Management Rox!

Management Rox!
by Ellen Moon

Management is a fascinatingly significant science
A subject in which all organizations show reliance
As I have learned throughout the semester’s run
Management is pretty damn important to everyone

There is so much work that goes into
Hiring and training a pizza crew
To successfully manage a high volume pizza operation
I’d have to give workers a deep sense of motivation

“Eggs-ecuting” a plan with team members is no vacation either
Only one person in the group did the groundwork and implementation, most did neither
There’s actually a difference between planning and doing
I personally just wanted to be a spectator, merely viewing

Creation of novel Jell-o products got repetitive
After the first 30 ideas, it got way less competitive

Just a few examples, but one can plainly see
A manager is one of the hardest things to be

But hold on, let’s not be lazy and crass
Because Intro to MGT is a required class

Fortunately, Kurpis taught our course
Therefore, I hold no remorse

Now I apply management knowledge to everyday existence
Maybe in the future, I can provide corporate assistance

Who knows, I may end up in a managerial position soon
I can then use Kurpis’ teachings to become a tycoon!
Yay!

Mc'D's catastophe!

Management “MCD”

I went into the fast food restaurant with a friend. We surveyed the employees (minimal lines, but it looked busy). You know those few McDonald restaurants that have friendly staff most of the time? Yeah, this wasn’t one of them. They looked sour, despite the fact that you would have to double their housed customers to call their work bustling. Now, I’m not saying that the employees were checking underneath their fingernails for dirt or picking their noses; just sayin’, it could have been worse.

We approached one of the ominously harassed-looking cashiers that we had picked earlier after analyzing each one and determining which looked least aggravated. We ordered. The hamburger bit was easy enough for them. Maybe they saw us coming! Oh, but wait, well-cooked UNSALTED fries!? If looks could kill…

Cashier lady calls over a more menacing, looking hair-netted lady, taller. She glares. “Well done, no sal?,” she asks in an exasperated and impatient Latin American accent. We fuss over the details of the order for a couple of seconds. She’s very impatient and very angry. Yikes.

I get my order and it honestly didn’t take much more time than it usually would have, which is so surprising to me. Order preparation was pretty standard, though communication was an issue. I had to repeat the order many times because they could not remember it for the life of them. They also weren’t coordinated very well. It felt as if I was going through a customer service rep on the phone for Comcast. Every time I get transferred, I have to re-explain my issue [order]. Customer service was terrible, but I definitely expected that.

As a consultant, I would recommend them to work on their customer service. Complications are unavoidable for special orders, especially in fast food places as popular as McDonald’s. If that is the case, I feel that better customer service will keep everyone happy.

My Visions, Dreams, and Goals

1. Get a bachelors and masters degree by 2017.
2. Do some art education [like professional studies or a second bachelors] specific to Visual Merchandising, by 2015.
3. Have at least 2 years each of Visual Merchandising and Buyer experience by 2020.
4. Go to 3 major USA national foosball tournaments and 1 major multitable foosball tournament in Europe by the time I am 27.
5. Visit Vienna, Austria again - for at least a month before I turn 30.

All of these goals are within my reach and have a time limit so that I don't get lazy ;-). These are things that I really want to do and will take a large amount of effort and time that I am willing to make/sacrifice/invest.
I am willing to practice foosball harder and possibly get to play the most elite in this world, learn many things, and win some money to support the addiction in the near term. This will allow me to play in multitabled event and possibly win [yeah right!].
I am also willing and able to go and visit Austria for a month. I have saved up money and will continue saving to reach my goal. I have loved Vienna from the moment I laid eyes on the beautiful and artistically cultural city [4-5 years ago].
I will apply for visual merchandising classes at my dream school [LIM] as soon as I graduate which I have also saved up for.
I am currently seeking Visual Merchandising opportunities.

Decision Making

I didn't say much of anything, nor did I help with the decision process. I was the little asian girl in the corner of the room that screeched "SHUT UP!" when things got rowdy. I wouldn't consider this avoidance though. I thought it was neccessary for the majority of the group to be quiet and attentive at any one moment for decisions to happen. I was happy to help out by reminding the people that emerged as semi leaders to stewfoo [stfu] :). I wouldn't have gone about this any other way and feel that even after knowing the end result [which I think was excellent], I participated in my most helpful way.

Eggtastrophy!

