Good and bad bosses

I've had a few bosses in my time. I've worked alongside a few, and I've been a boss as well. Here are a few of my observations down the years.
When I worked at the bank the manager was a seldom seen figure who occupied an office and hardly ever emerged. He left the day to day running of his branch to the deputy or assistant manager, who then delegated down to the various department heads. It worked well. Because the business was run to deadlines, the overriding concern was to getting the job done to the highest possible standard in the shortest possible time. Once everything was completed and the assistant manager gave the OK, we could go home. Because it took a long time to progress to branch manager, and because there was a well defined career path, one rarely encountered a ruthless, devious and ambitious individual trying to short cut his way to the top by fair means or foul. One did, however, encounter a bunch of bank clerks who had reached the limits of their ability and whose career path lay in a series of sideways moves.
My lack of ambition caused me to be transferred to the various sub-branches of the bank, along with the other no-hopers, and each day was spent in doing the work as quickly as possible so that I could go home.

It wasn't until I worked in retail that I encountered an environment that rewarded ability rather than length of service, and these observations are based on my retail experiences.


The first thing I noticed was how some managers would employ tactics that kept their subordinates fighting each other. Divide and rule. While your departmental and assistant managers are fighting each other, they're not fighting you.


Then I noticed that some managers rule by fear, while others by encouragement. In every business the manager needs to stand out. He need to be head and shoulders above the rest.
Some managers do this by kicking their staff so that they are always on their knees. The manager is the only one standing.
However, the best managers that I worked for and with would encourage and equip their staff, making them strong and able to stand tall- with the manager carried on their shoulders.
As I travelled from branch to branch, either assisting or training managers, or relieving them for days off or holidays, or taking over from them and managing their store, I noticed another difference between good and bad managers.
Some managers would deliberately hold the store back, rather than allow turnover to increase to its full potential. They would hold the store to the level that they could manage,and not allow it to grow any further. Success brought problems to them. A bigger turnover meant more stock had to be ordered and handled. A busier store brought problems of staff training and retention. It brought security and shoplifting problems. If turnover was held to the rate of inflation, it meant a quieter life.


I was a pioneer rather than a settler. I preferred the challenge of taking an empty shell of a shop unit and fitting it out, of recruiting and training my staff, of ordering the stock and filling the shelves, and the bustle and excitement of opening day. I enjoyed working hard and growing the turnover week by week and following it through a complete year, with the Christmas build up and climax, and the post Christmas doldrums. After about eighteen months I was ready for a new challenge.
I was lucky in that most of the firms I worked for, namely Superdrug, Share Drugstores and Volume One Bookshops operated at a time when it was possible to open new shops in town centres, that there were new markets to break into, and big profits to be made.
As a manager I opened five new stores, and assisted in the opening of several more.
I trained many a new manager, some of whom went on to greater things.
I got out of retail at the right time and have never looked back.

The greasy pole, or the onset of ambition

I've never been particularly ambitious. My form teacher at my first grammar school wrote on my end of term report that I was over inclined to rest on my laurels and time has proved him correct.
I do just enough to get comfortable and only move if bored or threatened, or if I suddenly get ambitious.
I've already posted about my ambitions for 1978. Learn to drive, new house, new job. I started work at Superdrug and found myself surrounded by ambitious people with differing levels of ruthlessness. When Superdrug started in 1966, it was a very hands-on set up. The Goldsteins did everything and as the company grew they recruited like minded people to take the company forward. They never once recruited an area manager. On the retail side, everyone started at the bottom, as a trainee manager. They learned how the company worked by doing the work. Those with talent got their own store very quickly. They were expanding at a steady rate, without having to go into debt and keeping all expenditure under control. There was never a penny wasted. As the company grew they needed an area manager and they appointed someone who'd been a manager at the very start. He then became a Regional Director as the company expanded. It was said that if you cut the arm off a Superdrug area manager, you'd see "Superdrug" running through the arm, like letters in a stick of rock.
I wasn't into such naked ambition. If it was a case of "compete or retreat", I'd leave them to it.
And that was how it was for two or three years.
Then I reached thirty and I decided I'd better get a move on. I decided to pull my weight a little more and improve my performance. I even asked to be considered for any new shops that might be opening. My bosses were gobsmacked. They'd got used to me doing just enough to stay out of trouble and there I was, bright as a button and looking for promotion. A few months later and I still felt the same way. I was based in Northampton but travelling to all the stores in a forty mile radius. I even transferred to Peterborough for a while, and commuted daily.
This went on for a year or two. I was getting more and more frustrated, and my bosses were digging their heels in. I had to get another job and I didn't care where.
Some people are naturally ambitious, but remain affable. My ambition made me angry mean and nasty. I was not nice to know.

