BrownArmy
Well-Known Member
I don't agree with your assessment and I doubt he was given all the facts. I'd like to know what freedoms and roles a "real manager" would have. Complete freedom to do whatever we want? I'm bound by a union contract. Does this mean I'm not a "manager?"
Sir, I'm not sure about 'facts'. As I described, I simply told my friend 'my perspective as a package car driver dealing with the daily reality on the ground'. Did I give him all the facts? I don't know all the facts.
I have no idea what the logistics of your job is. I can tell you that, in addition to describing to my friend my reality on the ground as a driver, I also gave my friend my impression of what I thought my center manager's job was like, in terms of dealing with CORPORATE, the UNION, etc.
The fact that you are bound by a Union contract is not relevant to the fact that (if you are in the same position as my center manager), you are not able to make independent decisions about, for instance, how many routes you need to run on a certain day given everything you know about your center on that particular day.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but (at least in my center), my center manager would dearly like to run two or three extra routes on any given day, but he is not allowed the independent authority to do so. I understand that volume projection for any given day is an inexact science at best, but the reality on the ground is that when my center manager finally gets the go-ahead (from corporate?) to add in another route or two, it's now forty minutes before start-time and the end result is less than stellar.
Of course I'm not suggesting that you should have 'complete freedom to do whatever you want'. And I understand that you are dealing with 8-hour requests, drivers calling in sick or booking off, ad infinitum...(that's the part where you being bound by a Union contract is relevant).
But I am suggesting that you, as a center manager, know your center best.
Don't you wish they'd just let you run it?
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