Meetings all the time?

Writing a bookstore diary is exercising my flabbifying memory.
I didn't write notes yesterday, and this morning my foggy brain is searching, What happened yesterday?
(I swear I never used to forget anything...)

Below: Face on the staff door, going inside from the dumpster/parking lot, made by Grateful-J from donated crafty bits

Oh! Yeah!
Yesterday after work, Asst Man (AM) called the departing manager of another indie thrift store (not a national chain like Goodwill) for an informational interview. Their store is hiring a replacement, and AM wanted to get some sense if he should apply.

AM had asked me beforehand to help him formulate some questions.
"You're really good at asking questions," he said. "I never thought about asking questions till I saw you do it all the time."

There's an art to crafting good questions, but I'm not sure what it is--I do it intuitively.
All my life, I always wanted to ask people questions.
I used to be bad at it. I'm embarrassed to remember how I'd pin people to the wall with questions:

"What kind of toothpaste do you use? What's your middle name? Do you know there is a civil war in Congo?"

And I never gave people enough empty space to answer, I was always jumping in--more like an assault than an inquiry, I'm afraid...
(I guess my genuine interest must have come through though, because I did have some interesting conversations, and make some friends.)

To help Asst Man with his informational interview, I asked him,
"What do you really want to know?"

We chose three things.
A top concern was how much freedom he'd have to do his own thing. We turned that into this question:
"Our board is very hands-off. What is interaction with your board like?"

This turned out to be the key question.
The departing manager said, "Oh, I wouldn't say our board is hands-off..."
Turns out their board meets every-other week, on the managers' day off, and the managers are expected to show up.
Plus, "We have meetings all the time. There's a committee for everything."

AM, even as a manager, doesn't know most of our store's board members, and our store almost never has staff meetings (and those are a farce, mostly). I resigned from the one committee that got set up in my early days, it was such a farce.
_________

ONE TIME we had a great meeting:
The store had reopened after Covid, and our windows were still boarded up from the riots after George Floyd's murder. People were struggling, and I suggested to Big Boss that maybe it would help if we met and just talked about how we were feeling.

BB called an unofficial meeting in the parking lot.
Almost everyone came (not the norm for our infrequent meetings). Standing in a circle near the dumpster, we went around and everyone spoke personally.
It was incredibly helpful--not only for a sense of togetherness in a time of crisis, but because people said stuff that has continued to help me understand their motivations.

People like Mr Furniture talk all the time about their views on race and the personal experiences that formed them, but other coworkers are quiet, and I didn't know where they were coming from.

Everyone is different.
One seventy-year-old Black coworker, for instance, talked about how his father had been a cop in Cleveland, and if Black people would just respect the law, they wouldn't get in trouble.

This is not the majority view, but it helped me see why he is the way he is. I'd seen him as obsequious--annoyingly so (he called me ma'am for the longest time); but after that, I saw how his father must have trained him, his Black son, to act servile so as to be safe.
This coworker is not an imaginative man--he doesn't seem to grasp complexity--so he just keeps to his original programming.
Now I have some compassion for that.
______________

Last night, Asst Man told me he'd gotten a very bad feeling about how managed management is at the other thrift store.
Once again we agreed that the very things that annoy us at our store are the things we benefit from.
No guidance translates to Do What You Want.
No praise also means No Interference.

Low pay? Oh, yeah.
The Other Thrift Store would pay Asst Man twice (2 times! double!) what he makes now.

But all the staff at our store set prices for items we sell to each other, and that means we make up for our low pay, somewhat, in trade.

The Other Thrift Store has strict rules--people who sort donations cannot buy anything until it's been out on the sales floor, full price.

I told Ass't Man that yesterday, Art (the volunteer who does pictures & frames) had pointed out a couple bookshelves that had just been donated.

"If you need bookshelves," Art said to me, "you should buy these. Danish-modern, teak, like your Dansk silverware."

Art and I don't exactly like each other. We are both rather controlling, and where our areas overlap, we've clashed.
But I always give him the latest issues of The New Yorker before I put them out (he returns them), and he displays art in my area that he thinks I'll especially like. (He's often right.)

I DO need bookshelves. I only have one rickety little one. My books are mostly on the floor. And these ones are just what I like. They will go not only with my silverware but with my new floor lamp.

"They're gorgeous," I said. "How much are they?"

 "Ask Mr Furniture," Art said.

Now, one of Art's main complaints is that the furniture guys have no knowledge of furniture. He knew Mr Furniture would give me an IKEA price.
And he did. (NOT just out of ignorance, Mr Furniture always gives his coworkers deals too.)

Ass't Man said that it's not just the self-pricing, it's the hunt that is a pleasure of working in thrift.
I agree.

You don't need to own an object you find; the pleasure comes simply in uncovering it. Opening a plastic Cool-Whip container to find some treasure. (I've rarely bought things until the last couple months, when I've been furnishing my new place.)

But there is also the possibility that you'll uncover a treasure you've been waiting for for years. Having a strict no-staff-purchases policy takes that pleasure away.
I get it: as a retail policy, it makes sense.

Our store doesn't have retail sense.
And while Asst Man and I rail against that, we also benefit from it, and so do our coworkers.
And so do our customers!

I worry that it sounds like we're ripping off the store, but it's not like that at all:
AM and I both thrill to set up displays of the fun treasures we uncover.
We take extra care---like how I frame old photos, to draw attention to them so they don't let lost or damaged in the shuffle of stuff.
AM will feature some cool old electronic gadget in his end-caps (he has a special interest in audio equipment).

Anyway, at the end of our phone conversation, AM said he didn't know if he'd even apply for this other thrift store.
"Meetings ALL THE TIME?"

I said he should keep looking, but that while I supported him finding a better fit, if he left he'd be a real loss to our store.

"We shouldn't look to Big Boss for praise," I said (one of our mutual frustrations--lack of positive feedback or helpful guidance.) "That's just not his schtick, and it's never going to be. We coworkers should look to one another."

"Thanks," he said. "Gotta go feed the kids now. Love ya, 'bye, see you tomorrow."

"Love ya"?
That's a first.
AM's come a long way from when he told me I had to obey him a couple summers ago.
I trust that we've both learned a lot about each other and ourselves in the meantime. Our meetings are informal smoke breaks by the dumpster.
And I don't even smoke.