Parks Place

The three-year mark came and went. The Zone Manager system had settled somewhat but not a terrible amount. It was still very volatile, and the turnover rate was still very high. Princess and Hammer lasted. Most of the others did not. There was a revolving door over the Specialty departments that didn’t seem to go away. The final Zone Manager that ended up in Specialty was a transfer from a different store. His name was Storm. I do not remember exactly what he did at the other store, I think it might have been something in the receiving department. I also applied for the position and again did not receive an interview. I was used to it by now.

Storm was not a bad manager. He had a lot of good stories but I confess after a while I wasn’t sure how many of them I believed. He claimed to be a remote travel expert who put together private vacation plans for people. And at one point he was in charge of a coffee shop that was going to put Starbucks out of business but I’m fairly certain that didn’t happen. He did what pretty much all of the Zone Managers had done so far and that was to ignore the Flooring Department. Probably a good thing,

By now I had the department firmly under my occupation. Oddball knew that it was our department and no one else was gonna touch it. By now Hook had quit (or been asked to leave, I honestly don’t remember because it wasn’t a great loss) . To replace Hammer we hired another Specialist. A hotshot Lowes vet from Jersey. I’m going to call her Eagle because she loved The Eagles. She seriously knew her stuff and was a wonderful addition to the team. We also brought in a former employee from a different Big Box retailer. He was very good at merchandising but he was also very stubborn and believed he was right about everything. We’re gonna call him Stubborn because I want to.

Between myself, Oddball, Eagle, and Stubborn the department had never looked better. I was still rocking the closing shift. We noticed we were having a hard time finding products in topstock. At this point there wasn’t any location system to find things on a shelf or in topstock. So I went ahead and partnered with the overnight team and I mapped all of the topstock that the flooring was kept in and turned it into a Google Sheets document. I gave the overnight supervisors access to it and together we were able to seriously increase findability for the product.

We were running very efficiently and things were going very smoothly. So you know something had to break. Now I don’t actually mean that in a bad way, at least not in the long run. The day of reconning had come. The debt was called. And Ivan’s reign of terror was over. He was terminated on the spot one day in the middle of the week. Probably just a month or so after the Zone Manager program was implemented. The District Manager just walked in, told the Operations Manager to cancel his card and terminated him immediately. Obviously there was a quiet celebration amongst the plebeian’s, including myself.

Now why was he terminated you might wonder. Surly it was for failing to meet goals or metrics. Perhaps it was because he stole from the company or lied about inventory? No, dear reader. It was none of those things. Ivan the Terrible was a family man, with 2 young children and a loving wife. So of course he was sleeping with the front end supervisor. And giving her preferential treatment when it came to promotions including a Zone Manager position.

I know, shocking. After he was fired the woman in question quit. His wife divorced him and thankfully for me I never saw him again. I’ve been told by a few people that he is still in the area selling windows or fences or something of the sort. I couldn’t care less honestly. I hope he is able to afford food and a roof. Outside of that he hasn’t entered my thoughts since this went down (other than in the course of writing this of course.)

So what happens now? Well the DM pulled all the Zone managers and ASM’s into the office to talk. I have no real idea what went down in that room but we were told that we would be getting an interim manager while they found us a new store manager. Honestly I had next to no contact with him or most of the ASM’s at this point anyway so it didn’t really affect me. It did occur to me that maybe I had a reasonable shot at a Zone Manager position now that Ivan was no longer in charge.

As for the immediate here-and-now there really wasn’t much of a change in the building. There was buzz about it for a few days and everything just gradually fell back into place and work continued as normal. The interim manager seemed nice but he also seemed like he had both feet out the door already. I honestly don’t remember his name. I had some contact with “At The End of The Day” on a regular basis now because the company had started holding Specialist meetings to discuss sales goals and metrics and stuff like that. Probably not a bad idea at all. I’m not much of a meeting person though. If it can be an email let it be a damn email. I work best when I’m out on the floor driving sales or keeping things in order. Not stifled up in a room listening to someone tell me what I should be doing out there.

After about a month and a half our new store manager arrived. She was a transfer from up north. We were going to be her first Store Manager position. She was just a few years older than me (just under 30 if I recall correctly). She seemed like a genuinely nice person, but her management style would remain to be seen. I’m gonna call her Indy (because she liked the Colts, can you tell I’m running out of nicknames at this point?) If nothing else she was warmer and showed a much more human side than Ivan had. So I was already a fan.

And I think we can call it there for now. I will continue in Part Eight. Thank you for reading!