This happened a long time ago, I just still feel angry every once in a while about my time with this company and working for my managers for multiple reasons.
So for about 8 months I worked at one location of an office supply chain store. My position was a tech sales supervisor, essentially when someone comes up for a computer, printer, label maker, etc. pretty much everything electronic that the store sells I help customers and answer questions. During that time of helping we have to ask a series of questions trying to get at upselling other things in the store and also our in store warranties to convince them to buy more things so essentially the company can make a bigger profit off of each customer.
My direct manager was overseeing the sales of the entire store, and since my department was where the big ticket items were he worked more extensively with my coworkers and me in that department more than most others. And since I was the supervisor of that department that meant he would hound me the most often.
Now I admit that I quickly realized I didn’t have a strong sales skill which is one of the things that lead to the eventual decision to leaving. Though how he treated me was also a strong reason too. He and I had very different personalities that conflicted. Or rather he was too conflicting in and of himself and he didn’t realize it. Examples include:
– I could count on two hands how often he would confide in me that he doesn’t know why customers would turn him down when he tried to upsell to them and only buy the things that they came in for and nothing else. Then in the next breath 10 minutes later when I would talk with a customer he’d complain that I’m not succeeding at that very same thing he was ranting about him struggling with just moments before.
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He would list 5-10 things for me to get done that day. I’d start working on them but then later he would find me and complain that I’m not doing what I should be doing and part of my job is severely lacking, even though I was doing what he told me to do that morning.
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They seemed to limit the number of employees down to most of the time during the week only one person on each department/station at any given time. That would lead to me missing sales opportunities because I was with one customer already and another would walk in and just grab something in my department and go buy it. Every other time This would happen he’d complain I missed another opportunity, even when I explained to him why that didn’t seem to matter to his small brain. Not being able to clone myself and be in two places at once is a flaw that can be held against me apparently.
This got to the point where he wrote me up Once citing some of the things he ranted to me listed above as well as a couple others. That was the final straw that confirmed that I needed to quit before they fired me. Sorry that this may not have a satisfying ending but it was just a horrible time working here and I figured that a story like this would belong here.
Have any of you been in this similar situation?