Whenever new management enters the equation, there are bound to be a few issues that pop up, that can affect the entire company… but mostly the employees working under them. This boss joined a small cell phone company in a rural area, and coming from New York, he had no idea what kind of environment he was getting himself into. One of his employees, OP, worked on cell phone towers and used the company's competitors' phones sometimes when he had no service. The former boss had no issue with this…

Many businesses depend on international deals and teams. It's exciting to get other cultures and markets into your business. But it's not easy. There are many factors you have to consider, one of the most obvious ones being the time differences. It's unprofessional to call your employees after working hours, but for some reasons many bosses and managers think that it's okay to call you after work hours, because in their time zone it's still work hours. Work hours. Work hours. Work hours. Like,…

Unfortunately, after long years of service with an organization, all it takes is a singular change in leadership to bring everything crashing down. New managers come with new ideas and processes, bringing things with them that they've made a part of their playbook—eager to shake things up and leave their mark on their new organization. While these ideas and processes may have been successful at a previous job, they can seem wildly misplaced at the current one. With things like introducing open…

Every job has its quirks, and workers usually have their own adapted processes to deal with these in efficient and effective ways. Sure, sometimes these might cut too many corners and need reeling in by management, but the worst thing a new manager can do is assume that they know a better way of doing things. See, usually, these adapted processes are developed by workers over an extended period of time through experimentation and process of elimination in order to streamline their tasks and rem…

Often when hearing of a good job opportunity, people are on their best behavior, hoping that they'll pass the interview. After they get the job, the pretty picture that the company carefully curated begins to crumble, leaving a gaping black hole behind the velvet curtains that turn out to be a prop. In this case, OP was convinced by a friend to drive 9 hours for a new job that sounded at first like a ‘good gig’. It took OP exactly 3.5 days to realize that something was very off about their boss…

‘Nobody wants to work these days’ and ‘Employees aren’t loyal anymore' are two of the most popular sentences coming out of management's mouths nowadays, as they seem to be under the assumption that something has gone awfully wrong in recent years when it comes to work ethic. They aren't entirely wrong, but they're looking at it the wrong way. Why doesn't anybody want to work anymore? Why have employees finally grown a pair and are no longer feeling obligated to their job the same way they'd fee…

It's ironic how few effective management skills "managers" possess, with their leadership abilities sitting around the same level, which is somewhere around zero. Managers love a good buzzword, but action orientation is not their strong suit. In this case, OP was working as a top-producing salesperson, in charge of training several salespeople and getting their numbers up, which OP did well. An opportunity for a promotion popped up, and OP thought they had the experience as well as the skills n…

New managers tend to make the same, common mistake of entering a workplace and attempting to prove themselves by ‘bettering the environment’, usually by changing policies that actually work. What then follows is a string of mistakes that either cost the company good employees, a lot of money, or the ‘environment’. In this case, a small AV company that dealt with thousands of NEC displays a year hired a new general manager who had absolutely no idea what he was doing, per usual. The employee in…

New management always finds a way to demotivate workers, usually via micromanagement, but in this case, the opposite is true. There are countries where labor laws are a dime a dozen, and in this specific one, employees have a certain amount of hours required to work each month; every hour short of that is deducted from monthly payment, and every hour beyond is paid as overtime. This employee used that to his advantage when his new boss decided to mess with him, attempting to deduce his salary b…

If you don't understand what your new subordinates do, it would be a good idea to seek to understand their work. Jumping to baseless conclusions that their work is worthless just because your skull is three inches thick is a surefire way to land the entire organization in hot water. Well, true to typical “new boss logic,” this boss, “Sally," was too quick to judge when an essential analyst was restructured under her tyrannical

It's rare these days to get a manager that you actually like. Usually, boomers are in the upper management and they think the world revolves around them and/or around a toxic management style. The whole “eat or be eaten” mentality that spirals many managers into treating their employees like crap—especially in the service industry! Why does that industry attract a certain type of toxic management style, who knows?! On longtime service industry employee recently got a new manager and they love h…