the end of being there for one year, she would be promoted to district manager position.  The biggest problem with her was that she was a manager who always did most of the floor jobs herself. Certainly this is something that managers just don't do.  However, because of this she spent very little time interacting with employees.  After the year was over, she was not given a district manager job, so she abruptly decided to leave the company.

During a week off from vacation, I came back to meet up with our new manager Shawn Nichols.  Little did I know that this guy was nothing but trouble.  As I will be explaining along the way in future posts, not only was Shawn a  bad manager, but he was also a COMPULSIVE LIAR!!  Certainly not a quality anyone would want from ANY manager whatsoever.  He made the last 6 months of employment with the company absolutely intolerable.  It also continued even after my employment ended as well.  Nobody should ever have to put up with what I put up with.  Neither Shawn nor Staples have any shame for what would happen over the next 2+ years.

Commentary: Borders 


As another example of Borders failure can be seen, Waldenbooks which closed up in the Maine Mall, 3 years ago, also had a management problem.  The issue with them was that because that they were gossiping females, they spent most of their time talking to each other while ignoring the customers and being just plain mean to them a lot of the time.  Several times I would walk into the store and saw rolling racks of books that needed to be put on shelves and boxes full of magazines that needed to be put up on shelves as well.  


It is all this ignorance by management that led me to believe that they are a major reason for their own downfall.  Staples should take a lesson from Borders failure, but unlike Borders there problem extends throughout the whole company, not just store management as I will be explaining in the future.


Next Up: Assistant Store Managers - After all they are ASSES!