This week I am working as a substitute at a shop other than my own as a manager. I live in Ohio but am currently spending the week in New York helping out another shop. Through the course of my duties today, i was taking a part that was replaced and saving it in case the warranty department requests for it to be mailed in. In the area where the warranty parts are saved, I saw an American flag left on a shelf in disarray. It was torn in several locations. I grabbed the flag and brought it back to the work area. I grabbed the other manager and said, "I found this upstairs, we need to properly fold it and get it to a VFW or American Legion so it can be properly retired."
The other manager did opt to help me. I had her hold the side with the union while I worked with the tattered end of the stripes, trying my best to get the folds as good as I could. It was difficult to keep all together and to keep from touching the ground. A technician there saw what I was trying to do and opted to join in. He took over holding the side with the union and the other manager helped me with supporting the center sections. This flag was bigger than the standard 5x3.
We got the flag properly folded into a triangle, and i found another employee there that was a Veteran that ensured he would get it to the local VFW. Immediately after this situation transpired, i noticed the people at this location, that are not quite sure of why a manager from another state is there, or what to think, take a liking to me.
On top of this, i was able to teach another person how to properly respect our flag. Today was a win.
Sounds like you were sent over to a store that needs help because it was sinking so badly, the store (or that department) is at risk of shutting down permanently.
I did something similar about 10 years ago, when I worked at a computer shop in Illinois and I was asked to go out to Indiana for a week to work there and try to save the store from shutting down. I went over and wow, they were like 150 computers behind on repairs.
Due to me being deaf, I don't normally interact with customers, which is why it was beneficial for me to go there so I can focus on repairing and getting the computers out. I managed to get about 100 computers out in just one week.
Most of them were easy fixes and I couldn't understand why that store was letting most of the computers sitting around for longer than a month or two. The longest was like 6 months and it was a new motherboard install and parts transfer from a broken laptop chassis over to a new laptop (the chassis was broken into half and they didn't know how to transfer everything over to the new chassis).
Went back home and a few weeks later, the big guys from California came over to our store for our quarterly inspection and they came up to me to congratulate me for saving the department. Had I not gone over there, everyone would have been fired and the store would have been at risk of shutting down permanently.
So it sounded like you had to do something like what I just did.
I know I digressed from your story and I didn't mean to, but thank you for doing what you did with the American flag!
Its not because the shop is performing badly, but because of the labor shortage and trying to get the people here some help and relief.