As a twenty year old college student, I have had a few different jobs since entering the work world. Now granted, they have all been menial jobs, so it's not as though I'm working in some big corporate office with CEO's or anything, I really just deal with other associates and managers. I've probably had at least about ten different managers at the various places I've worked and honestly, maybe half of them have truly been what I consider to be professional.
I think everyone, not only managers or CEO's, but associates too, should be professional. This means they are reliable, hard-working, respectful, cooperative, and contribute to the goal of the company. With that said, associates are generally only responsible for themselves, but managers are responsible for a whole team of people, which means that they have to not only possess these traits, but enhance them so that they can lead by example. At least that is the way I was taught a manager should be. Not only that, but leading a team means that one has to be an exceptional communicator so that associates can be clear on their responsibilities, feel free to ask questions, and feel able to express their strengths in the workplace so that work can be done as efficiently as possible in order to get the business to thrive. It seems logical, right? Unfortunately, I'm coming to learn that an incredible amount of managers do not possess these professional traits at all.
It seems that in today's workplaces managers are more apt to just do whatever they want, simply because they are managers and regardless of professionalism. One manager I had was completely disrespectful to everyone except other management and since this manager was in charge of scheduling, if anyone ever stood up for themselves or spoke up in any way after one of her out of turn statements, they might not get any shifts for a while. The best and worst shifts were given out based on that how that manager personally felt toward the associates rather than based on their work ethic or availability.
Aside from the entitlement and resistance of some managers to show any sort of respect to their workers, which I find to be quite unprofessional, there are also some who do things like tell other associates about a problem they might have with one other associate. They push off managerial duties onto associates rather than taking care of something themselves, whether it is a task or communicating with other associates. I've recently noticed managers who will tell associates about something that another associate is doing wrong rather than just going to that associate and explaining how they can fix whatever they are not doing correctly.
When I was in high school I was so excited to finally be able to make my own money and earn what I wanted on my own, but I didn't actually expect the workplaces that I saw on television told from the standpoint of the angry associate who deals with the awful manager every day with no choice. It's actually kind of real, and if you do leave, there isn't a great chance of finding better management. It's awful, because I know so many people who deal with this and some who really can't leave because they are responsible for supporting someone else, but it's especially bad for the managers who work hard to be good, professional leaders and get along with their associates because they are the ones that usually get stuck with cleaning up after the unprofessional managers. Maybe in companies that require a lot of communication and team work it isn't just the associates that should get hired based on their ability to interact properly with coworkers and customers, but managers as well. But hey, what do I know?
