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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell. Descendants from the famed mutiny on the Bounty can still be found on Pitcairn Island to this day. And I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
Mutiny on the Bounty is a really interesting story. I’ve never read the 1932 novel or seen either the 1935 film starring Clark Gable or the 1962 film starring Marlon Brando. I’ve only read different articles and watched different YouTube videos about it over the years. Maybe it’s time for another remake of the story.
But aside from that story or The Caine Mutiny novel by Herman Wouk and its movie adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart, I don’t know that we really think about mutiny very often. If you’re like me, when you do think about mutiny, you think about sea voyages and ocean vessels. I’m sure these two stories are the reason for that.
But I can tell you from first hand experience that mutiny can even occur on dry land in the land locked state of Oklahoma that I’ve called home for most of my life. It’s a story I’ve teased before, and today it takes center stage.
But first some background that you may already know, but it’s important to share again today to make sure you have the full context of why mutiny was ever even thought to be an option.
I started working at a regional bookstore chain as a part time cashier in the fall of 1994. A few months later I was asked to fill in the Bible department temporarily until they could find someone to staff it full time. Once that position was filled I floated around the store doing various tasks and eventually landed in the education department. I worked there for several months until I was moved over to the office supplies department.
Several more months passed and I eventually dropped out of college, which made me available to work full time. Eventually the Bible department head position opened again and I was promoted to that position. Eventually I was promoted to a key carrier position and in the fall of 1997 I was promoted to assistant manager.
Some time during 1998 I was approached by the district manager about joining the manager-in-training program. I wasn’t interested in doing that, so I politely declined. Then in early 1999 the district manager approached me again about joining the program. This time I prayerfully considered his request, which led me to agreeing to join the program.
So in the summer of 1999 the company sent me to several stores in the chain to help train their Bible department staff about the various Bible software products we sold, as well as spend time with the store managers for training. I also spent time in our central warehouse learning about distribution. Then near the beginning of August I moved to Lubbock, Texas to help open that store and spent the next 10 months training under that store manager, Sammy.
In June of 2000 I was offered the store manager position in Wichita Falls, Texas and I served in that role for two years. The store was in rough shape with inventory control, cleanliness, organization, and merchandising. As I’ve said before, the team was great, and we all worked diligently to get the store up to the standard we all desired.
Our hard work paid off. At the next year’s manager’s meeting at the corporate office, I received two bonuses in recognition of the store’s improvement. One bonus was due to our excellent inventory management, and the other bonus was earned by our excellent scores on our annual customer survey. My store had the largest margin of improvement year over year.
In June of 2002 I was offered a position as a book buyer at the corporate office, which relocated me back to my home state of Oklahoma. After 18 months in that position it was decided that buying was not a good fit for me, so I was relocated back to the stores. It was a tough blow for me as being a buyer was the job that I’d most desired to have even before I ever chose to join the manager-in-training program.
However, I was grateful that the company still saw value in me and worked to keep me employed. They were also considerate in where they placed me. We had four stores in the Oklahoma City metro area, and they chose to place me in the store closest to where I lived. It just so happened that this was the same store that I’d started out at and spent the first 5 years of my career at.
It had now been nearly 5 years since I’d last worked at that store and the store manager had changed since I left, but many of my old co-workers were still there. Those employees knew of my work ethic and skills which had led me to work up the ranks there and then be invited to the manager-in-training program. They also knew of at least some of the success I’d experienced in Wichita Falls, so they were excited to have me back alongside them.
The new store manager was also someone who had been with the company for quite a while. I’ll call him Peter. I had met him a few times early on in my career as he worked at a different local store. While I was either in Wichita Falls or working as a buyer, the store manager position at my old store became available and he was offered that position.
Peter was a super nice guy. He had a last name that sounded like a type of jungle cat, but he didn’t have the personality to match it. He was no alpha. Now I’m not one that believes a person needs to be an alpha in order to be a good leader, but there were other reasons why Peter was perhaps ill suited for the store manager role.
Peter’s background was in merchandising and he was excellent at that. However, his weakness was in his people skills. He was soft spoken and avoided confrontation. He let things go or allowed frustration to build rather than dealing with it head on before it could build. Or in other cases, he let his own frustration build quietly until he blew his top. To be honest, this is a pretty common makeup which I’m sure you’ve experienced first hand in some way.
So I was happy to come in and add another layer of leadership and experience to the store I considered my home store. I was happy to work as a subordinate to Peter and help the store and the company in whatever way they saw best.
