If You Have Two Masters, Whom Do You Choose to Serve?

[seoulsearch]

Good evening, Singles!

Yes, I'm taking the title from Matthew 6:24 -- "No one can serve two masters. Either you will love one and hate the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. No one can serve both God and money."

I would like to take this passage and use it in the context of actually having two masters BESIDES God and money. For our friends in the Bible Forum who will probably be drawn to this thread title, please read this original post first so that you can respond in the proper context that is intended.

Do many of you find yourselves in a situation in which it feels like you have two masters? How do you cope? Let me explain to you what I mean.

I have almost always worked in situations in which I am assigned to a certain department but am actually pulled between several places--in other words, I have many masters. Master 1 is in charge of our department; Master 2 runs another department and often pulls me away from Master 1. Master 3 is in charge of both Master 1 and Master 2 so when #3 comes along and asks me to drop everything and follow what he/she wants, I have no choice but to do so. Which of course, in effect, swiftly angers Masters 1 and 2.

The result is a lot of stress and conflict. Everyone has their own agenda, no one wants to look bad, and no one wants to get in trouble with the higher-ups. But it's very true--when you are being torn between several people who are over you or whom you have obligations to, you are going to have to favor one over the other or you'll drive yourself crazy. I tend to be very loyal to my direct supervisor which has resulted in things such as a person from another department calling me "slow" because I didn't achieve their directive. This came from a person who stands in one spot the entire day, whereas I have to move from one place to another constantly, often hauling things that are bigger than I am.

I have been praying about this a lot lately: "Lord, I can't serve everyone equally. And I am about at the end of my rope. What can I do? I know you would want me to be humble and to serve, but it's a no-win situation. I'm going to constantly make one or two people mad as I try to serve another. So which one do I choose to put over the others? Do I just ignore the ones who call me lazy? And then do I just deal with their anger and its fallout accordingly? I guess I also have to just stand there and take the insults? Please help me because I am literally ready to split into pieces."

What about the rest of you? What do you do when life gives you more than one master? For instance, what happens if you feel like you have to choose between making your spouse or your children a priority? Your parents or your in-laws? Your friends from years back or new friends you've made recently? A child who has special needs or is younger vs. your more independent children? Your small group or ministry at church vs. the head pastor? These are just a few examples--feel free to give your own.

I would like to know, whom do you choose to prioritize over the others, and how do you deal with the consequences?

 

[zeroturbulence]

Hi Kim. The problem really isn't yours it's your company's. They have a defective hierarchy system. No employee should have two supervisors that have equal rank over you. It should be ok with three supers as long as each one has a specific place in the heirarchy.

 

[seoulsearch]

Hi Kim. The problem really isn't yours it's your company's. They have a defective hierarchy system. No employee should have two supervisors that have equal rank over you. It should be ok with three supers as long as each one has a specific place in the heirarchy.

Hey Zero . Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way in everyday life. On paper, yes, everyone has a place. But we all know how that goes! As I said, the head person DOES supposedly have the clout but as you know, it angers the people you are directly under when you drop everything for that person because then their agenda doesn't get done.

At my last job, my supervisor asked me to stay a few hours to finish a specific task. As soon as he was gone for the day, another manager swooped in and wanted me to do something else. I finally got so fed up that I told them no, I had volunteered to stay behind to work on something in our department, not another. I then punched out and went home. They were mad, of course, but my supervisor was quite pleased. I had made the point that if I was staying on my own time, I was going to work for my own department.

Unfortunately, it's pretty much the same everywhere, at least in the work I've been involved in since my 20's.

 

[Lynx]

I agree, it sounds like something is wrong with the manager setup there. That, or your job is gopher and everyone thinks you should make their gopher task a priority. If the former... find another job? If the latter, try to prioritize by which is more important to the company's main business, which is more urgent, etc.

And about the one who says you're slow, as long as your managers don't think you're slow just ignore him. Or offer to trade jobs...

 

[seoulsearch]

I appreciate the feedback but I just gave my own situation as an example--I'm hoping to hear from people who feel they're caught in the same situation and how they deal with it.

Retail is the same wherever you go now days. Ever wonder why stores are always short of help, especially up front? That's because they train most of their staff to work the front end, and therefore, schedule maybe one cashier because they reason they can save money by only having others come up "as needed".

