I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

As almost all of you know I was once a server.  

In fact, I waited tables off and on from 17 until I was 46.  

I once thought I was going to be a lifer. I’m sure many of my friends thought the same.  

I worked at mostly corporate jobs.  

Bennigan’s. Applebee’s. O’Charley’s. Anyone notice a theme here?  

I will forever be grateful for my Bennigan’s training because if they did nothing else, they taught me how to wait tables.  

5 full days of classroom training from 1:00 to 4:00 followed by a floor shift.  

When I finished, I was actually good at waiting tables.

And thus, it paid a lot of bills along the way.  

Fun fact: Corporate restaurants are full of ridiculous things they expect from their staff.  

And the worst of all of these restaurants with their list of stupid things they expect?  

My last restaurant serving job.  

There were about 150 servers on the schedule, with more than 40 on a single busy shift.  

Sometimes at 10:00 you’d run into a co-worker and that would be the first time you’ve seen them all night.  

The restaurant was stupid busy. I made stupid money, and 89% of the people I worked with were amazing.  

This post is not about the other 11%.

It’s about, the hoops I was expected to jump through to keep my top ranking among my co-workers.  

As a server there, I lasted 5 years. Until I got to Maine, it’s the longest I’d worked anywhere.  

I was pretty good at my job. I worked a section no one else wanted to work, busted my ass and made a lot of money.  

And for 5 years, I had to fight to keep my schedule.

We had hoops.

And the hoops were used to rank the servers. At the end the schedule was posted alphabetically by first name, but back in the day, the manager’s would gather monthly to rank the staff and it was the schedule was published with your name in order of your ranking. NO LIE!!!

And.  

The rankings were no longer published but if you scores were great in the following areas they’d cut your shifts, and downgrade your sections.  

Surveys:  

We asked our guests to do surveys. In a perfect world you’d score a 7.00 on a survey. The restaurants goal is 6.0. The problem with the survey is that there are a lot of things out of your control that can bring your survey average down. If someone fills out a survey and the manager did not visit the table then your average just went down, to a 6.3. If the food was cold. Your average goes down. If the host was rude. Your average goes down. And yet it was my job to get surveys above 6.0. Managers NEVER did table visits, never, never, never. So I was starting with a 6.3 before the experience even started.  

And the big catch to the surveys? You could do them yourself. Yes. It takes a computer and about 2 minutes of your time. And what do you know. A perfect 7. And the best part. Everyone knew this happened. And they encouraged it. They had contests and the top 10 highest survey scores at the end of the month got to write their own schedule. You better believe that I won. But I think it was stupid that my schedule was based on something so easily manipulated.  

Edit: Until my shifts were cut I never filled out my own surveys. NEVER. But I was being punished for a 6.0 average and so…
Fun fact: The last two years I worked there, I was one of a few people recognized for having the best survey scores. And everyone, and I do mean everyone in the room at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, knew that I did them myself.  

———————

Frequent Diner Cards.  

We were expected to sell frequent diner cards. Buy it, track the money you spend and get discounts when you reach a certain level. I think it is stupid. I hate being asked to buy this type of shit at other places like Barnes and Noble used to do to get a discount. I hate having to have a card to use at the grocery store. Wouldn’t it make sense to just give everyone a discount. And I have to admit, I never even tried to sell them And my schedule was based on this.

However,

Another catch. You can buy one for yourself. Wait a month. Cash in the original purchase price, because getting the cash back is part of the purchase deal once it’s used. I’m out no money, the restaurant is out no money, and suddenly my schedule improves.  

It was not stealing. I spent 25 bucks. I got 25 bucks. And I also got to keep my schedule. HOWEVER…it is stealing if you track points and then cash those in for discounts. (I did not do this, but I know lots of people who did).  

UPSELL!!!

We are expected to up sell. Every restaurant expects this. The way around this? You can sell a burger add cheese rather than a cheeseburger. The price is the same but the first way gets you up sell points. Chicken nachos? Why do that when you can sell nachos add chicken. We also had people that just added on things to tables that didn’t speak English. If you don’t speak our language, you can’t really argue when the check comes.

I get management wanting to increase revenue. I get management wanting a measurable metric to know how the restaurant is doing, but seriously, if your staff knows it can be manipulated, and you know it can be manipulated and no one is discouraging the manipulation then what is the point?  

Anyone want to guess?

Their bonuses were the point.  

Someone in a corner office who had probably never worked in a restaurant, decided that if they could measure output, then in addition to revenue they could know how the restaurant was performing.  

I’d love to say that I was making any of this up. But too many of you reading right now, know it’s true. Some of you still work there.  
PS. You know what would guarantee a bad survey?  

Working on Sunday nights, when we would run out of cheeseburgers, French fries and we were serving guests out of kids cups because we didn’t have glassware. No lie!!!
Its called Sunday – Funday for a reason.  

So whenever, ever, someone suggests we do things like this at a restaurant that I have managed, I have kiboshed it. How do you measure your staff’s ability? Stand at the door and ask your guests how things were. Look at their tip percentage next to their net sales. How many comps do they have? How many voids? How do their co-workers feel about them? Are they on time. Are their sells always 100 dollars less than their co-workers. Do you look at the server’s sections when you walk through the dining room?  

Yes it was a big restaurant, but the manager’s knew who their soldiers were. They knew who should be training. They knew who should be a rocker!!! They knew who should be working at the diner down the street.  

They knew all of this, but their hands were tied by a corporate structure that didn’t work.