Favoritism – Personal vs Professional

Warehouse and Operations as a Career

Hey all, Marty here with Warehouse and Operations as a Career back at you. It’s been a busy week. I’ve been giving some leadership classes, developed a few incentive programs for different things like productivity, attendance and position accomplishments. I’ll be doing a little traveling over the next couple of weeks, I’m in Nevada today and I’m aiming for Colorado next week, dependent on the weather though! I try not to be around snow.

One of the things that came up during a group class was the subject of favoritism within the workplace. As young members of management I see to many people fall into that trap, it happened to me, and it took me several quarters to clean it up. We must remember to be professional instead of personal in the workplace.

Let me share my story and then I’d like to talk about a few things’ others shared over the last couple of weeks.

I was a night shift order selector back in the high-rise department, pulling groceries on an order picker, you may call it a cherry picker. I’d been back there, oh, probably like 3 years and I had been promoted to the warehouse inventory control associate on the day shift. It wasn’t an actual front line management position, but I was given some responsibility and authority, or I felt like I had a little authority, anyway I was told I could pick someone to work with me. We would be responsible to perform item counts for the inventory and merchandising departments. Things like running down lost or misplaced product, counting truck shorts and misships and overseeing the salvage or spoiled product areas. I loved that segment of my career but I almost threw it all away by acting off of a personal decision instead of a professional one.

I had a good friend on the night shift, I had worked with him for all 3 years, and I had asked if I could bring him to days with me. I thought he’d be great at what we were going to be doing. I was told no, that I would need to choose an associate from the day shift. I only knew two people on the shift. One was an inbound clerk, and the other was a receiver on the dry product docks. The inbound clerk was kind of dry, didn’t play around, he was full of integrity too, he was straight up with the over the road drivers, stick and fair. The receiver was, well, fun to work with and he had done this job before, filling in a few times when an inventory associate was out and such. I liked him so he was my choice.

About my third week in, my new partner was sent out to count an item by the v.p. of operations. As he was entering the aisle to go to the location, he encountered two gentlemen from inventory control. They spoke, he explained where he was going, and they told him they had counted it and the count was xxxx or whatever. Well, he ran with it, and reported it to the v.p.. To make a long story short, it was incorrect. I was called to the v.p.’s office and asked what he was given the bad numbers. I didn’t want to explain how everything went down so I said I would go count it myself real quick. He said there was no need and asked if I was going to be able to do this job and control my choice as a teammate. Come to find out he already knew the whole story and how everything had gone down. He was not pleased with a direct order from him not being carried out by what he considered to be my crew!

I did what most of y’all would have done. I went to my guy yelling and screaming, asking why he didn’t go count the product himself! He brushed the whole episode off and even threw in that did I really believe all his short and mispull counts were 100%. We both laughed, I knew he didn’t take things seriously all the time. My next promotion was dryside lead, I didn’t make him the full-time warehouse inventory guy under me! We both grew up as it related to responsibility and both ended up having great careers but that was my last time to soley base a hiring decision on my personal feelings. Even today I wish I had chosen the inbound clerk as my teammate. I still hate thinking of how I felt standing in that v.p.’s office with him asking if he could count on me going forward!

So, what brought all this up today was a question presented to me at one of my leadership classes. Things got started with one of the students sharing this story. A lady had been working at a produce company for about 2 years. They had a supervisor position come open and she had applied through HR. She’d spoken with her lead, her manager and the general manager about it. The department manager ended up bringing in a supervisor from outside the company. Everyone seemed fine with her choice, understanding management needs to do what was best for the company at the time. It was explained to the internal candidate that they management appreciated he enthusiasm and that her time would come but for now they need an experienced supervisor, some one that could hit the ground running. She was fine with that, excited even as she was told she could start receiving a little training here and there.

As it turns out, the new supervisor was a friend of the manager. A friend that had no produce experience. And no supervisory experience. And had been brought in at an inflated salary.

As you can imagine the operations started going down hill pretty quickly. Within 3 quarters the company had lost some very productive employees, expenses went up and productivity went down. The manager and the supervisor were terminated. The company hired a new manager who immediately named the original internal associate her dock supervisor. As the story goes everyone prospered and the company grew!

The question that was brought up in class was is it legal for a manager to hire or promote anyone they want to a new position. The easy answer is that yes, as long as they do not discriminate against another. A weak manager may choose a friend over the more qualified candidate as long as he or she does not discriminate against another. Looking back that is what I did in my first position of non-authority authority! As I mentioned, I still think about that. Did I change his life going forward. I like to think not, but I have no way of knowing.

It’s important to remember though that there are consequences or actions based on every decision we make. The produce lost several high producing associates due to the incompetency’s of that old manager and supervisor. In the long run the manager did not do the friend any favors by giving them a position they were not qualified for and ended up losing their jobs for both of them.

The moral to today’s story is, and we’ve spoken too it several times here at WAOC, is that we need to keep our personal opinions, feelings, partnerships, and objectives separated from our professional lives. Business is business ladies and gentlemen.

There’s a few thoughts on hiring and promoting friends. Oh, another thing that came up real quick was, is it illegal if a company refused to hire a husband or wife, even a relative just because someone related to them already works there. The easy answer is no, and actually many companies have such written into their handbook. That is a rule for many different reasons. Maybe the hiring agent feels like if one person is terminated for cause, both employees will be lost. If there’s a divorce between two associates things could bleed over into the workplace. Should there be an emergency within the family several people could need to take off at a time. I almost forgot to mention that question!

Well, I’ve got to get back over to the warehouse, I’m working with the second shift for a while tonight. I appreciate you checking in with us today and I hope we talked about something that’ll help you out in your career! Have a topic you’d like us to address on the show? just send me an email to [e-mail] and we’ll check it out. And remember that you can always get your questions and concerns answered by those on the floor by sending a message through our Facebook and Twitter feeds @whseandops and check out our Instagram using waocpodcast.

Until next week, Have a great, productive, prosperous and above all safe week out there.