A year went by very quickly and soon it was another retirement and then another retirement and I had my choice of routes I went onto a route in the city it wasn't a very good route but it was close to home and I knew the territory well. I took this route and within a year it was in the top five. The route supervisor that it had helped me come to work with the meat company had taken another position outside the company so therefore this position was open. I knew how to be a route supervisor from when I was a District manager at Coca-Cola. I filled out all of the sales charts without anybody knowing about it. I updated all the sales that everybody needed to know I made sure everything was on their clipboards. The branch manager began wondering why or who was doing this.
After a short time he figured it was me I was the one that had the initiative to do what a route supervisor would do. He offered me the position and I took it I was the new route sales supervisor for this meat company.
Things were very similar here as they were when I had come off the route a Coca-Cola and became a District manager. There were older salesman and there were newer salesman. Attitudes were the same as what I had seen at Coca-Cola the older salesman knew everything and were not up to learning anything new it was their way or the highway after all they had seen all management come and go.
These things I had been faced with this before. It was nothing new to me and I decided to tackle the job by again jumping on the trucks and going with the older salesman and learning all about them and their lives and what it was like for them on their routes. After a while the communication got better with these people both old and new and they accepted me as a route supervisor.
The branch manager and I became friends and every weekend we play golf together. I thought the branch manager was in pretty good shape as we walked the whole course 18 holes every weekend. One weekend however after we played golf I got a phone call later in the day. He had to go the hospital he was having a heart condition. At the hospital they found a couple of arteries that were totally blocked. He was to have bypass surgery that meant that I was going to have to take over the position as branch manager temporarily and as route supervisor. At the same time we had a couple of new hires that we brought in to train for the routes and wouldn't you know it as luck would have it they both quit on me the same week.
The call to the region office to let them know what was happening wasn’t easy, they decided to bring in a couple of people from out of town from another branch to help. Before those people arrived from out of town I found myself upon the trucks running routes by myself I tried to cover all the large accounts by myself and then any phone calls that came in from smaller ones that needed service I would try to get those customers as well. I tried to do the best that I could, in turn my numbers got weaker each week. I even cut the grass. I did everything around the branch that needed to be done to keep the branch running.
