Every month I go to a large office supply retailer to have handouts printed for my presentations. The employee who manages the printing section, Cassandra, has always been very courteous and helpful. Her boss, on the other hand, seems to be in a constant state of being too rushed to care about his employees or customers. Let me share a recent example.

The other day I came in to ship out some books via UPS and also to pick up my handouts. It was early in the morning and I was the only person at the counter. The boss happened to be in the area taking care of his own project. While Cassandra started to help me, another customer showed up at the counter. Since she had just started with me and we were going to be a while, she interrupted her boss from his project and asked if he would be willing to assist them. His demeanor revealed he looked on this as more of an annoyance than as an opportunity to perform great customer service.

He did speak with them for a moment. Then, while Cassandra was in the middle of helping me, he came over and said, “You need to take care of these other people.” Cassandra, wanting to follow orders, immediately stopped what she was doing with me and moved over to the other folks. I protested to the manager, saying that type of approach does no service to me, the new customer or the employee. When he objected, I asked him if he thought there was anything more important in his day than the customer who he had right in front of him. Instead of replying, he told Cassandra to finish with me and walked off in a huff. Once Cassandra finished helping me, and we went to the cash register, she explained to the other customers that she would ring me up and then help them as soon as possible. Not surprisingly, we customers got to talking about how ridiculous the managers’ behavior was.

As I was leaving, I heard the manager get on the phone with an employee who was obviously late. The first thing that he said was, “You were supposed to be in here at 9:00!” Chances are, the employee already knew this and was calling to let him know that he was running late or couldn’t come in for whatever reason.

He probably wanted to respond, “No *@#* Sherlock!” but instead bit his tongue.

Perhaps, when the manager answered the phone he could have started off by saying, “Are you feeling ok?” For all he knew, the employee’s mother just died, he was in an auto accident, or had been the victim of some circumstance over which he had no control. Instead, the boss assumed that the employee simply didn’t care about getting to work on time.

If it were my company, I’d tell this manager that he needs to either change his approach with both customers and employees or find work elsewhere. In the 15 minutes that I was there, he turned off two customers, as well as two employees. It looked as if he was having a lousy day — and the chances are that being the manager, this bad disposition affected the day of everyone else.

Cassandra does a good job every day in spite of her boss, not because of him; because of her personal pride, not because he has motivated her. It reminds me of Cool Hand Luke encouraging the chain gang to work hard despite the conduct of the guards. Again, it’s a matter of personal pride.

When asked, how do we motivate people? I often advise companies to stop hiring managers who demotivate people. I recommend that these businesses make sure their managers follow these four rules:

• In a service or work situation, nobody is more important than the customer or the employee you’re dealing with in this moment.
• Always assume that your people are trying to give it their best whether they’re late or have numerous customers in front of them. Wait for facts to judge otherwise.
• See how you can be of service, not disservice.
• Speak for yourself, not the other person.