People Management: Insignificant Part We Hardly Talk About

 

Does a person that manages the people need to become insensible with feelings?

Human has been proven overtime hard to control and respond differently depending on their state of mind. Then, who said it is great idea to have another human- to control another group of human? Wild idea. 

Hi there, we are zooming in to 4 years later in which now I'd promoted to become an outlet manager. It has been less than a year as of today, but it felt way too long somehow. There were so many things happened granted I've lost counting since October 2022. As a manager I'm responsible to support my company on 3 things. On tonight post, we need to discuss on 1 of the them- managing people.

  Supervising my subordinate basic behaviour is my least favourite commitment. I've always assumed people have good common sense to get their shit together and behave accordingly. Well, I've learn the hard way. Previously I have explained I drove 1 hour to work due to personal reason. In the span of 1 year, I had never late, overslept, "stuck in traffic due to unforeseen circumstances" or whichever reason your co-worker used. I reckon only 2 times late due to heavy traffic happened from other major car accident. The rest of it? Prompt. Punctual. Because I understand it's my job to be on time.

  Not for the rest of the team, especially for the very few. And this cause me to experience extreme anxiety in the morning, wondering who is going to be late today? It was bad. I shouldn't feel that, but I felt that. Repeated tardiness also will need me to escalate this issue to upper management. Attendance issues from the staff that had gastric because they chose spicy ramen as breakfast will need me to question, is this person insane? This situation then put me in difficult emotions. I'm drowning nervously. I want them to work comfortably with me, but I also want them to be held accountable for their basic behaviour too. My heart and my brain are stretching to opposite spectrum. I don't know what to do and how to properly react.

That eventually leads me to crying.

  But I cannot cry. I'm manager. Crying is a waste of time. The plot now focus on me getting my shit together and act on the company procedure. After countless interview and advices with these unethical staff, the plot twist is I'm the one who need to pull my act. I'm the one that need to re-learn to control my people. Not the other way round.

I was hurt and grew anxiety out of this affairs. Asking myself: did I act right? Will they hate me? Will my staff listen to me now? Will my management look down on me? Will they think I'm a pain in the ass? No amount of self help book can help me on this. No joke, I've stopped rounding self-help corner in the bookstore because I figured, they can't help me get through it. 

  It will be the tears, the self doubt, the moment I sang one song from Taylor Swift that screamed "Cause baby I could built a castle, out of all the bricks they threw at me", the random scribble on my notepad that will be pouring rain in daily basis. It will be me looking at the bathroom mirror. Because I want to react, but I don't know how to react. So I choose to escape doing mundane thing human capable of. Then, collapse internally. Handling this kind of people on top of managing my outlet like I've agreed upon.

We hardly talk about this part. Because if we talk about it, it seems insignificant.