Let me start by saying I’m a “floor guy” at a small town hardware store. I am in training to be a manager but not one yet. I do a bunch of stuff around the store. Which leaves me busy a lot of the time.
We have a paint department that LOVES calling me and the other floor guys to do dumb things that is their job. Now, I don’t mind helping here or there. However when I get called away from doing something to come pick up your empty boxes to bring them to the box crusher when you’re supposed to, or to bring a box up to the register for a customer that weighs 10lbs.
I just get furious since they’ve been told not to do this. However they don’t stop. I recently told them I’m not moving a box for them since they weren’t busy. They were just playing on their phone while waiting on me.
They complained and the manager told them it’s their job. Now I have multiple people mad at me because I tell them NO. When it’s not my job unless they are too busy.
Am I the asshole?
Just sharing my opinion: I’m not a fan of these kinds of posts. You’re obviously not the asshole and it feels like you just posted this for validation. There is no ambiguity here and the post definitely gives off reddit-esque, “AITA for leaving my boyfriend of 2 months after he cheated on me with 9 people and stole a family heirloom worth $200,000 to fund his heroin addiction?” vibes.
I was just mad because I had a few people telling me I was a dick, smart-ass, asshole, ect. Just for telling them no. I thought maybe I was being unreasonable.
However I get what you’re saying.
Might I suggest [email protected]?
I’m sorry 😞 I didn’t know that was a community. I also really did want to know if i did something wrong, but I do see that as a better fit.
Oh no don’t apologize. Your post did well here. Just sharing another community.
That makes sense. They just sound lazy and upset that you aren’t doing their jobs anymore. The fact that management sided with you says a lot.
The issue probably wasn’t you telling them no, but the way you did it.
“Am I the asshole for now allowing strangers to kick me in the nuts every day?”
Top this scenario with the frequent:
“the wedding is in two hours”
and it can also be in relationship advice
Not the asshole, they’re mad because they have to work now.
They have to find someone else to do their job now
You think that’s not WORK? 🤣
How do you plan to manage a bunch of people that don’t respect you?
He’s “training to be a manager” which is manager speak for “I have nothing concrete to offer you, here’s an empty promise”
Or, “take on some/all of my tasks without consideration for your current workload and with no additional compensation.”
Everyone is my dept respects me. They do what I say when I say it. They know I’m in charge and I’m not that bad of a manager. I actually have experience from 2 other stores. It’s the girls in other dept that is so used to the other floor guys, current and old, saying YES YES YES!!! However I don’t say yes which makes them mad.
In my store we have “floor guys” that do everything. We are supposed to know the store and help when and where we can. Which is why we get paid more. However just because we CAN doesn’t mean we SHOULD. Even the store managers are tired of it which is why we had a meeting where they got told it’s not our job. Pissed them off.
I’m not gonna be a store manager. Just someone who manages the guys and what they do. Basically make sure they aren’t fucking off 90% of the day.
I just realized “floor guy” doesn’t mean “flooring department guy” and now this all makes more sense.
Sounds like what I call Pretty Girl Syndrome. Pretty girls are never told no and are appalled when anyone does so. I can hardly hold it against them, it’s just the way life has been for them, but still.
Key learning opportunity right there.
No, you’re right to set boundaries.
People will always want you to do stuff that’s outside of your classification. The key is to be “too busy” when it doesn’t advance your career, and willing to learn when it does. Ideally, you don’t have to directly say no. When you hit the balance right, they stop asking.
I like your advice, and it makes me think I’m on the right track. They used to call a lot more. Even for me specifically, but I got tired of it, and it made them mad, and now they call on occasion for small things like the other day.
Just it’s not my job to do. Even if I’m just walking around looking for things to do either for myself or my crew. I am still working and they just don’t wanna do their jobs. I’m only supposed to do it if they are busy or it’s like a 5 gallon bucket of paint that needs to be brought to the front. The heavy lifting and hard work.
If I didn’t love my job I’d probably find a new one. Just with 75% of the store liking me and 25% not… I think I’m good. 🤔
the trick is just learning how to tell people No
its a balancing act that takes some finesse and if you are going to be a manager soon, you might look into how it is done
Im not sure if I could explain it but it usually involves listening to the request, rewording the request and repeating it back. And then explaining the situation as you see it (why you will say no) and then when they have understanding of the situation, you explain why you are saying no.
From my personal experience, this works out pretty well but there is always that one off that blows up in your face. When that happens just face it head on and as time goes on it usually gets better and requires less work when you have to say no
You are not the asshole, and the people who are will, of course, make you feel like you’re being one.
it might be unfair to ask as this is just based on your username but:
do they resent you for taking smoke breaks?
do they know you’re a furry?
I actually quit smoking 6 months ago. No only my close friends and fiancee know I’m a furry because when I call myself a “furry” it’s just a persona for like anime conventions and stuff. Not huge into the community.
INFO: did you tell them no in a polite way or were you shitty about it?
Not the arsehole but you do need to say no more often, you saying yes all the time is why you get badgered so much.
Yeah, and I started saying no more often but the other floor guys just have the mindset “I get paid to be here. Noone is gonna tell them anything. I’ll be the only one who hears it so I will just go do it.” 😞
Part of me wants to make a giant spectacle of the thing. Show up with a ton of gear that you have to set down (directly in their way) while you you deal with the boxes. But I know that type of person would just complain even louder.
It sounds like you’re in a different dept with a different manager. Assuming that your manager agrees, your manager should be the one to say no. That way, everyone on your team can simply say their manager won’t allow it.