Unpaid work part one

I've done a bit of voluntary work over the years, depending on work and music commitments. In the early eighties my band had folded and I struggled to get another one going. It was always a bind finding suitable reliable musicians, and when we relocated to Somerset I just decided that it was too much trouble finding musicians, agents and venues so I retired from music for a few years.
My father was an engine driver and I'd always loved steam railways. I got the bug quite badly in the mid-late 70s. Whenever we played a weekend booking in Leicester that involved playing both Saturday night, Sunday lunch and Sunday night I'd visit the Great Central Railway at Loughborough during the afternoon and ride on the railway. I even drove the 90 miles or so to Didcot to volunteer to clean up and help restore one of the scrap railway locomotives there. After a while the travelling got too much and when I heard that there was a small group restoring a steam engine not far from where I lived I decided to pay them a visit.
For the next few years I spent most Sundays up to my armpits in grease and muck, cleaning and painting an old steam locomotive. It was great fun and a great sense of achievement when we finally steamed it and it moved under its own power.
Soon after that we moved over 150 miles away, but all was not lost. There was another steam railway a few miles away and after spending some time getting our new house in order I put in an appearance there. Our little quarry tank engine was dwarfed by the huge 9F freight loco that I worked on. I climbed in the firebox (when the fire was out) and could stand up inside it with my hands outstretched. I had to sweep it clean and apply a limewash to the metal in order to protect it over the winter. I did a few other jobs but nothing as glamourous (!) as that.
After a few years we moved back to Northamptonshire and I rejoined my friends with the little saddle tank engine. They were about to move to a new greenfield site. When I saw the new site there were four wooden pegs in the ground to signify where the museum would be sited. Over the next year or so we levelled the ground, dug pits and foundations ready for the building and rails.
I learned that you have to dig deep if you want to build high.
It was almost a year before we were able to move our engines into the museum but it was great fun and the perfect antidote to the day job.
Sometimes a change is better than a rest.

Superdrug

Superdrug was set up in the early sixties by the Goldstein family. Ralph (the father) had sold his chain of supermarkets to Tesco and his sons Peter, Ronald & Howard were looking for a new venture. They opened the first Superdrug in Putney High St in 1966. They found the premises, fitted it out, stocked the shelves and manned the tills. They grew the business from humble beginnings and there wasn't one single aspect of the business that they hadn't done. They knew it inside out.
I was interviewed by Peter Goldstein at the Northampton branch of Superdrug and he offered me a job. The company was growing, opening new stores almost every week and he made a point of telling me about the opportunities for promotion that existed within the company.
One thing convinced me to join Superdrug.
It wasn't Tesco.

