This story is all too familiar for me...

I took over a trouble location about 7 months ago now. The first four months were awful. I was stressed out and wasn't someone I'd want to work for. Eventually I sat down my management team and had an open and honest conversation with them; I admitted how difficult it had been for me and even said "in truth, I wasn't ready for this, I wasn't good enough yet to be the GM here." We then went around in a circle and admitted our shortcomings, which eased the tension and made us all feel safer around each other.

The key there was really building trust with my management team. I then used that trust to hold my management team more accountable. It sounds counterintuitive to say that, but I think that the truth is that they know where I'm coming from when I hold them accountable now (that I only want to make them better). I also praise, compliment, and celebrate their successes. Make sure you treat your assistant manager as an equal, even if he or isn't at the same level as you. Make sure you're able to rely on one another. Instead of getting angry when something doesn't go right, like your 10am shift on Friday, ask her what happened and then give her some advice. Tell her what you would have done. Ask her what she thinks she could have done differently. Make sure she knows you were disappointed with the results, but don't necessarily blame her for the outcome.

As for my staff, my employees beneath my management team, I took the best few associates and gave them raises and gave them additional training to make them hourly managers. As others have suggested, its crucial to become overstaffed as soon as possible; you need to have the flexibility to cover call outs, perform training, and to be able to terminate your low performers when you need to without having to pay OT or work more hours yourself. Have your best few employees work with your new hires, and I would really recommend only having other managers (yourself included) do the initial training; you don't want your new people to pick up the mistakes of your low performers. As others have suggested, borrowing from other locations, if possible, is a great idea.

I still haven't completely turned my location around... Every now and then I have to put in a 13-14 hour day, or come in a day off (I had to go in this morning, actually), but it's nowhere near as bad as it had been. I hope that helped... Good luck!