What Does Priority Mean To You?

 One of my weaknesses as a manager that I've been working to overcome has been the ....well it should be simple...but the simple matter of delegation.

The process of dividing out tasks to my team so that I'm not the one trying to get everything done by myself. 

I struggle with this though.

Because it often feels like I could have done it much easier and much faster if I'd done it by myself.

Especially in the sort of situations where I DO end up having to do the task by myself after all. 

And it's especially frustrating when I give out tasks to others only to see them not get done.

And it's hard to know if they weren't done because the person didn't want to do them or they didn't have time to do them or some other factor prevented them from completing them. 

But like....coinciding with yesterday in "give a person a specific task and timeframe to get the truck done" it continued on into today.

Where I left my opening manager with a list of tasks that needed to be done.

Which amounted to like 3 things.

1. Open the store.

2. Finish the truck and clean up 

3. Do the required scans to check inventory.

and like a side project was "Hey give the cashiers this project to build so that I can finish this reset a different day. " 

And I get a message at the end of opening manager's shift. 

Hey there's still a bit of truck left and scans weren't done.

Which -_- not unexpected because it was a larger truck and we're still getting back into the groove of having one truck a day. But like....how could you not get truck done when you had EIGHT HOURS to do truck?

Okay more like SIX HOURS to do truck because the opening tasks can take a couple of hours.

And granted it's been a 'sick' week where we've had a bunch of people calling out for not feeling well, which was the case today as well so I get there having to be a bit of breakaway. 

but at the same time....I'd been hoping to have a bit more of truck done. 

But also it turns out that the task I set the opening manager to set the cashiers to do?

Didn't get done either. 

And I don't know if it was because the cashier was like "Nah I don't wanna" or if the morning manager didn't COMMUNICATE that this was a task that needed to be done and therefore the cashier didn't know it needed to be done.

In any case.

I get in touch with the closing manager to be like "Hey finish the truck and then do the scans if you have time but truck is the priority." because we're supposed to have truck done within 24 hours of it arriving. 

And also had the closing manager get the closing cashier started on the task that the morning cashier should have been working on. 

In any case.

Closer to the end of the night when the closing manager needs to be switching gears to start the closing tasks I get a text of "Hey we're still working truck but I got half the scans done!" 

And I'm just.....face palming.

Because TRUCK SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE FOCUS.

How hard is it to get through everyone's skulls that truck should have been done first?!

Like scans can be pushed off to a different day if needed. Truck? Not so much. 

And granted I'm sure that closing manager did some of the scans for a bit of those happy endorphins of "I completed a task" but at the same time. WHAT ABOUT THE TRUCK!

Sooo yah it's left me a bit frustrated to have multiple people ignoring the 'truck first' priority and just like....do their own thing. 

Especially when that means that I have even more on my plate for tomorrow when I go into work because now I have to fit in the rest of whatever didn't get done today with what has to be done tomorrow. 

So yah.

Frustrations all around.

Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi