I am the manager of a contractor retail store, and I have been in this role for about a year. The culture that I have implemented is not one of an uptight setting, but at the same time I emphasize customer experience, professionalism with customers, and to be accountable for mistakes. I have a good relationship with sales reps, colleagues, other company departments, and with my own staff (I think). I feel I am good leader to my staff. Every week I receive hardgoods from the main warehouse by using our own company drivers, and these drivers sometimes need to pick items from my retail store and take it back to the warehouse. The problem with these drivers is that they are unionized.

In the past year, I have had the same driver come in 3 times per month. I have "shoot the ****" with him sometimes while he is working, making fun of himself and myself. I am not sure what I said 2 months ago but he abruptly said to me "You can't tell me that, I am in an union" and things just started going downhill from there. He is not under my command. Let's call him M.

These drivers work from 6 am to 2 pm, and all the hours worked after that are counted as overtime. If they do not have the time to pick all of the items in my store, which they are accounted in my KPIs, the drivers can say that they don't want to do it and they can just go home. Sometimes I tell the other drivers if they want to take stuff back and they politely decline it.

Anyways, M has been having issues with customers and with myself these past months. 4 weeks ago he asked me if I wanted items to be pick up from the store, I replied "if you want to, do it, if not, then don't" but M says angrily that I have to make a decision. I told him what his colleagues usually do, but then he asks me if he is ever been like that, angrily. Another time I asked him if "Is that all of what you are taking?” while counting inventory and again he tells me I cannot ask/tell him that because he is in an union.

M apparently had an issue with a big customer of mine. 3 weeks ago he did not want to deliver their order because he had issues with the receiving team at this location. The customer called me 2 days later asking for his order. I am assuming the union allows this. His manager just emailed me saying “due to an issue with an employee at this location in the past M refuses to do this delivery. Will not be delivered by him today”.

Today, he came to pick up my items, and I had to come out 3 times to:

  1. Say hi and asked if he needed anything.
  2. Check what he was taking after dropping everything off.
  3. I needed to check if he was taking long due to the fact that I wanted to know if my employee could go to lunch before counting the inventory.

M snapped. He told me that this needs to stop, to let him do his job, and that I am annoying. I told him if he had issues with me to take it to his manager. I also asked him that I don’t understand what is his problem with me.

Rant over I guess. I probably have acted unprofessional with him in the past, but the way how he aggressively confronted this situation makes it unpleasant to deal with him again. I am assuming his attitude corresponds to his upbringing (Somalian/Muslim/uneducated), and he has no people’s skills at all. He seems to take everything to heart.

The last thing I want is for this to go to HR. Any idea if I should tell his manager first or my manager and what should I tell them?

TLDR: issue with colleague not in my command. He aggressively talks to me when I speak to him, and defends himself with his union system.

Ps: I hate unions. It rained heavily yesterday all day. Out of 12 drivers, one called off half of his deliveries because it was “too wet”. The company had to pay a private courier to finish his deliveries :|