My last day shift.

     So I finished my last day shift for the next year last night.  It was kind of a bittersweet day.  In preparing for the transition, I had to gather up all of my schedules and calendars and such to pass on to the manager who will be taking over my areas.  As I was doing so I felt a little sad.  I have really enjoyed working with the group of individuals in the areas for which I was responsible.  I will miss them, and I believe that most of them will miss me as well.  They even gave me a thank you card and two bottles of Mountain Dew, they know me well, before I left for the evening yesterday.  They are a bunch of hard working people who take a lot of pride in doing a good job.  It's not like I am moving away and won't see them anymore, but I will no longer be working with them very closely, and it sucks to move on when you have become close with a group of people.  As a manager, I feel it is my duty to take care of my associates and make their jobs easier in order for them to be happy and productive.  It upsets me when I see managers that think managing means that you can't be friendly and social with your workers, even worse is when they try to manage by fear or intimidation.  I have always believed that happy workers are more productive and do a lot better work than ones that are just trying to avoid punishment.  When morale is low among workers the end product, particularly customer service, suffers as well.  I wish that all managers were as concerned about the morale and happiness of their associates as I am.  I will genuinely miss this group of associates, they are one of the best bunch of people I have ever managed.  That being said, I am looking forward to working with the overnight crew, and seeing what I can do to help them to grow and improve.  On to new challenges.