In 2011 I started at a company I’ll call Beyond Bed and Bath in the USA. It was the regional office so the managers working out of this store oversaw not only our store, but were the bosses of all the store managers for hundreds of miles in every direction. A few times a year those managers would all come in to visit and attend whatever new training session corporate deemed important that quarter.
A few months after I started a new employee, John, was hired to my department. On his second day he was tidying up the store in his department as he was supposed to. The manager training session took a break, so some of the managers decided to stretch their legs. Our store was set up as a loop. Walk in the front door and a single aisle, right in from of you, would take you through every department in the store and right back to the cash registers and the door. The managers, logically, took a couple of loops of the store during their short break. Please note that NONE of the managers in this story worked at this branch, they were all visiting, but wearing company attire and manager’s nametags. None of them had ever met John before this story.
Manager #1 walked out of the training room and began to meander through the store and saw a few customers in Johns department browsing. They asked John if he had greeted the customers. Corporate policy said that every customer had to be greeted in EVERY department (Yes, seriously). John said, no, the customers had just walked into his department and he was finishing up tidying before greeting them. Manager #1 proceeds to go off on John, chastising him for not properly greeting customers and not maintaining ‘the standard of excellence demanded by a regional flagship store’. John horridly did as he was told, while Manager #1 continued their walk. A few minutes go by and as John finishes talking to the customers Manager #2 walks by. They see that there a few crumbs on the floor and proceeds to criticize John for not keeping the store clean. As John tries to explain that what he has been doing and what the other manager said he gets cut off and told to ‘just get it done’. Clearly dejected John proceeds to get out the carpet sweeper and clean up. Cue Manager #3. They walk into the department and see that it hasn’t been tidied. Seeing John cleaning, they quickly say that a few crumbs on the floor is nothing to worry about if the customers think the shelves aren’t stocked. He should be pulling all the inventory to the front to replace the empty space left by customers taking items. He should know this as an employee of such a great company. John, clearly unable to fully process the frustration of being told to go back to his original task, doesn’t even argue, but does as he is told. By this time Manager #1 has finished a lap of the store and walks back into Johns department to see John tidying up the store, the very thing they told John to stop doing. They immediately walk right up to him and begin to scold him for ignoring them, they are a manager and he needs to respect them as such. With a dead look in his eyes, John takes off his nametag, drops it on the floor and silently walks out.
He never came back.