To find it very hard to deal with a very young senior manager?

[ForBoldMintBear]

I’m 36 and I’m a general manager of a restaurant that is also part of a large chain. A few months ago we got a new area manager who is only 22! I just find him very hard to deal with because he is so young and in my opinion lacks experience. I’ve never known an area manager to be as young as he is either. I find him very difficult to deal with because he is so young. He also won’t take on board any suggestions or advice and he thinks he knows it all, including when I know that some of what he wants to do won’t work for the restaurant and that it will make things worse! AIBU to find it so hard to deal with an area manager who is this young? I don’t even know how he got the job when he is only 22.

What an ageist post 🙄

I agree it's unusual to have gained enough knowledge and experience at 22 to do this job well, but not impossible. Have you given him a proper chance? You have said several times that he lacks skill and experience and that he's not good at his job, but you haven't provided any clear evidence of this or specifics, other than that he doesn't like your ideas. He can't be hard to deal with because of his age. It's either because of how he behaves or because you are perturbed by his age.

Of course he won't yet have good knowledge of the business if he's only just joined, so could you be under-estimating him? If he gets that vibe from you then I'm not surprised he rejects your ideas, particularly given that he may expect a negative response to his young age. If you're right about his competence then that's a difficult situation for you, but there's nothing to be lost by going the extra mile and seeing if being supportive and welcoming helps him to ease into the role.

One of my favourite managers was quite young. He was great due to his temperament and skills. A few senior women bitched about him too.

Similar happened in my case but they did nothing anyway just wanted the title. I kept just doing my job and told them what I was doing. The role should have gone to several other colleagues that had so much more experience.

It was clear they got the job because their godparent was a high level manager. Their only work experience was Uber eats food delivery driver - no managerial experience, no higher education and no other real-life work experience. Other colleagues had all of this and hard to believe they were overlooked. I am not surprised that person didn’t last too long in the role.

He also won’t take on board any suggestions or advice and he thinks he knows it all, including when I know that some of what he wants to do won’t work for the restaurant and that it will make things worse!

Your job isn't to give him advice or convince him to take your suggestions, because you work under him not the reverse. A lot of senior managers think they know better than the people they're over, and many come across as know-it-alls; usually they're right about some things and wrong about others. You're going to have to let go of the focus on his age and experience level and just treat him like any other senior manager you aren't an immediate fan of. Raise concerns about how decisions are impacting your store your store respectfully with no implication that you're giving him advice or helping him get better at his job, preferably via email so there's a trail, then accept whatever decisions he makes that are his to make. He may fail at his role and he may not but that isn't in your control and the only thing you're going to do by trying to manage or resist him from below is make yourself a target for blame if he does start floundering.

Have you seen his full CV, job history and spoken to his references, OP?

If you have real concerns (that aren’t ageist) can you raise them directly with him in a professional and diplomatic way and try and work together so your restaurant runs smoothly and hits/exceeds targets?

Is he your direct line manager?

If you cannot resolve the issues, and you truly believe his actions are affecting trade and the overall run and moral of the restaurant then I think it’s fair to report to his senior. I’m assuming you will have lots of contacts at HQ?

I am somewhat surprised that other posters trust the recruitment process so much. Getting the job is no guarantee of competence. I had an area manager once who got sacked due to gross incompetence after four months.

Same business also hired a mid-level manager who was of appropriate age but nevertheless totally unsuitable for the job due to lack of practical experience. Her role required her to train new staff to develop practical skills she did not have! We all worked out very quickly that she must have blagged the role through exaggerating previous responsibilities. As blagging had got her the role, she continued to use the same strategy in her new role, which resulted in her giving erm, incorrect guidance to staff. She failed her probation, I believe.

You will find yourself in serious trouble if you continue to discriminate against someone due to their age! Replace the word 'young' with 'old', 'pregnant', 'female', 'gay', 'black' etc, etc in your OP, and see how it reads!! For all you know, they left school and 16 and have spent 6 years working their way up and leaning more than you'll ever be capable of. As a CEO of 51, I would never discriminate based on age, and only judge on ability.

