A New General Manager

During my tenure at the call center I saw several different managers and general manager come through.  Most of general managers were not very impressive but a couple did stand out.  We found out that a new general manager had been hired and would be starting in a about a week.  The only information that was shared with us the supervisors was that he was part of a new program where the company was hiring retired military officers directly into management as they left the military.

For this blog we will call him Mr. Michael.

My first encounter with him was on a Saturday morning.  At the time we were open for a skeleton shift on Saturdays and Mr. Michael wanted to come in and meet the poor souls working on the weekend.  I didn't know what I expected  but Mr. Michael turned out to be a great guy.  He was personable and attentive to his personnel's needs and wants.  I found myself liking him immediately.

On the wall of the production floor we had a painted mural that depicted the four pillars of our companies beliefs:

I.) Increase Profits
II.) Client Satisfaction
III.) Customer Satisfaction
IV.) Employee Satisfaction

It was common knowledge that only the first pillar mattered to the upper management.  So one of the first things Mr. Michael did was take down the mural.  He also started doing leadership classes with all the managers, project managers, and supervisor each week.  These went along way with helping us learn how to better at our work,each other and, our employees.

Here are a few examples of how "Out there" our new General Manager really was:

****************************************************************************
My immediate supervisor came out of his office one day with an exasperated look on his face, with Mr. Michael following closely behind him.  My boss said the he had been trying to get back to his desk for an hour so that he could get some work done, but things kept coming up.  Mr. Michael chimed in and said "I know!  I have been waiting under your desk to surprise you for 45 minutes!"

****************************************************************************

*Harry Potter Spoiler Alert*

Ok, you have been warned!

When Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince came out my wife and fought over who got to read the book first.  As you may have guessed, my wife won that fight and started reading the book.  Two days after the book was release I went into our morning meeting at work and Mr. Michael stormed into the meeting and slammed his copy of Harry Potter down on the table and said "I can't believe the B***h killed Dumbledore!"  All of us who cared immediately were thrown in to a state of shock!  He looked around at us all and honestly was very confused why we were all upset with him.  To this day I still can't imagine why he he did that!

****************************************************************************

Finally, for Halloween Mr. Michael dressed up as a large furry monster.  His costume covered his whole body including a hood/monster face.  So when he was fully dressed you couldn't tell it was him.  I heard this next part from the recruiting staff, Mr. Micheal went up to the Recruiting waiting room before it opened at 8am and laid down in the floor.  He stayed completely still laying in the floor for over an hour while potential recruits came in and started filling out paperwork.  Apparently they just thought he was some kind of Halloween decoration.  At least until he had a room full of potential new hires and he  suddenly jumped up and roared at the top of his lungs.  As the story goes, the potential new hires all screamed and ran from the room.  Some went out the front door, never to return and a few ran into the building to get away from what ever just happened in the waiting room.

*****************************************************************************

All in all, Mr. Micheal was fantastic GM and we all hated to see him go but he moved onto a bigger and better job!