I wasn't prepared for the culture shock when I turned up for work on my first day.
For a start, it was very formal. All the management staff called each other Mr.... No first names.
No fraternising with the staff. Inappropriate behaviour with a female member of staff was a sacking offence. It was like being an officer on a ship of the line.
Then there were the hours of work. The store opened from 9.00 to 5.30. I was expected to start at 7.00 to unload the deliveries and to stay until at least 6.00 each night. I was used to having the odd Saturday off. I couldn't even have the Saturday off before my annual holidays. My band were playing about three times a week and they'd have to wait for me to finish work before driving off to the venue. I'd change from my work clothes in the van and grab a sandwich and perhaps a short nap. I weighed about 11 stone and was built like a racing snake.
My job title was Trainee Manager. This meant that I did everything from opening the store to unloading the deliveries and packing everything in the warehouse. I also made lists of the stock that had been sold during the day and picked the goods for the female staff to price. I also kept the store neat and tidy and dressed the windows. Every evening we'd face the shelves up, bringing all the stock forward to give the appearance of  full shelves. We'd count the stock every week and place and order with head office. This was delivered two days later. Superdrug ran a very very very tight ship. There was no waste anywhere. The cardboard was separated from the rubbish and sent back to the warehouse, where it was baled up and sold for recycling. This was at least twenty years before recycling became fashionable.
We cashed up the tills every day and banked every penny. The cash had to balance to the penny. If it didn't there was an enquiry.
We carried out staff searches at least twice a week. The reasoning was that if the staff expected to be searched then they wouldn't try anything stupid. It mostly worked, although I did catch a saturday girl with a bag full of sweets and no receipt. She lost her job.
We took stock three or four times a year. We didn't have a stocktaking team as that would have cost too much. The area manager would oversee the stocktake and it was conducted like a military exercise. Every staff member had to come in, or stay behind after work to take stock. We never closed, not even for half an hour. During the day we'd count the warehouse and the backup stock and as soon as the door shut we started counting the stock on the shelves. We were only interested in monetary value. One person would count the stock and write the amount on a piece of tally roll, and another would follow along, spot checking and recording the amounts on a master sheet. These were gathered together and tallied up and it was possible to arrive at a provisional stock result within three hours of closing time. Woe betide if you had a bad result.

Superdrug didn't have a training department. They expected their trainees to have had some formal training at their previous jobs. I hadn't. The company estimated that a trainee manager could relieve another branch manager after a few weeks, and be able to manage his own store after three months.
I struggled. Boy did I struggle. I tried to find another job but there was nothing doing. It was 1979 and the country was in a right mess. I had to stick it out.
For all my different jobs, I'd had no experience in management or leadership. I sullenly followed orders and became the area relief manager. I'd travel to the various Superdrug stores within a thirty mile radius to cover the manager's days off and holidays, and I tried to keep a low profile.
Two things kept me sane.
One was my music. I'd formed a top40 group in 1976 after my rock band had folded, and we played the pubs and clubs within a thirty mile radius of Northampton. It was the one constant during all the years that I was with Superdrug.
I'd achieved my ambitions for 1978. New house, new car, new job. I'd married my long term girlfriend in 1977 and we were working hard doing up the house that we'd bought together.
I can't say that I was happy though. We were predictable and safe, like an old married couple.
Then a new chief cashier started at Superdrug. She only stayed for a few months but she changed my life. After she'd left the company the rules about fraternising didn't count and we became friends. After a couple of years we became lovers. We've been married for over twenty five years.
I was a stubborn and slow  learner. It took me ages to feel comfortable giving orders. I'd always been one of the workers. I had to learn to be single minded, not to be distracted and have clear objectives. It took a long time.
One defining moment was during a particularly busy time. I was on the shop floor, rushing around trying to restock the fast moving lines. There I was, with my head down, price gun a blur, and my staff standing by watching me. I suddenly realised what I was doing and everything changed in an instant. From now on, they would be the ones with their heads down working, and I would be watching them.
I stayed with Superdrug for nearly six years before moving on. As fate would have it, I was back with them within three years. A lot had gone on in the intervening time.
Looking back I really admire the Goldsteins. They were innovators, pioneers. They were hard but fair. A few years after I'd left Superdrug they offered me a chance to join them on another pioneering retail venture.