At my last job, I worked in receiving. Somehow we were expected to run to the front of the store about 50 times a day, check everyone out, and then run to the back in between and process 660 cartons a day. When we didn't meet those quotas, the receiving manager was mad. When we didn't come up front fast enough to the liking of the front end manager, they got mad. When our counts for both areas were behind corporate mandates, the store manager got mad. We had an awesome receiving manager for about a year and he eventually quit because it just got to be too much. I was very sorry to see him go. It's a no-win situation and it's pretty much the same anywhere. We recently had a manager who had worked at almost every major chain and said they all follow a similar model.

I'm hoping this thread won't be about my situation specifically but that other people will share their own stories as well.

In particular I was thinking today about people who have to look after their elderly parents, and how they balance serving their parents vs. their own families and taking care of themselves.

 

[zeroturbulence]

Seriously Kim, you're actually in an abusive situation. It doesn't matter if its commonplace in that company/industry. What the scripture says is true for real life also (can't serve two masters - at the same time). If the situation isn't going to change then all you can do is try your best to please whoever you think you should be pleasing at any given moment. Of course that leads to inevitable conflict/problems so there really is no way to make it truly work. The companies that I've worked for never had that problem and I've worked for a few large companies including retail stores. Maybe because I wasn't a manager? I don't know, but that's a volatile situation they've got you in there.

 

[zeroturbulence]

I appreciate the feedback but I just gave my own situation as an example--I'm hoping to hear from people who feel they're caught in the same situation and how they deal with it.

Retail is the same wherever you go now days. Ever wonder why stores are always short of help, especially up front? That's because they train most of their staff to work the front end, and therefore, schedule maybe one cashier because they reason they can save money by only having others come up "as needed".

At my last job, I worked in receiving. Somehow we were expected to run to the front of the store about 50 times a day, check everyone out, and then run to the back in between and process 660 cartons a day. When we didn't meet those quotas, the receiving manager was mad. When we didn't come up front fast enough to the liking of the front end manager, they got mad. When our counts for both areas were behind corporate mandates, the store manager got mad. We had an awesome receiving manager for about a year and he eventually quit because it just got to be too much. I was very sorry to see him go. It's a no-win situation and it's pretty much the same anywhere. We recently had a manager who had worked at almost every major chain and said they all follow a similar model.

I'm hoping this thread won't be about my situation specifically but that other people will share their own stories as well.

In particular I was thinking today about people who have to look after their elderly parents, and how they balance serving their parents vs. their own families and taking care of themselves.

Ok, now that i've read this I see what you mean (I hadn't read it before my last post). What's really going on is that you're overwhelmed in your position. The workload is probably too much for one person to handle sufficiently so you're getting flak from whoever ends up short. You're right, this is prevalent in retail. I guess if you can hack it, it's tolerable, but I wouldn't last a year in that job. I need my sanity.

 

[cinder]

Well, I think I will never work in retail.

My slightly humorous story is about my current work project, which I liked to call too many bosses and not enough direction. We had a language learning coach, a lady from our own organization who checks in with us because yeah I've never figured it out, then there is our story consultant, oh and then there is the lady who will actually be the one most involved in using our stories when we're done. And none of them could really tell us how to get things done. I was all set to complain my head off until I heard another team talking about having an overbearing, high stress field supervisor who was making them miserable. Then I decided that I'd rather be under directed and not bothered and feel lazy than constantly stressed out and made to feel like I wasn't making appropriate progress.

Things are going sort of well now, so maybe we've finally figured out what we're doing. Well other than that whole explaining the Holy Spirit thing and have we actually covered the fact that we are separated from God and a few minor considerations like that. Faith was much simpler when everyone else knew all the buzzwords and right answers too.

 

[seoulsearch]

Retail is a tough, tough business. On top of everything else, you then have to deal with the public that thinks it's entitled to everything and that you have no brain. Now of course, workers make mistakes and can have attitudes too, but I can't tell you how much I appreciate kind, polite patrons, which are often extremely rare.

I've had friends who are into all other sorts of professions (law, accounting, teaching, computers) and honestly, I think everyone has to deal with these kinds of things on a certain level and from what I've seen and heard, I don't think it's all that much different no matter what you go into. I could be wrong? (Or just jaded!)

I'm grateful to have always had jobs. I went to college but got to a point where I knew I'd rather be bringing money in, even if it seemed like a laughable amount, than shelling out more and more for degrees that no one seemed to care about. I'm extremely thankful I don't have to work 90 hours a week on salary like I see some of my friends and family doing. My family has always taught me to be frugal and careful, so I try to make the most of what God provides.

I actually feel sorry for the managers in places where I work--it's a neverending hierarchy and the reason they're getting mad is because THEY'RE trying to avoid being yelled at by THEIR supervisors.

