February 14, 2010

• Hypocrisy and Ignorance (Please Proofread)

       Tracy’s behavior is widely disliked by every employee working under him. As an illustration of the effect his behavior has on the people around him, I will tell you the stories of Daniel and David. Daniel and I started as full time employees on February 2nd, 2009. While I was hired for having warehouse and SAP experience, Daniel had a vast amount of work related work experience, and was very knowledgeable on the subjects of working processes, procedures, and management skills. He worked very closely with Tracy from the day he started and over about a month’s time he started to question Tracy’s work ethic, and eventually became so perturbed (a word he loved to use) at how Tracy said one thing and did another, told him to complete a task one way and later chastised him for doing it wrong, and never provided him the training necessary to do his job well. Daniel and I spent time together few times a week after and outside of work, and it was during this time that Daniel painted an elaborate picture of Tracy’s behavior and lack of work ethic which astounded me. After hearing and understanding everything Daniel had to say, I did my best to avoid Tracy by taking my questions and concerns directly to the people from which they arose. Unfortunately Tracy’s lack of work ethic didn’t show any signs of improvement over the course of Daniel’s first six months as an employee, and he made the decision to move on to bigger and better things.

       When Daniel resigned, David took over his position temporarily while Tracy looked around for a full time replacement. A month and a half into David’s office time, he too began coming to me with the exact same stories and frustrations about Tracy that Daniel used to speak of. I found this rather interesting, and I offered my help in training David in on everything Daniel had shown me. David’s abilities vastly improved over the course of our time working together, but Tracy eventually frustrated him enough that David also resigned. I know this to be true because David and I talked about Tracy often, and at one point David mentioned that he was looking around for other jobs in hopes that he could “work under someone who gave a damn.” His resignation came on short notice when his previous employer (from which he’d been laid off) called him back into work. It was at this point that I took over the position Daniel and David once held, and began spending the day in close proximity to Tracy and the other warehouse supervisors and managers.

       After listening closely to everything Daniel and David had to say about Tracy for eight months, I felt I had some idea of what to expect from Tracy. Given the ridiculousness of the behavior they described, I was curious to find out if their stories were completely true through first hand experience. As much as I had curiously observed Tracy’s every move from the moment Daniel came forward and said something, I had done well avoiding him as much as possible and hadn’t had the opportunity for in-depth observation. After the first few weeks of my in-office experience, however, I saw everything I had been told come to life.

       Tracy is a very laid back person. His philosophies are “As human beings, we all make mistakes; there’s nothing we can do about it” and “It’s not about who made the mistake or pointing the finger, it’s about addressing the problems that occur as a team.” As true as these ideologies are, there is a difference between making common mistakes now and then and expressing total indifference toward company policies, procedures, and guidelines. Since the implementation of our current warehouse policies and procedures back on January 1st of 2009, a number of warehouse (and production) employees have crossed the line of making common and understandable mistakes into the bounds of pure indifference toward warehouse procedures. This has caused a great amount of stress on both the warehouse employees who follow through with the procedures in place and on the company itself because the indifference of one employee doubles the work load of another which leads to overtime that could have been avoided. These are not facts that take a great deal of knowledge or experience in business to know or understand, but they are fundamentally important.

       I’ve mentioned that Daniel, David and I have been outrageously frustrated by Tracy’s lack of work ethic and/or laziness, but I haven’t mentioned any specifics. The specifics are as high in diversity as they are in number so I won’t list everything, but I will touch on some of the more prominent concerns I have.

  1. Private Phone Calls – Tracy spends at least 6 hours a day on the phone with his wife, or a customer service representative from a company who’s service has recently disappointed him. At one point I was in the office with Tracy and the shipping and receiving supervisors and for several hours we listened to him argue with Best Buy customer service about how they needed to fix and/or replace his TV. A few weeks ago True Green lawn care called him on his cell phone with a survey, and he complained for several hours about his disappointment with their poor service as well.

  2. Forwarded Emails – When Tracy is not on the phone, he’s browsing through a wide variety of forwarded emails that are sent his work email address. Some are long and detailed, some are short, some include pictures, and some include videos. As close as I can estimate, Tracy spends around one to two hours a day reading forwarded emails, and maybe 10 or 15 minutes work related emails a day. Any labor these work related emails request always get’s passed on to me, or another employee, no matter how available or how busy the chosen employee may be.

  3. Work Avoidance – As I mentioned in my last statement, any work Tracy receives over email get’s passed on to the people who work for him. If a bin stock appears incorrect, Tracy will print it off, and have 10 people (whether or not they’re busier with more important things) count it one at a time before he moves forward with whatever it is he’s doing when he could just count it himself once or twice, and save himself and everybody else the time and the trouble. On days when the work load is abnormally heavy Tracy always has an appointment, a sickness, or some sort of prior engagement that makes it necessary for him to leave early. On days with 12 or more production jobs, three or four jobs will be done by 12:30, and at 12:30 three or four jobs will be sitting on my desk, unissued. It is Tracy’s duty to issue the jobs until at least 12:30 at which point the closers take over the task, but he only issues jobs on days when the work load isn’t overbearing. On busy days (12+ jobs) and on slow days (2-7 jobs) he doesn’t issue anything. A lot of his work avoidance, I believe, is about accountability. Each SAP user has a login, and virtually every movement a user makes is fully documented under their username in the system’s history. When something that will raise the attention of those working above Tracy’s head, he always, almost without fail, will have me do it instead.

       It is my firm belief, and the belief of many others, that Tracy is unfit for the position he currently holds. It is also my belief that the warehouse and it’s employees will not be able to progress with the rest of the company until this situation is properly addressed. Good work flow is about having the right people in the right places. Tracy is a nice guy, but in my humble opinion, he is not the right man for the job.

  • 2:08 pm
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