Yes, I was off script but…

I always covered everything in the script. Maybe not in order, and probably in more detail than corporate intended, but I covered it.

I received an “off the record” feedback conversation from someone at work on Friday that has seriously aggravated me and shadowed my whole weekend. We have a three-hour course on shrink for our hourly managers that is part of the “Intro to Hourly Management” week long program I sometimes cover. At my company we estimate that out of the total amount of shrink each year (the difference between what our invoices say we own vs. what the service physically counts) the percentage caused by procedural errors committed by hourly managers is between 60 and 80 percent. One of the folks in my class on Friday is from a store that just had inventory and had a shrink of two million dollars. His Facility Manager may lose his job over it, and the way I’ve been covering this course for the past eighteen months was to go into more detail about what hourly managers could do to reduce it than what the material provides for.

I got called on the carpet for it and was told to just cover the content the way it is laid out. The content is so high level it really doesn’t do anyone any good except to let them pass the test at the end of the week. I asked if I said anything wrong or incorrect during my presentation and he said that wasn’t the point. Fine. If he doesn’t think that potentially reducing that store’s shrink number from two million to half a million is the point then neither do I. I’ll cover everything word-for-word right down the page just like a trained monkey would. I’ll send my attendees out on activities unsupervised (because that’s what it calls for) so they have no idea what they’re looking at. I’ll have them sitting still in a class 90% of the time instead of moving back and forth between a real store environment and the classroom.

Two things though: when people start falling asleep, scores start dropping from low to mid 90’s to barely passing, and they stop talking about what a fun experience the course is I don’t want to hear it. Also, I no longer want to be asked, “what time will you be done on Friday?” because the boss wants to leave early. The content calls for forty hours of me talking so by golly thats what you’ll get. We’ll be done at 1700 Friday from now on. Suck on that.