A521.5.8.RB_MedinaM

On October 2012, in Daytona Beach, FL, I was approached by my immediate supervisor with a list of tasks that needed to be completed before the end of business. Along with this list, the instructions were to not stay passed the scheduled time, as it would hurt budget for the next week. These tasks were given to me an hour before my punch-out time. The list consisted of various tasks such as counting inventory, making the next week’s order for both food and paper products, cleaning the entire back room area, etc. Typically on the days of inventory, counting inventory takes about five hours and must be done with someone else for verification purposes. Composing the next week’s orders, between counting and inputting the order into the system, takes about two hours for each order since the systems are different. That day I felt like I was in so much conflict between my feelings about what she had done and how much she trusted me to get them done before my scheduled punch-out time. I tried different things between delegating tasks to subordinates and doing some myself before my scheduled deadline, but overall it all fell back to me. The subordinates that were left for the rest of the day had the work cutout for them as business transactions increase when it’s cold outside. After being repeated the importance of the completion of such tasks, I decided that I had no other option but to stay off the clock in order to complete the tasks given. Now imagine if my immediate supervisor had not abused of my loyalty. Do you think I’ll still be able to trust her to do what is right? To be a little bit more organized? To maybe jump-in and help when needed?

Conveying this story is important to me as I hope that it sparks action. The action should be to become more organized in a way that it will not hurt the relationship that supervisors and leads must have. Whether it’s the lead trusting the supervisor to do what is right and the supervisor to not abuse of the lead’s loyalty to him or her. If this story sparks the right action, the dynamic of the entire organization will change in terms of management and its employees. Employees will learn to trust their supervisors more and in turn become more loyal to them rather than having this continuous gap and breakdown in communication between management and employees, and for the organization it will mean a dramatic decrease in turnover and an increase in human capital and knowledge.