Who’s In Charge Here?
Author: Bill Garwood
Who’s In Charge Here?
Who’s in charge here? And how many bosses do we need?
Have you noticed in the last several years that every business or store seems to have too many people in charge? Most of my life was in the Army. I remember working under a higher headquarters and there were so many young officers, there was hardly enough jobs for them to fill.
One office had a few new officers show up and they literally set up desks in tiny corners just so they would have an “office” to work out of. Then they had to invent a job for these people to do. I have seen and worked for companies that always wanted to hire more people than were needed to do a job. After I retired from the service I was hired to set up and run the first real recycling program on the nearby Army base. I was retired but wanted to work at something.
I worked for 4 years by myself and loved it. I had a recycle route I did every day, collecting and gathering recyclables. Even pushing down cardboard in huge dumpster bins, so there was much more weight in them for recycling. More weight, more money.
I worked with the local Waste Management company placing and emptying bins. 4 years all by myself it was a great job. After I retired, they hired another guy, he just wanted a “retirement job”. He decided that was too much work, so he had the boss hire 3 more guys to work for him! He had too much work…Grrrr.
If you look around at many big stores you see Company owners, CEOs, Managers. Then folks designated as shift supervisors, section supervisors. Even area foremen! Once I had both bosses, Civilian and Military, in the same office. I said “I want to obey both your orders BUT I can’t do the job and follow both of your orders. So, talk and tell me who I obey; I’ll be outside”. It worked no more cross missions. Job done.
If a company has district directors OR corporate bosses, that’s ok. They are not part of the day-to-day work of the company; there should never be 15 supervisors in a small business! They tend to get in each other’s way and annoy the workers. Don’t get me started on “micro-managing”.
A business should train their workers, and cross-train them so if one worker is sick or leaves the others can be trained to do the job. I have seen a workshop where ONE person knew the job inside and out. The bosses never had others learn the job, so every time somebody needed something the other workers would stop the knowledgeable person to ask questions.
Some shops do it right, they close half a day each week and teach their workers how to do the job. Ever hear, “never enough time to do it right but always time to do it over”?
Stay well, my loyal readers, our fall season is about to start. Excelsior!
