A friend of ours (let's call him Lowes, LOL) owns a small business, and I've been helping out at his store over the last few days. And I've had the "pleasure" of working with one of his staff members during this time. Let's call her Clueless. (This is in fact a double entendre; there is such a clothing store in Sydney... LOL) And she is so disrespectful! She's not rude, she just doesn't respect Lowes' decision on so many things. It's his business, and if he makes certain offers/discounts to people, then she should just respect his decision, and not question it each and every time. Certain decisions are made for strategic reasons, and she doesn't always see this bigger picture. All she sees is "well this is a 10% discount, and so we're losing 10%, which we wouldn't lose out ordinarily. So this is a bad decision", and herein starts the questioning of Lowes' original decision. She just doesn't see that this isn't all there is to it, and that we may be winning a lot more business from this one customer, which we otherwise would not have received. ARGH, she is so frustrating sometimes!!!
The other thing that annoys me is how she makes decisions based on how easy it makes life for her. If she can find a shortcut to do something, then she'll do it that way. That's not always a bad thing, sometimes she comes up with ingenious ideas this way, which can turn out perfectly fine. It just becomes a problem when she starts vetoing Lowes' ideas, just because his ideas - in her opinion - are too hard to implement, administer or manage.
And one final issue - she feels like she is entitled to make overarching decisions in Lowes' absence. Uh HELLO, I don't think so! You don't own the business. You don't have the authority to do whatever you want. Just because he is not in the store at any particular time doesn't give you the right to offer whatever you want to customers. Unbelievable.
I think Lowes is partly to blame for how she is right now. He hadn't set boundaries from the outset; and being a small business, written procedures aren't in place to set boundaries and expectations. I'm not saying that he shouldn't have processes in place . The complete opposite, actually. Especially after seeing what has happened now, without them. And I don't know how he can rectify the problem now. He has let her run amok in certain ways, and I can't see how he can all of a sudden set boundaries and not expect a negative reaction from her.
Lowes has also mentioned that in the past, when he has put his foot down, and made his final decision, no questions asked, she becomes sullen and ignores him for the rest of the day. How rude and disrepectful is that?! I can't believe you would act that way with your own boss. I am completely shocked. And at the same time feeling sorry for him to have to put up with this behaviour.
