The bad.
The manager was all over the place. One day something would be super important then the next day, it wasn't. We would focus on one area of the store and then rest would fall apart and the manger would freak out and focus on another part. It was a never ending circle of busy work at the manager's wim. It was their way or the highway. There was very little room about giving your input or ideas.
Like it or not, the store is a clearance store. They have been open for 5 years now and have conditioned their customers to shop when the store is 50% off. They take away the 50% off sale and sales drop, customer counts slow down. The manager would always pull clearance items to the stock room and put out size runs of polo shirts or pants. 3-4 different colors if you were lucky. I could not tell you how many times I would have regulars approach me and ask what happened to the clearance. "They (the manager) pulled it off the sales floor" would be my response. They would leave empty handed.
I found try and bring out racks of clearance or add spaces around the store with clearance items. I would always come back from a day off and find my racks and items were pulled from the sales floor and back in the stock room. When asking why, I would get a passive aggressive answer. "You can't have rolling racks on the sales floor" unless, the manager made them then it was perfectly fine.
I know I wasn't perfect but I did try and make the store better. I wanted to sell items. Instead we spent countless hours moving product around instead of just selling it.
The store had massive turnover, roughly 200% and the manager really didn't understand why. It starts with you. The manager made the store really hard to work in and you never knew if they would come in happy or angry and snap at you. People quit their manager. Period. That turnover is a direct result of the store manager.
Passive aggressive notes were left everywhere in the store. In the stock room, the teammate break room, the bathroom doors, and cash wrap with the issue of the day. If you want the team to work on something, tell it to them face to face and not in a note because you don't want to leave the office.
I will be forever grateful for the experience as an ASM but please, look deep into your own self and style and find the flaws of how you behave and lead the store. So many good teammates are chased out the front doors because the store manager isn't confident in themselves and has to crack the whip to give the impression they are good.
