Mr. Solis My Good Boss, Research Paper Example

Every once in awhile there comes along a person in life that really stands out, one that it is just impossible to forget. Whether this person is liked or not liked, he or she will be in mind for years, possibly will even be thought of on the death bed. My good boss Mr. Solis is one of these people. I have worked with Mr. Solis long enough to identify his chief traits, familiarize myself with his general attitude, and recognize what he values the most in life. I have come to know his style, the general manner in which he operates. Over the year I served as “counter help” in the town meat market, I watched his actions and demeanor impact my coworkers and bear directly on the running of the store itself. All of these things, Mr. Solis, my coworkers responses to Mr. Solis, and the working environment created, also had an impact on me. It is that personal impact I wish to explore, but to do that accurately, I must first detail for you an understanding of Mr. Solis so you can more fully understand the impact he had had on my life.

I will start with the easiest way to describe a person, a conventional physical description. Mr. Solis is a white, Caucasian male in his mid-forties. He is tall, standing in at about six foot, with a large frame and average body type. A once athletic man who has gone a little soft with family responsibility, Mr. Solis’ physical attributes are very much in line with his social style. I will go more into that further down the line, but first I would like to note some observations about Mr. Solis’ character, particularly his chief traits and main values.

A trait can be a physical characteristic determined by genetics, or an emotional marker that is always present in the way a person acts. I am referring to the second definition when I say “trait”. Over the time I have worked with Mr. Solis, three chief traits were made apparent to me. They are responsibility, trustworthiness, and initiative. Mr. Solis carried a great sense of responsibility. He did not slack off in what he felt to be his duties toward his meat market, his employees, his customers, or his family. Many times Mr. Solis would run himself down to his last ounce of energy making sure of details such as that a customer’s open house order was prepared and ready exactly how it was requested, that our paychecks were in our hands on time, the inventory order was called in, and the flat on his daughter’s new car was replaced. He pushed himself to complete these tasks because he felt it was his place to ensure them. In addition to a rooted sense of responsibility, Mr. Solis’ customers knew he could be trusted. They didn’t worry about the order being wrong, didn’t watch closely when he weighed out their food, and did not need to scrutinize the merchandise for freshness and quality. The third chief trait of Mr. Solis, initiative, was brought forward in his daily actions. There was never much of a time elapse between thinking, planning, and doing with Mr. Solis. He saw a problem and sought to correct it…immediately.

There are four things that Mr. Solis very clearly valued above others in life. These are hardwork, time management, frugality, and family. One did not let Mr. Solis catch them slacking off on the job. Neither did one let Mr. Solis catch them adding lunchmeat to an order after weighing and pricing it, or packaging the tomato and cucumber salad vegetable heavy and sauce light. He always insisted the reason for the high amount of sauce in the salad was not because he was cheap, but because the tomatoes and cukes had to really marinate for it to taste just right. The tomato and cucumber salad was his specialty. His wife, and co-owner of the meat market, handled the rest of the salads. A number of them were made from her own recipes. His daughter and son, both high school aged, also worked in the meat market. It was apparent from their interactions and his devotion to their activities how much his family meant to him.

Though Mr. Solis was usually very good with his wife and children, his manner toward the employees was not always so charitable. Mr. Solis’ style in general could be condescending and bluntly direct, kind of like an over exasperated parent can be with their young child. He had a “my way is the right way” philosophy when it came to his store. Often, Mr. Solis would stop an employee in the middle of a task to instruct on the “right way” to do it. Often Mr. Solis would then instruct that same employee on the “right way” to do that same task five minutes later. I cannot begin to count the total number of times he instructed me on the correct size of peppers for shish-ke-bobs, though I know there was a day he corrected me on it six times. When Mr. Solis felt that an employee was simply not listening to him and working up to his standards, he would pull the employee in question into the walk-in cooler to “talk” with them about job performance. I remember when he did this to an employee, named Amy.

Amy was eighteen, in her last year of high school. She couldn’t seem to cut the shish-ke-bob peppers just the right size, or put them together quick enough. So Mr. Solis pulled her back to the walk-in cooler. We all knew not to enter the cooler. Mr. Solis’ “talk” was actually a beration of chastisement delivered at a fairly loud enough volume to make you want to cover your ears and with enough sour terms to make you want to hang up your apron and leave. What most employees did however was cry. And that is what Amy did. Pretty quickly, Mr. Solis had returned from the cooler and went back to work. When Amy didn’t come right out, I and another employee went to check on her, wondering if she had been sent home. Amy was still in the cooler, crying her eyes out and sobbing. She was not used to being spoken to so harshly and had taken Mr. Solis’ words very hard. It was my response to this incident that pinpoints a change in myself brought about by Mr. Solis.

I remember I was so angry that Mr. Solis could so heartlessly reduce someone to sobbing because of an issue so insignificant as the size of cut peppers, especially when the correct size of those peppers changed daily. I remember being angered further as I listened to the other employees console Amy and talk about how he had done the same thing to them at one time or another. I remember that for probably the first time in my life, I confronted a person in authority with an injustice I felt they had committed. I went right up to Mr. Solis and told him what I thought about the incident, as well as the way his manner and actions affected the working environment, making the employees so nervous about our work that there was no enjoyment to the day.

I call Mr. Solis the “good boss”, not because he was a wonderful boss, but because of the good change that he indirectly caused in me. Not that he was a completely horrible boss. His chief traits were very good ones. But his style often eroded the benefit of those traits and made him very hard to work for. As a result, my confidence in my own values was increased and my own chief traits were brought forward.