If that fails, the Wally Reflector is a good tactic. Tell them that you’d love to help, but they need to do something first. You can say that you’re very busy, but you’ll take the boxes if they flatten all of them and put them on a cart. It’s still offering to help, but it requires work on their part. It also quickly reveals if the requester is just being lazy.
If that fails, treat it as a training opportunity- they must need training on a required part of their job, which is why they called you. Drag them along the whole time, explaining every detail to them. Bonus points if you explain the history of why we do it that way. Basically, make it more work for them to be lazy.
Nah, definitely not the asshole. It’s pretty clear that they are just upset by no longer having their laziness enabled.
One important component of assertiveness that I taught to my former clients was that everyone has an inherent right to refusal. You can say no, and you’re not obligated to provide any justification.
Obviously you ought to provide context when appropriate and in work situations if you want to keep your job. But I was in similar situations where I would refuse leadership’s direction on reasonable grounds/different department’s duty. I would not let notorious department heads throw me under the bus, and I’d save emails to call them out on their bullshit in the email chain they lied/blamed me. I would refuse orders to over-bill and call out managers/leadership trying to push us grunts to commit medicaid fraud/waste, even in the middle of their meetings announcing the directives.
I wasn’t liked by those toxic people in the organization, but they learned respect/fear me and a lot of my peers/my team would tell me they appreciated me speaking up when they were afraid to. My supervisor told me after I had her come into our boss’ office with me to confront our boss over unwarranted criticism about me. Afterwards my supervisor told me: “I wish I could talk to leadership like that… but I’m too afraid to lose my job.”
I was never fired but I did leave the job when I got really sick with covid + RSV + pneumonia, a secondary bacterial infection in my lungs, pleurisy, and then long covid. The healthcare industry in my region was so strained, we had so many people quit due to toxic leadership/over-worked/burned out, and the policy was not hiring replacements and instead pushing the load on the remaining employees. I probably would’ve quit if I hadn’t gotten sick.
But I’m proud that I always stood by my principles even when it meant disobeying/confronting superiors. My stubbornness and threshold for confrontation also made me a damn good client advocate. That was what I was most known for. I kept residential care and assisted living facilities in check, hotlining them and aiding state government investigations. It was usually stealing client funds or meds, but I also uncovered neglect and abuse.
I can be wrong and an ass at times, just like all of us. But if I feel strongly convicted about something, peer-pressure or fear of losing my job won’t stop me from holding my ground.
I think you’re doing the right thing standing your ground. I would appreciate you being the one to put yourself on the line for my benefit as well, if I worked in your department. That is a quality I would want in my manager. Rather than rolling over and accepting additional work/disruptions to your department’s actual duties.
No, you’re not the asshole. But I’m the guy who won’t do shit unless it’s explicitly part of my job description.
Not the asshole. They are trying to get something for nothing it sounds like. You had evry right to do and say what you did. “Sorry, you have to do your own job” shouldn’t be something that you have to say, but you will need to say it, probably more than once.
I can’t imagine a universe where what you did makes you an asshole.
Well I have 4 women complaining about it. One called me a dick to my face and said “You always complain about doing your job.”
One complained that I was being a smartass by saying they weren’t busy so they should have done it.
One complained I called them out for giving us the wrong information on a product to load in a customer’s car.
The other just doesn’t like me. 😕
Them calling you a dick to your face for you not doing their job is an HR write-up. Do that.
You want to know why they disrespect you? Because they haven’t faced any consequences for doing so.
That’s the thing. We don’t have a HR that handles that kind of thing. It’s up to the store managers, which is all family. One of the girls called my coworker a asshole for not being gentle enough with a buggy of paint. The consequences, you ask? An apology to me and my coworker. I never recieved one and my coworker never told me if he got one and refuses to talk about it because “she was probably upset so I’m not worried about it.”
Time to find a new job. That situation won’t get better anytime soon due to family managing family.
That’s a toxic work environment in the making. Always call out that kind of behavior.
No, you’re not an asshole, the other person is the asshole by de facto demanding you to do their work (when people get all pissy if you say “no” for something they “asked” you for, they weren’t really asking).
If you want to preemptivelly remove or reduce the risk of others accusing you in some way of “meaness” (such “asking” and the “meaness” accusation on refusal being quite a common strategy of people who were far too spoiled as kids and never really grew up - they do it because the “oh, look at poor little me” worked when they were kids to reverse adults’ “no” responses), provide some kind of “yes” under conditions and a time frame entirelly defined by you, something like “I would love to help you but I’m really busy at the moment with higher priority work. If I get the time I’ll come around and help you with that”. From this point either go down the line of “never having the time” (i.e. you don’t do it and have no intention of doing it, and if confronted just provide vague “I couldn’t get around to doing it” or just “I forgot and now it’s too late” reasons that can’t really be disproven by the other person) and they’ll eventually give up on asking you that (being pissy about people being too busy with more important work doesn’t really work as well as being pissy about an outright “no”), or you go down the line of “helping others help themselves” (i.e. you do some of the work as long as they’re right there also doing the work with you or take them to the right person to ask for help if there is one and wait with them while they ask and next time around when they come to you, ask them “have you asked person X already”).
Personally the way I solved my own “not wanting to be seen as not nice” way back when I started working was a mix of prioritization (i.e. “I’ll help you when I have the time”, and I genuinelly meant it but in practice I rarelly had the time) and helping people help themselves (i.e. “I’ll explain you how you do it while you do it yourself” and afterwards for subsequent requests just asked “have you tried already what I taught you last time?” and not help until they did which usually resulted in them solving the problem themselves) though this was in software development and people came to me to solve the kind of problems that had to do figuring something out, diagnosing a problem or implementing a certain kind of functionality, so I could do the whole “teach them whilst they do it themselves” thing.