Of the five steps in the planning process, I felt that my team really only followed two [Step 1. Define your goals and objectives, Step 5. Implement the plan and evaluate results] and bits of others [Step 2. Determine your resources and current status vis-á-vis objectives, Step 4. Make a tactical plan]. We forewent Step 3 [Develop several alternative strategies] and instead went with the second idea, which sounded much more convincing than the first. This may have been the deciding factor of Billy's fate.

As a team, we understood the objectives and the time limit, and we managed to get everything done before the time expired, especially the planning part. We ended up having to revise the plan at the last second due to overtaping. This was foreseen by some group members but was ignored to the demise of Billy. However, we did not allocate our time properly because we rushed the procedure during implementation towards the end.

We did not assess the individuality of our group members. We had no idea what our strengths and weaknesses were. The extra time we had after the planning process was over could have been used before the planning [wince] to avoid this catastrophic oversight. Another one of our minimishaps included not breaking down our time and our roles in the implementation stage. This is unfortunate because we had plenty of time to do so during the planning stage. It ended up so that the person who invented our egg-traption did most of the implementation with me standing about, holding the tape. -_-

I feel that we could have done better after all but the project was fun and our ultimate performance was grand, considering the gaps in our planning process. ....not that we got the five points ;-)

Shout out to my team members! It was a blast!

xoxoEllenxoxo

Problems in Management

As I mentioned previously, I host Friday foosball pick up game events. The majority of people that show up for FCFs [Fat Cat Fridays] are close friends of mine who take and play foosball quite seriously. There are others that show up by hearing about it through mediums such as newpapers, facebook, articles published about New York Nightlife, and Meetup.com.

The attendance is steady though slowly declining in the past couple of months. I've been doing this for about one/one and a half year(s) and trust me when I tell you, it is not always easy to keep attendance steady.

Also, when I started this event up, I went through what I call the Great Depression of Foosball. GDofF is when practically no one shows up and I'm stuck there for hours alone waiting for someone to show up. I call it GDofF because one, it's depressing, and two, foosball attendance at FCF is very much like the economy. It's got its ups and downs and twists and turns.

Well lately, I have been in a slump. I don't want to go back to the beginning where I'm stuck by myself. I found out the hard way that it is difficult to herd or manage (a) large group(s) of people, even if they are as close as family, the way the NYCFoos community is.

To boost attendance last time, it was a lot of word of mouth, fake hype, and guest appearances. When the attendance hit 29+ people, the tables were overcrowded, and when coupled with overall less satisfaction; not the picture that I had intended to paint. I slowed down the marketing side and focused more on developing the service. I started taking attendance and statistically compressed population ideas [what, I'm not allowed to talk like that?] into how I could make FCF more worthwhile to those who came most frequently. When I went upstate for a foosball tournament, I had just started www.nycfoosball.com/fcf, which essentially targets those who don't play foosball in NYC and educates them on our most recent activities within NYC and guests from other regions who visit the big apple for foos. This blog is a complement to www.nycfoosball.com/ontour, which captures NYC playing in tournaments on other turfs. Anywho, the upstate folk complemented the blog and I was surprised to see how far management has taken me.

Nowadays, I've been having more and more pages views from over 85 cities [friends we've made right here in NYC!] across the globe in the last 3 months.

Sorry for this being so long; guess I went off on a tangent there. I'm taking a wild guess - No one from class is gonna read/comment this one haha :)]

Ellen M

Hey all!

Herrro :)

A little about me.
My name is Ellen. This is not my first blog. Visit FCF to see my not so fluent HTML expertise or lack there of. I go to Baruch full time as a Marketing Major in the Advertising & Communications sector and a Religion & Culture minor. I work part time at an executive search firm in the research department as a "Data Analyst". I was a gymnast for 9 years and a pianist for most of life [didn't get too far with that though]. I am a total work aholic and LOVEEEEE to do volunteer work. I host weekly foosball events every friday [my pride and joy] at a jazz lounge in the west village called Fat Cat [hence FCF - Fat Cat Fridays]. I also attend the local foosball tournaments in the same place held every tuesday. :) As you probably can tell by now, I am an avid foos fan. I live and breathe foosball. If you wish to locate me in class [I'm friendly & I don't bite{unless I'm playing foosball}], I'm the one decked out in Hello Kitty gear :)

I hope to learn a lot from this Intro to Management class and also to meet new people :)

Thanks for reading!
Ellen M