Friday, June 27, 2008

Not Quite The A Team

I just had a mildly interesting experience at the supermarket.

The checkout people at the store during the day are usually competent and reasonably cheerful.  The ones that are working at night, not so much.  They take longer, get puzzled more easily.  My wife and I will say 'well, the store took longer because the B team was on tonight'.  Today, it was a different flavor.  All of the checkout lines were staffed normally, but the one I was in was staffed by an unusual duo -- a man wearing a tie, with an assistant who was very pretty and well dressed (casual, but well). Every so often he'd turn to her and ask 'now, how do I do this?'  It took longer than the A team would, but the combination of the guy's obvious intelligence and the visual treat of the assistant made it more bearable than it otherwise might have been. 

I figure it was a regional manager, getting a taste of what it's like in the trenches.

2 comments:

Lone Chatelaine said...

Lol! Man, that's really a bad reflection of management not having a clue how to do the jobs of their direct reports.

Cerulean Bill said...

Well, I suspect he was a couple of organizational levels above the people who routinely did it. And he was trying....