Dealing with Restaurant Management

I suppose this post relates to just about any other job, but I made it to explain how to deal with management in a restaurant from an employee perspective. Why? Because this is a restaurant blog, not a corporate cubicle blog. In a restaurant setting, the employees spend their entire workday side-by-side with the manager whether they like it or not. The manager will either be wandering the floor table-visitng, working back in the kitchen expediting or cooking, or up at the hostess stand seating guests (but usually flirting with the hostesses. Why do you think they get hired? Because they can put people in chairs to the best of their ability?). The only consistent thing about restaurant management compared to other kinds is that restaurant managers are 100% available if needed and willing to get involved.

Sometimes the manager has to get involved in a situation. Some things in the course of the shift can only be done by management: changes made to the ticket (comps, voids, etc), correct or delete ordered food, and completing server checkouts. However, at times it is a good reason for the manager to get involved such as when a customer is unhappy or new hires need to be scared shitless.

A lot of the times when dealing with a customer, a server will try to do what we call “firefighting” at the table. Now, there are special cases where it can be successfully done, but when we have a belligerent customer who won’t see it our way, we will get the manager to deal with the situation. Sometimes it’s just easier to let someone with authority handle the situation. Why? Because customers hate it when a waiter is right. I suppose for some reason they think that the server is the low-man on the totem pole and do not have the answers they need so, seeing a manager at the table is usually a comforting thing to a customer. It’s not comforting when the customer is told by the manager that the waiter is right. There are little things in this world that a waiter is happy to see: wrong customers is one of them, along with being able to tell customers who come in late that the restaurant is closed.

But this post is not about the role of the manager; it is a post about how to deal with a manager from the employee perspective.

Going into a new surrounding, it’s important to get a feel for everyone and everything, most importantly your management. Getting on the management’s good side is a fantastic way to see yourself getting better shifts, days off, and generally be backed up whenever something goes wrong with your table or at work. Just don’t get tagged as a brown-noser, or a suck-up. So, when you do join a new establishment, it’s always a good idea to ask the other servers about the management. Don’t ask just one server, though. It’s happened before that a veteran employee will give bad information to the new guy, and that’s not just in the restaurant business. Ask three or four other servers about management; what they’re like, if they get mad easily, etc. But honestly, the most important thing to get on management’s good side is to show them that you were a good hire. Be eager to please, say “yes Ma’am” “yes, Sir” to them, come to work on time every day, and don’t make stupid mistakes. Sooner or later, management will open up to you and see you as a viable member of the team.

In my restaurant, my general manager has a tendency to scare new hires for some reason. Somehow she gives off this aura to people that she’s an intimidating woman. I say she’s just passionate about the job she’s been given. Sure she can be pretty hard to handle at times, but honestly, if she were to leave this restaurant and find somewhere else to work, I’d want to work there with her. The biggest advice I give to new hires is to not let her get to them and take anything she says personally; even when she tells them that “they suck” or “why did I ever hire you?” That can be given to any new hires around the country. Some people don’t work well under pressure, and if the person who hired them is the one pressuring them, they may be nervous about making mistakes and ultimately do a poor job.

The biggest piece of advice I can give you when you deal with management is to spend enough time learning your managers. Learn their quirks, their dislikes, let them hit on you, etc. Just be able to speculate how a certain situation would be handled by that particular manager, and manipulate the delivery of the situation to your advantage. Hopefully, if you spend a while at that restaurant and you’ve been keen on observation, you will be able to properly deal with the managers soon enough. If you can’t handle management or authority, well, you’re fucked in this world.