There are many stresses throughout the day but the biggest one, ironically, is that every day I have to fight someone or several people in order to be able to do my own job.

Cinder, thank you for sharing. I'm hoping other people will talk about what they're going through as well because I'm sure we all deal with this at some level.

 

[kenthomas27]

Kimmie Doodle, I think you're going to find those kinds of issues everywhere. I'm not sure it's peculiar to retail, though retail probably has their unique challenges. The problems I have are more of an ethical nature. In my business I have several clients or businesses. Our company will contract with these clients to perform a particular service - usually an annual contract. Included in these contracts is money for a service technicians time. Let's say that business A has contracted for 20 hours a week. Well, often I will be working for business A and my boss will pull me off to go work on business B who's only contracted for 5 hours a week. At the end of week when I'm logging my time, I'm seeing that business B has racked up 35 hours and business A only had about 5. What my company will do is charge business B for the extra 30 hours, but gives no credit to business A.

It's rarely as cut and dry as the example I gave but there's been plenty of times when the math just doesn't add up. On the other hand, I know how businesses like mine have to act. They have to provide a low cost competitive service rate in order to get a contract to begin with and then make up fees and other schemes to make enough money to stay in business. For me - at the end of the day, I'm honest about the time I spent where and turn it in and what the business does beyond that is their business. But let me just say - this happens ALL the time. It's not just the business I'm in, it's everywhere. So how do you, as a Christian, reckon with this disparity of ethics?

 

[Lynx]

It's a matter of greed versus not running too many employees off. In my current place of painful empl... er, GAINful employment everything has been measured, they know exactly how many seconds it should take to do this and that (and I'm not exagerating... seconds) and how much percentage of revenue we should be spending on labor, broken down by the hour. Yeah, we can get hourly reports on labor cost as a percentage of how much we took in that hour. If labor is too high we have to send someone home. No matter that the remaining staff might not be able to get the job done as fast as we should, no matter that someone might need that time clock money for bills. It's all about the bottom line.

The goal, from the POV of the people making these rules, is to get as much work for as little wages as possible without losing employees. And they have computer analysis of just how much a person should be able to take, and they run it right up to the limit. It's a science, or maybe a sociological art form.

However... having said all that, I have to say that I never have two bosses. Multiple assistant managers are usually at work, but one is designated as "on the floor." That person makes the calls for that shift. Even the store manager, should he be there, says "Ask (insert manager's name,) he's on the floor." Of course the manager on the floor has multiple, competing priorities, but that one manager calls the shots.

I have to ask seoulsearch, where do you work? Because we have multiple Dollar Stores, Family Dollars, Fred's and Wal-Marts around here, and none of the workers I've seen there look rushed or stressed. I have friends who work at those places and they never seem run ragged like that.

 

[seoulsearch]

Well this thread hasn't exactly gone the way I'd hoped. Rather than focus on my own situation, I was hoping others would share their own.

For privacy issues, I'd prefer not to say specifically where I work, nor will I go into why I stay because they are personal reasons. But it's my second job with a large corporation and unlike most I've researched, they offer health insurance for a wider range of employees. Before that I was fortunate enough to work for a privately owned store. Some workers are lucky enough to work in just one area and not be pulled in all directions.

As Ken said, you'll find it everywhere. I feel a lot of empathy for people in the medical field who are responsible for people's money or LIVES. I'm grateful to only be responsible for people's merchandise, which they get upset enough about--I can't imagine having to answer to someone for either their life or their life savings!

I appreciate everyone's concern -- thank you for caring about my well-being.

But I really am hoping to hear from others who are being pulled in all directions, which is really what this thread is about: whom do you prioritize when multiple people are making demands of your time, emotions, and resources? And how does it work for you?

 

[seoulsearch]

Ken, I just read your post again and I agree with you. It's so hard to live out our Christian values! I think you're doing what you can and then you're right, you just have to hand it over to your superiors and God, and trust He'll direct (or correct) what happens. You just reminded me of all kinds of ethical "red flags" I've seen as well, both at work and at school.

I also wanted to add that I am usually very loyal to the places I work. I've only ever quit from a job because I've moved out of the area. There are times when I've felt God has wanted me to stay, usually because I'm learning something I'll need for the future, and often I know He's keeping me at a place because I need to learn from someone, and someone there also needs me. I've worked at some places for many years and we (the employees) weathered all sorts of problems together--abusive relationships, marriages, divorces, unfaithful partners/spouses, a sick child, financial crises, going to church together...

Sometimes we are called to a place for more than just what's best for ourselves, tough as it may be.