The birth of ambition

1978 was the year for change. At the start of the year I resolved to do three things: firstly to pass my driving test. I grew up in London and never needed to drive, not when there were three different bus routes and two tube lines within easy walking distance of home. I did get a Honda 50 when I was seeing a girl who lived in Hillingdon. I missed the tube one night and it was a long walk along Western Avenue, more than ten miles before I got a lift. I bought the bike soon afterwards. But even a bike is a bind when you live in a bedsit, so I sold it to my dad.
Living in the suburbs of Northampton was a culture shock. No buses and taxis were prohibitively expensive. I was still in my drinking phase so my girlfriend learned to drive, and our roadie used to pick me and the other guitarist up and take us to Milton Keynes, where we would rehearse and also store our kit.
So passing my test was one priority. The next was to buy our own house. In 1978 the average price for a victorian terraced house in Northampton was about £7000. We opened a savings account and I put all my gig money in it. We saved £500 in a matter of months, found a terraced house in Abington for £7200, got a mortgage and moved in during the autumn.
The third resolution was to get a new job. As a department supervisor I fancied myself as management material, despite my reluctance to impose my will in any situation. I was already considered too old to be a Tesco trainee manager (that's what they told me), so my future lay elsewhere. But where?
I needed a clean driving licence for a start. I'd had a bit of practice driving our car with my wife/girlfriend in the passenger seat, so I could control the car. I need to learn how to pass the driving test. I had five lessons and put in for my test and passed. I don't know who was more surprised, me or my wife. She needed two tests and a lot of lessons.


So that was two down, one to go. I saw an advert in the local paper looking for trainee managers for a drugstore that was opening branches everywhere. I applied and was asked to an interview.
I must have said something right because I was offered a job at a higher rate than I was earning, so I put my notice in at Tesco and prepared to move on.
By this time I was managing the wines and spirits section and I didn't have a clue what to order for the Christmas rush. There were no records and the outgoing manager had had quite enough of Tesco and wasn't going to help.
I disliked the new general manager intensely. He was arrogant and sly. He's stand on the shop floor eating the stock, and would bawl out anyone who even thought of doing the same. The top man at Tesco was Ian Maclauren. When he called in to look around he was the model of courtesy. The same could not be said for his underlings. The regional manager would visit along with the area manager. The regional manager would walk around the store and publicly bollock the area manager if something wasn't to his satisfaction. After he'd gone, the area manager would drag the general manager around the store and publicly bollock him about the same thing. He'd stomp off and the general manager would call the departmental manager over and publicly humiliate him. The the departmental manager would do the same to whoever was nearest.
Why didn't they cut out the middle men and have the Regional manager bawl out the saturday boy, and give us all a break?
Working at Tesco had its compensations, namely the fifty or more checkout girls, plus other female staff scattered around the departments. Getting off with one or more of them was almost compulsory. I did untold damage to my marriage when I worked there, but hey, that's rock 'n roll, right?
I heard from friends that the wines & spirits department sold out of stock in the first week leading up to Christmas and couldn't get any more. Shame. They should treat their staff better. 

When I started work at Superdrug in November 1978 I had achieved my ambitions for that year. New job, new house and a driving licence.

What followed was a real culture shock in every way

Temporarily speaking

I was reading through my post about the temp jobs I'd had and I realised I'd missed a few out.
A few years ago I worked at a plastics factory in Kettering on the 6.00- 2.00 shift. I made black plastic dustbins. And yellow builders buckets. And the perspex "glass" windows for red telephone boxes. And casings for modem units, etc etc etc.

The principle for each of these products is exactly the same. You have a steel mould and some plastic pellets. When subjected to enormous pressure, the pellets liquify and flow into the mould. When the sequence ends, you take the product, examine it, trim off any excess and stack it ready for despatch. If the product is faulty, it's ground down into pellets and re-used.

The products are very hot when they leave the mould, and you can't wear gloves, so you handle them carefully. The dustbins were the easiest because each one took a minute or two to form. The hardest to make were the ubiquitous plastic stacking chairs. I just couldn't trim the seat and fix the metal legs in the time between each extrusion. I was a failure.
I didn't care to be honest. I was a temp, and more interested in my music career. Other temp jobs came along and the plastics factory was taken over by another firm and production moved up north. The factory remains, an empty shell.