He's going to get excellent experience in managing someone difficult like you op.

He's clearly worked hard and dedicated himself to get to where he is at 22. The fact you keep saying his age is an issue instead of simply focusing on his experience to me is extremely telling that you are a significant part of the issue here. If your concerns were genuine his age wouldn't be mentioned. Certainly wouldn't be the title issue either.

I didn't get a job once because of idiots like you. The hiring manager didn't think his team could cope with reporting to a younger person. So a big fuck you from younger me.

Also if he's been working hard since 16 then he's potentially got 7 years experience under his belt that's enough to get to a high level in a lot of career pathways. I know a lot of people who left school at 16 who were very successful business owners by their early 20s while I was up to my eyeballs in student debt. I would also expect anyone who's new to a management role to have a bit of a learning curve regardless of their age.

This ageist nonsense is such crap. I remember starting out at 16 in a part time job and by 20 I was training 45 year olds who'd just joined the company and was running the department when my supervisor was off. Funnily enough new customers regularly asked for the older people to serve them thinking they were more experienced which I found amusing.

We'll find out what experience he has when OP comes back, but he hasn't necessarily been in full-time work since 16. It could be that he's 22 year old who has got his first job through one of those graduate-only management schemes.

He's about the right age to be on a graduate fast-track for a chain, they often go straight into area management where the role is quite different from managing a single outlet, and requires different skills.
If you genuinely believe you're know better, you could email him your concerns about specific things as they arise and store them in a mail folder that you can find easily so that if he tries to throw you under the bus for his crappy decisions you have back-up.
BUT you need to be prepared for this to backfire spectacularly if it turns out that he was selected for some skill, training, or qualification that you don't know about, and he was right more often than not, or that "his" decisions are actually directives from higher up, and he's implementing them as instructed.

For example, Aldi have a graduate scheme expressly for area managers. They promise that people on the scheme will get the keys to their own store within 15 weeks.

aldigraduates.aldirecruitment.co.uk/2086318/#page=16

I left my job of 20 years because of inexperienced, incompetent, unqualified management. They were quite young for the role but not very young & they were incredibly inexperienced and incompetent. I was very competent experienced, they made it difficult for me to do my job well with their misguided leadership. I have now left and they are now off with stress, their incompetence now realised by senior management. I wasn’t the only experienced member of staff to leave.

Well whatever it is OP, you need to accept that he is your boss and do your best to work with him. And try not to stress, I get that it's affecting your work, but it's be worse if it affects your mental health as well. If you can't do that, then you can either wait it out and see if he will lose his job through incompetence, or you can start looking for a new role yourself.

In YOUR opinion!!

So you’re basically pissed of that he’s judged to be more suited to the role of manager than you?

Frankly, that’s your problem. Maybe try to improve your performance and apply for promotion?

Can you ask not to work on the days he’s in charge so they can see how inexperienced he is. That way you’re not involved with his with mistakes

He is

Yep, I bet he is too.

If he's AGM, he is looking after several sites. If he is as shit as you say OP, it'll become incredibly clear in a very short space of time.
All you have to do is your own job to the best of your ability. If you disagree with his ideas, have meetings with him to discuss (professionally) and follow up in writing ("just to summarise our meeting from earlier, I am concerned about... Can we agree a review date on...").
Don't let it take up extra headspace.
I do agree he sounds young, most AGMs I've known are in their late 30s/early 40s after having been GM in at least 2-3 branches or different chains. When I worked at a very large and well-known bar/restaurant chain, we had the youngest GM in the country and he was 28 when he took the job. Someone more senior than him and younger was literally unheard of.

I’m not sure you thought this one through before posting

It’s always young men though. We have the same in the NHS, young, newly qualified male nurses fast tracked to band 6’s very quickly. It’s because they know their worth and threaten to leave, and it’s still pretty much a white man’s world.
Whilst you get some brilliant older women and African nurses who stay band 5’s their whole career, but have so much experience. Still all about the sharp elbows.

Some of the recruitment processes are completely ludicrous people learn the recruitment technique rather than the job and will go for promotion and senior jobs - think Liz Truss