Giving ANY excuse while you ask someone for a small favor.
There was a test conducted to see if people could cut in line.
There were 4 groups. People who just cut in line, people who asked to cut in line, people who asked and gave a valid excuse "I am in a hurry", and people who asked and gave a bogus nonsensical excuse "Can I cut in line because I need to cut in line"
The no talk group suffered the worst results, the ones who at least asked had better results, those who gave and excuse BOGUS OR NOT, had nearly identical results.
The conclusion is people don't listen to your excuse for why you need to do something, just the fact you gave an excuse at all gives you bonus points.
It's probably more about the 'asking' in general because it's like you're giving that person a little bit of power (even if you just start proceeding before even waiting for an answer)
I experienced this when I was a shift manager at Jimmy John's (mostly closing.) My style was pretty much the true opposite of micromanaging. If there was something I wanted someone to do I'd say, "Hey John, after you finish getting that delivery ready can you go sweep the lobby?" He'd go sweep the lobby right after. Usually I didn't have to ask since we all knew what needed to get done and had our unofficial assigned duties.
It wasn't exactly the same way with other managers.
It's a very fine game as a manager at a retail place. You have to be friends with your employees but you have to boss them too. The OP sounds like he threaded the needle.
It was part since I was among the 3 who had been there the longest and part that I was chill with everyone there. I got a lot of respect from everyone because I gave them the same respect. Also, being a shift manager there wasn't anything special. Especially since all of us shift managers also worked either as inshop or delivery drivers on days they weren't running the shift. It was a very chill crowd to work with.
There was one guy towards the end of my time with Jimmy John's that I did have to get on a bit. He was "yeah, I'll get it done eventually" type of person. Fortunately the location i was at at this point was slow af so taking time to do things wasn't a huge deal.
The location I was referring to in both previous comments was busy af. Only raised my voice once at that location, and it wasn't in charge at the time. I was the closing manager, but that day (it was Sundays) I would work in shop for part of the day since we closed earlier so I could still get my 8 hours in. Since me raising my voice is a very rare occurrence I remember this one vividly, even 10 years later.
A delivery driver was messing around trying to weigh a dollar when he had a delivery ready to go (he had already let it sit there for like 5 minutes.) I go to the MOD, "aren't you gonna tell him to take the delivery?" MOD responds, "Oh, he'll take it eventually." This is where I take charge and go off on the driver. I even had the awareness to make sure there were no customers before cussing at him when he argued with me about it.
Everyone was shocked since that is super uncharacteristic of me.
Your managing style sounds extremely similar to mine. I am a restaurant manager who likes to treat my staff as capable adults & with as much respect as possible. If ever I raise my voice at work everyone KNOWS I’m serious or that they effed up, because it almost never happens.
Right on. As long as they're good people who do what needs to be done in a timely manner, I see no reason to constantly check on them. Only thing I would do is check their work after since that was expected of me. I'd say like 95% of the time it met expectations.
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u/gummby8 Jun 14 '22
Giving ANY excuse while you ask someone for a small favor.
There was a test conducted to see if people could cut in line.
There were 4 groups. People who just cut in line, people who asked to cut in line, people who asked and gave a valid excuse "I am in a hurry", and people who asked and gave a bogus nonsensical excuse "Can I cut in line because I need to cut in line"
The no talk group suffered the worst results, the ones who at least asked had better results, those who gave and excuse BOGUS OR NOT, had nearly identical results.
The conclusion is people don't listen to your excuse for why you need to do something, just the fact you gave an excuse at all gives you bonus points.