Another production job involved making hydraulic and brake pipes for the automotive industry. There are several ways of making them. I started by placing pre-cut lengths of hose onto a jig. These jigs went through a process that hardened the hoses into the shape of the jig. Easy peasy. The next time I worked there I had to dismantle, move and reassemble a roomful of dexion warehouse shelving. It was hard work and awkward to work with, as anyone who has tried to assemble dexion will tell you. Then I was called back to paint a water pipe that ran from one factory to another at about eight to ten feet off the ground. At least they left me alone so I could work at my own pace. Nobody else was pushing themselves, so I didn't either. Then I was an electrician's mate, pulling cable and helping him rewire a factory. He took very long lunches, and so did I.
It was easy work, and fun while it lasted.

Retail but not therapy

I began what is laughably known as a retail career as shelf filler in Tesco's. The store in Weston Favell had been open for about nine months and they were struggling to increase turnover because they couldn't keep the shelves full. The answer was to bring in a dedicated night team to stock the shelves and fill the bins.

I worked four twelve hour shifts and was paid £1 an hour. This was good money for Northampton, where shoe factory wages were about £28 per week. The downside was that the shifts were on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights. I never knew what to do on wednesdays. Should I go to bed during the day, or try to stay awake and sleep at night? Whatever I did, I always seemed to arrive for work on Thursday evenings tired out.

The work wasn't too hard. Armed with a price gun and a pen and pad, I'd list the stock that was needed for my section, go into the warehouse, load the stock onto a pallet, drag the pallet onto the shop floor and get pricing. We had to price every item. This was years before EPOS and scanners at the tills.

I stuck at it for about nine months and business boomed as a result of the better availability of stock. I asked for a transfer to the day team and they agreed. I was now a trolly pusher, cardboard clearer and mopper up of spillages. I also worked the tills when it was really busy.
One day the manager called me into his office and asked if I'd like to run the frozen food department. It was underperforming and way behind budget. I said I'd give it a go.

I started by instigating a cleaning rota, and clearing out the dead stock in the backup freezer. Gradually all the rubbish was sold through or disposed of, and I had a clean sheet to work with.

Those of us who are old enough to remember will recall that during the 1970s the nation's favourite frozen dessert was a dairy cream sponge, with arctic rolls and frozen mousses close behind. It may surprise you to know that frozen vegetable prices have hardly changed in more than 30 years and may even be cheaper in some cases. Once the department was organised we were able to push for sales. There was and is no secret to it. Keep the shelves or freezers full or if not, faced up so that they look full. Every Saturday afternoon we'd empty one freezer by rotation into shopping trolleys and store them in the walk in back freezer in the warehouse. We'd switch the freezer off and clean it thoroughly. On Monday morning we'd refill the freezer from the trolleys and top them up again, ready for the week ahead.

We never opened on Sundays. We stayed open until 8.00 on weekdays and 5.30 on Saturdays. You could always guarantee that someone would come into the store at 7.59 to do their month's shopping and someone would have to stay behind to serve them. If we'd have stayed open until 11.00 the same thing would have happened. Now we have 24 hour opening and the stores look the worse for it. The shelves are never full and I can't see the point of going shopping at three in the morning- ever. Get a life for goodness sake!

Surely the point of a successful business is to take as much money as you can in the shortest possible time? There is only so much money in the pot. If you can take it in 80 hours why double your costs and open for 160? The answer is fear.
Fear that your competitor might steal a march on you, might entice a customer to spend his hard earned dosh in their shop rather than in yours. Market share, market share, market share.

Anyway, we beat the target by miles. In April when I took over we were on course to make only half the target during the year. By September we'd equalled the target set for the year and by the end of the year we'd doubled it.

I was pleased. We'd worked very hard and had risen to the challenge. My reward was two fold. New freezers that reduced the stock capacity and which put the stock behind doors, and out of the customer's reach, and secondly, my target had been doubled. It was now four times what had been set the previous year.

