5 Things I'd Tell His Boss If I Could

This is a rant I wrote back when my husband worked for someone who shall remain nameless... *ahem-Domino's-ahem*
Now that he has a different job, things are smoothly and we can actually pay rent without wondering if we'll be able to eat the next week...
On to the rant!

May 2009
I just read an article titled 12 Things We'd Tell Our Bosses if We Could. It got me thinking, "I don't have a job, but if I could talk to my husband's boss..."

So here are the 5 things I'd tell my husband's boss if I could:


1. For a happy team you need happy workers.

I wish I had a quarter, even a nickel, for every time my husband came home red in the face. Hubs' boss is a nice guy, unless you work for him. At first I thought he was just pushing Hubs harder because he saw his potential.
Um, no.
I realize that I may be a bit biased, but my husband is pretty honest with me when he makes a mistake at work, so when he lets me know he got in trouble for something he had no control over, I get a little red in the face myself.

To the boss:
"I'm glad my husband doesn't play the blame game. When something is wrong at the store, you blame him. Not the whole team, not the one person, him. If he blamed everything on someone else (even when it is their fault) his team wouldn't be happy. My husband knows this, and he's only over 17 people. You are over 17 stores! How is it you haven't figured it out yet?"


2. When my husband asks for time off it's because he really needs it off. Not because he wants to piss you off.

Hubs works anywhere from 55 to 90 hours each week. He doesn't get paid overtime because he gets a salary. $30,000 before taxes. How do we survive you ask? We pay our tithing and pray. Some weeks he doesn't get a day off and it's not just stressful on him, but it's stressful on his family as well.
A few weeks ago, I let my husband know I had a family reunion coming up. It's about 240 miles away from where we're living now so the drive there and back takes a full day. I asked him to take 3-5 days off so we could all go. The boss said no and got upset with my husband.

To the boss:
"I'm a little upset because Hubs asked almost a month in advance, he asked for 3 days, and he has two Assistant Managers that SHOULD be able to handle the store on their own. And he can't have 3 days? Really?"
Which leads to my next rant...



3. Give my husband competent workers so that he isn't doing his work, plus someone else's.

Hubs has been training one Assistant Manager for months now and she still isn't understanding that when you count inventory, it needs to be accurate. I'm thinking Hubs' boss would have seen her incompetency by now and would have given her a different position or even let her go, but nope. Instead, he stole another village's idiot and gave him to Hubs.
Apparently, he keeps giving Hubs the people that are slow to catch on because, (and I'm quoting what he said to Hubs ABOUT A YEAR AGO) "I thought you were on your way out the door."

To the boss:
"So, you gave him the idiots because you thought he was going to quit? Well, now that it's been a year and he's still there, what the heck is going on?"


4. When you make a mistake, don't praise my husband so he doesn't see it.

Every time Hubs does well, no one notices. Whenever Boss screws up, Hubs gets praised. Do you see what I see?

To the boss:
"It seems like you don't want Hubs to notice when you've screwed up so you tell him what a good job he's doing. It's called Misdirection and while you might not think so, I think it's a form of a lie. Fess up and let him know you made a mistake. He'll respect you more for it."


5. You don't have a family. I get that. But my husband does. And he'd like to see them.

Hubs' boss isn't married. He has no kids. At the moment, he doesn't even have a girlfriend. Or a pet. I don't think he realizes that family is important to us. Maybe he's just forgotten what it's like to have people that love you unconditionally ALL THE TIME. But if he could just try to be a bit more understanding, I wouldn't cut him to pieces in my dreams and wake up smiling.

To the boss:
"If you need family, you're welcome to come over and have dinner with us, play with the girls, even see the pet tortoise. But don't think my husband is weak because he enjoys spending time with us or because he wants to take care of us when we're sick. He's a family man in a business world. Cut him some slack."