I ratted out my boss. Am I in trouble?

I work as a part time floral clerk at a grocery Store. I have only been working here 3 month. My boss whom I hardly see anymore, NEVER trims the cut flowers in our whole dept. It is only the 2 of us in the dept., so I know it is her.

It bugged me for a while and I asked her and she said that she does cut them, but straight! She taught me to cut flowers at an angle, so the water gets to them better. We have a huge Marketplace of packages of cut flowers and numerous bouquets and dozens of roses, single roses, carnations and tulips…….all of which she NEVER cuts, just puts them on display.

Well the reason I am writing is that today at lunch I was sitting at the table and the store manager (who hired me) was sitting eating and using his cell phone and I told him that my boss never cut the flowers, ever! He asked me why? and I said I think she told me that she has a sore shoulder from cutting flowers for 12 years? I wasn’t sure. He just said okay.

My husband picked me up from work, and I mentioned that I told the store manager about this and he said “You shouldn’t rat out your boss, you are asking for trouble!”

The store manager has only been there about 9 months and the floral manager doesn’t like him at all. She even yelled at him once! She talk about how stupid he is. 

Do you think I am in trouble. I asked GOD to cover me, as I prayed before I told the Store manager and I only did it for the flowers and customer’s  sake:) I do throw away lots and lots of cut flowers every day!

Well, I’m all in favor of praying, but I am also a big believer in this following scriptural advice: “Oh be wise; what can I say more?” Generally speaking, blurting out that your boss is a failure to the big boss during lunch is a bad move, regardless of a prayer said beforehand.

In this situation, the store manager did need to know that the floral manager’s actions or, in this case, lack of actions were causing a tremendous loss of stock. (I’m making the assumption that you’re correct about the flowers. I just tend to kill any plant forms that come into my house, so I am not what you would call qualified to work in a flower shop.) There are times when you need to go over your boss’s head, and while you didn’t do this in the “proper” manner, you did do it.

Since the relationship between the store manager and the department manager was already rocky, it’s probably not going to go against you that you did this in this manner. Although, in the future, you should ask for a formal meeting and present such information in a formal manner.

But, right now? Cat’s out of the bag. I give your store manager props for responding, simply, “Okay,” and not engaging in trashing your department manager. It’s his responsibility  now to either deal with the flower issue or not deal with it. Will there be backlash on your head? Well, that depends on how good of a manager he is. A good manager, in this kind of situation, will find a way to “discover” this information on his own and deal with it. A bad manager will go to your boss and say, “Your employee said you aren’t cutting the flowers the right way, causing loss of stock.”

I don’t know which type of store manager you have, but hopefully it is a good one.

What should you do at this point? Probably nothing. Go to work, do your job. Cut the flowers properly. Try to keep the outbursts to a minimum. Try not to speak ill of your direct supervisor. If your department manager gets in trouble and takes it out on you, apologize for going behind her back. I doubt she has fire power, since she didn’t hire you, but nevertheless, try to work with her.

For instance, you can try to come up with a solution. If her sore shoulder is preventing her from cutting the flowers properly, maybe you can offer to be responsible for cutting the flowers while she does the display work. (No idea if that’s reasonable or not!).