It was years before I was motivated enough to try and reach a target. What's the point?

It was now 1977 and I was bored again. And demotivated by an impossible target.
I tranferred to the dairy department. We sold milk, cheese, sausages, pork pies and bloody ski bloody yoghurts.
Ski Yoghurts. We sold a pallet of them every day. Different flavours and every one of them disgusting.

The main challenge on the frozen food department was managing your back up freezer. Order too much stock and it would defrost on the loading bay. Too little and you'd sell out. By Thursday afternoon it was impossible to get another pack of peas into the freezers. The display freezers were chocka and the backup was full to the ceiling from front to back. By Saturday afternoon the backup freezer was empty, which was why we could park half a dozen shopping trolleys in there over the weekend.
Now you'd think that the best way to increase sales would be to enlarge the backup. Wrong.
In the run-up to Christmas the Butchery department would hijack the freezer and fill it with frozen turkeys.
On the dairy department we'd order  our requirements daily from the various van salesmen who called. We'd record the deliveries, the stock and work out the sales before placing an order. we had to keep an eye on the "sell by" dates, especially on a Saturday afternoon. If a product was due to go out of date on a Sunday, we'd reduce it in price to clear it. Over the weeks I noticed that certain lines stopped selling. I reluctantly reduced them in price and they'd go in seconds. The customers used to circle like vultures playing a waiting game. Eventually I'd cut my losses and reduce the prices. Some weeks I refused and let the pies and sausages go out of date and be thrown away.
The crunch finally came on Christmas Eve 1977. It was a Saturday and we'd been incredibly busy all week. Unbelievably so. I took a delivery of a  pallet of bloody ski bloody yogurts and single and double cream and waited for the onslaught.
It never came. The punters had finished their shopping on Friday night and had all gone into town to buy clothes or go to the footie. We got stung.

1978 was going to be different

Carefree

I left school in 1967 and by 1976 I'd had the following jobs-
Bank clerk
Invoice clerk
Clerical assistant
Storeman
Telesales office worker
Production planner
Factory department manager
I'd also done a little temporary work.
Apart from a week at the bank's training centre,where I learned basic machine skills I'd had no on-the-job training. I was supremely uninterested in any kind of career, especially if it interfered with my music. I was content to drift.
I wasn't irresponsible. I just wasn't going to take any responsibility, which is a different thing altogether. Any leadership or management skills were kept hidden.
I wanted to be liked. This meant that I found it hard to reprimand people.
I once got my drummer a job in the same place where I worked. It was a disaster. There was a conflict of relationship. We were equals in the band, but I was supposed to supervise him at work. It's not a good idea to work with family and friends until you can get that sorted out. Many years later I could do it, but I had a lot of growing up to do.

Then there was the whole fraternising with the female staff thing. I went to a boy's school and was very shy when I started work at the bank. Although the women were only a year or two older, they seemed so much more grown up than me. I never felt like an adult. How's an adult supposed to feel? Different to a schoolboy? I confess that I never felt like an adult until many years later, in my mid-twenties.

Once I'd had my first girlfriend I felt a little more confident, but it wasn't until I was going out with my second girlfriend that I made up for lost time. I treated her terribly. She came back from holiday a couple of days early because she was missing me, only to find that I had a German girl staying in my bedsit (just for a couple of days until she found a place of her own, you understand.)
I've already confessed to a liaison or two with the temporary staff at Olympia. It was the whole sex and drugs and rock n'roll hippy era. I thought that that was how one behaved. You feel guilty but you soon get over it. I was in a rock band. Isn't that how you were supposed to behave?

I left Telfers and food production in 1975 and was unemployed for a couple of weeks. The novelty soon wore off. We never had enough bookings and I was broke. I had to find another job and quick.

I lived near a large shopping centre. There was a large Tesco there and they needed shelf stackers to work nights. I didn't want to stack shelves and I didn't want to work nights, but I did need a job and I did need the money, so I applied and was taken on.
Welcome to the wonderful world of retail. My career for the next eighteen years.