Opportunity Four Application to Self

For this blog post I chose to talk about the manager at my place of work at the time that the hotel changed management. He was moved in before our old manager was gone and everything seemed to be going well. He seemed nice and mostly he seemed excited to get to work as a team. However, as soon as our old manager left and the hotel officially changed names it became a completely different scenario. In a situation where he should have been “supporting”, because we had a ton of new procedures and a new operating system and really needed the support of management. He decided to go more in the direction of directing. He became the worst micro-manager I have ever seen and would nit-pick at anything possible. His favorite thing was positioning in the lobby; he would tell you to move if you were more than 3 inches from where he wanted you, and as where he wanted you was always changing it was impossible to please the man. He also completely changed our schedule with no regard for seniority, and even worse he scheduled some people with kids in the afternoon. When we switched to let them see their kids, he flipped out and said we were “undermining his authority.” He ended up being fired after a few months and multiple employees under his control quitting.

However, there were definitely a few positives gained from this experience however. I learned that micromanaging is the worst thing any manager can do. It drives employees insane and an upset employee will not provide good guest service. I also learned that it is extremely important to be supportive of your employees. The best way to get anyone to do anything is to have them buy into it. Another thing I learned was the power of the schedule. The easiest way to make someone happy is to give them a good schedule which is an easy thing to do as a manager.