What I didn’t realize was that a mutiny was brewing.
A couple of months after I returned to the store one of the department heads approached me in the stock room and wanted to know how much longer it was going to be before I took over as the store manager. Frankly, I was surprised by her question. There was never any indication from me or corporate that I was there to take over and let her know that. Peter was the store manager and there were no plans to change that.
A couple of more months went by and another employee asked me about taking over as the store manager. I again reiterated that Peter was the manager and there were no plans from me or corporate to change that.
Then a few weeks after that I was approached a third time. I don’t recall if it was a different employee or one who had previously approached me, but they told me that several of the employees had been talking privately, and they very much wanted me to replace Peter as the store manager. At this point, I knew we had a problem.
Each month the store was visited by the district manager. This was the same district manager the store had from the day I first started working there. He’s the same guy that had invited me to join the manager-in-training program and the same district manager I’d had as my boss in Wichita Falls. So suffice it to say we had a good relationship.
So the next time he visited, I asked him if we could speak privately. I then shared with him the comments I’d been receiving from the employees and what I’d told them in response. He asked me if there were any issues with Peter that were concerning. And to be honest, there wasn’t.
I mean, sure, he was weak in his people skills and didn’t address personnel issues as proactively as he should, but these were things the district manager was already well aware of and was doing things to help Peter improve in these areas. No manager is perfect. We all had issues and things we needed to improve on. When it came to all the main operational things, Peter was doing a good job.
The district manager thanked me for my candor and told me he’d put some thought into it and get back with me. The next month when he visited he told me that he decided to relocate me to one of the other local stores. Remember in the Thor episode when I told you I was working for a store that had a strong store manager, an assistant manager, and a co-manager and that store didn’t really need me? This was the reason I was moved to that store.
Here’s what I learned.
So what would you have done in this situation? Would you have made the same decisions I did? Would you have said something different to the employees?
I’m sure I could have done things differently and some of those things may have been better, but overall, I THINK I handled this the right way, which was to present the issue to the district manager and let him handle it.
If the situation had been different where there were ethical issues or the store was being poorly managed, then I still think I would have handled it the same way. That is, I would have told the employees that I wasn’t there to take over, and I would have reported the info to the district manager and let him handle it. However, I also would have been straightforward with him to let him know about the issues and tried to also let him know that I was not trying to usurp Peter’s authority or take his job.
I struggled for a long time about whether or not to share this story with you because I felt like it was a story that was not very common and therefore not very applicable. If it’s not very applicable, then there’s not much value in sharing it, and my goal is to bring tangible value with each episode.
But then I realized this story is very, very common. Perhaps the detail about approaching a qualified employee about taking over the leadership position isn’t common, but if you look past that, the rest of this story is stuff that happens nearly every day at nearly every workplace.
If you peel back the layers a bit here, you realize that the act of an employee approaching me about becoming the store manager was not the first step in this process. The first step were the thoughts in the mind of one or more of the employees. They were disgruntled for whatever reason and allowed those thoughts to fester.
The next step was voicing those thoughts to another employee. Once they found an employee that they found common ground with, things grew from there.
And that is all too common. I’m guilty of it and I’d bet you are too. Management makes a decision you don’t like. Now they must be stupid and incompetent. They don’t understand, they don’t have a clue how to do their job, or maybe they just don’t care. You complain, you find sympathy in your likewise frustrated coworkers and negativity spreads.
What happens then? Morale goes down even further and a toxic workplace is formed.
I’ve been studying Romans this year and just this week I got to chapter 13. I know many of you aren’t Christians, but I believe the principles found in chapter 13 are sound and helpful to all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike.
“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”
Certainly Paul is talking about civic government here so we must keep that in context. As Paul wrote this, Nero was the ruler of the Roman Empire, so that’s a remarkable thing to keep in mind as well. And there are certainly other verses that should be studied to learn more about how to handle situations where the authority is commanding us to do something that directly contradicts what God has commanded.
But all of that aside, the principle here is sound. Authority and organizational structure are good and come from God. We as subordinates must respect that authority. When we speak badly or gossip about those in authority it may feel good in the moment, but the long-term implications are toxic, improper, negative, and destructive.
Yes, if there are dangerous decisions being made by leadership or things happening that are unethical, we have a duty to speak up to those who have the power to change it.
Otherwise, our duty and what’s best, is to do our part to respect authority, create a positive work environment, and take responsibility for our actions and how they impact others. Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding remains silent.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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