Perspective, Cloudiness with a chance of Clarity

My warehouse guy left.

He got a bit concerned that the future in the company wasn't looking bright.

I'm 50/50 about it.

He was good when the focus was on shipping stuff out.
But the nature of the products, and the tempo of the year being up & down, he didn't have enough of his "normal" work to do.
So, I would push him to focus on other warehouse related tasks to do.
There was no motivation in him to take on these tasks - he just didn't see it as his responsibility.

Without the interest to focus on other areas, it was better that he left.

Like a leaky tap, with the relentless tapping of water into the sink, I cannot just leave things how they ended.
The focus & pushing that I was applying was actually ruining our friendship - the line between manager vs friend is always tested from time to time - the lack of communication just resulted in me firing off shots to prompt him to respond.

I caught up with him yesterday morning - he is finding his new job very demanding - and in many ways he is dealing with some undesirable situations, that he wouldn't need to deal with in his previous role.

We had a good chat. It meant a lot to both of us to speak outside of the work environment.

I mentioned that our stocktake was horrible - he said that he hated stocktakes.
I said that I knew how much he didn't like doing them, as he only did 1 in his 4.5 years with us.
Then he said "Really you should bring in a team of people to help with the counting..."
I replied with "Why didn't you do that when you were there?"

He got it.
It reinforced to me why he isn't the right person for the role.

The clarity we both received when talking - we had defined our roles too solidly that we had lost perspective of what it is we are doing.

Where did the "fun" go? A light-hearted discussion, just breaks the ice and makes our encounters enjoyable again.

Let it go.