Before I start my rant I will say I know God has a plan and we'll be fine ... it's just going to be a stressful for awhile!
Emily started swimming at Emler about 5 years ago and Wayne started working there part time 2.5 years ago. Glenna asked him to be a manager almost as soon as he started part time and he declined. She continued asking him and he finally accepted her offer when I told him I needed a break from the corporate world.
Some red flags we should have paid more attention to from the beginning:
1) Glenna made him a verbal offer and when the written offer came to him it was $5,000 less than she promised. When he asked, she said that was what everyone gets paid while training. BUT, she never told him how long training would be .... we assumed 90 days (like most places!). We wrote our budget expecting him to get paid more in 90 days. When 90 days passed and he didn't get the full pay, he asked the question once more and was told MIT training was for a full year (WHAT?!?) ... remember I said they have known each other for years right? She knew what he needed to be paid and she chose to "hide" the truth from him until I had already quit my job of 8.5 years.
2) Glenna fired 4 managers in the two years Wayne worked part time. We didn't think much of it because they were young and this was their first management gig. Wayne has tons of management experience, so he would be fine :)
3) 2 managers quit about 6 months into their training. They are still teachers at Emler, but told Wayne after the fact that they left because they could not deal with Glenna's management style.
Hmmmm, wish we would have had a crystal ball!
So, moving on ... I'll talk about what happened while he was in training ....
He started the job during Emler's busy time (summer) ... he's never been a swim instructor. While working part time he was always in the office. He did teacher training when he started, but was NEVER in the water to work on the skills he learned.
There was no official training for him. He shadowed a deck manager, but basically all he learned the first 3 months was how to clean up the deck, stock candy, toys and how to work the pool. They were too busy to officially train him.
After his first three months of non-training, she decided he was ready to work the deck alone. When he was alone, he realized he didn't know enough about the classes to be an effective deck manager and asked Glenna for help. She blew him off and told him "just get in the water when there's a problem" ... OK, thanks ... that is exactly what he needed to know (blah). Finally she realized he needed extra training and had him start teaching classes .... (something she should have had him do in the summer) .... then he asked if he could re-take teacher training in Dallas (where their corporate office is located!) ... she told him no ... he asked if he could take a trip to Dallas and shadow some of the teachers/deck managers there (most of their teachers/managers have been around for a long time!) ... she told him that wouldn't help ... he asked her multiple times for extra help and she blew him off saying "you'll get it, don't worry" ....
I still don't quite understand why she let him go .... and part of me wants to go up to the pool and ask her .... but I know if I see her I'll want to kick her in the shins.
He said some of the things she said to him when she let him go were ...
"Thursday I told you to work on sign ups and you were on the phone in the office" ... well, before she reprimanded him for not answering the phone when it was ringing ... and Wayne said everyone on Thursday was signed up!
"I wanted you to walk through the observation deck talking to parents and you didn't" ... well, they had recently talked about him being on deck more often with the kids ....
So who knows what she really wanted from him ... he never could figure it out.
He could do all the management stuff with his eyes closed, he just needed a little more training in the water to feel 100% confident in the job. She didn't want to give him that ...
My thought is they fired him to fix payroll since their numbers are so low this year. Or they realized there is no way their South location will make now that Ian Crocker has opened a swim school ... or maybe April is right and Glenna likes to hire managers at the low MIT pay, keep them around for 6 months and fire them so she can get some cheap labor. Not a good way to run a business, but who knows what she's thinking ... Or maybe she's not used to working with an adult who will offer suggestions and ideas that make sense ... HA HA!
The crazy thing is ... her husband was let go from his job unexpectedly last year and she KNOWS how horrible it feels ... and she did it to Wayne.
Wayne was NEVER written up ... NEVER officially reprimanded .... when he'd ask her how he was doing and what he needed to work on she NEVER gave him any feedback ... only said he was doing GREAT and she was so happy to have him on the team ... blah blah blah.
The funny thing is, if you know her casually, you think she's the nicest person in the world ... she seems so caring and family focused ... don't be fooled, it's all an act ... or maybe she's going through the "change"?
Thanks for letting me vent it all out ... I feel better (and didn't even cuss once!)
Like I said in the beginning, we'll be fine - even though we've already run though most of our savings .... we'll be fine. Something better will come along and God will provide!
.JPG)
