May 2007

I had scheduled myself to work a double tomorrow in order to save on payroll at my slowest store. I had a manager trainee work yesterday (he gets prorated between nine stores) and I am making the store manager work on on Saturday.

Today is my tenth day straight with two more to go. It looks very likely that I will be losing one of my two GOOD managers tomorrow afternoon to another district. Fuck that double stuff. I will end up staying anyway to clean up the shit-hole, but I am not going to cook a damn double as tired as I have been the last few days. I am starting to get very snappy with people as well, so I am having to watch what I say and force myself to keep my mouth shut.

One of the things that I am required to do as part of my new job is to make a stop at one of the nearby businesses before I show up at every one of my stores, every time I go there. It’s called stop & recruit and is something we have done for a very long time. Even as a store manager I did it on a regular basis. Word-of-mouth advertising and recruiting potential customers and employees.

It’s a bit harder right now, because I am almost embarrassed to invite anyone into my three stores, particularly on any shift other than the morning shift. They pretty much suck all the way around, although one is worse than the other two. That will get better with time. I don’t expect to be able to get it right before the end of the summer, and possibly by Christmas I will have a really good staff.

Anyway, I have to order business cards and I was seriously considering some of those personalized pens as well. You know, “Hey, sorry your meal sucked but here’s a nifty pen!”

…or at least I tried. I managed to get up about half an hour ago, which is fifteen minutes later than normal. I have to be in one of the stores in about forty-five minutes. Normally we have one of the waitresses in at six am every day, but the one store I have been having problems with in other areas, they also can’t seem to show up on time at work. That may be because the manager is also late half the time. Being on time is one of my pet peeves. I decided that each day that the six am girl was late was a day on the next schedule where the entire shift has to come in at six. Obviously they aren’t too pleased with it, but it may fix the problem…

No meeting today thank goodness. I have to work a double tomorrow, so the meeting is being held in the store where I am already going to be working anyway.

My AVP just picked up nine more stores in the Atlanta area and one of the managers was promoted to the same level that I am. He deserves it and it’s a good thing, but the store he was running is my old one, the busiest in the division, so they are giving me a new guy and pulling one of my two good managers next week to run it. I can pretty much count on living at work for awhile I suppose.

I came home about 1PM to try and get a nap in since I was up most of the night, but unfortunately the telephone and children don’t seem to want to cooperate today.

One of the stores had me up shortly after 1AM. One of the waitresses was apparently sick and wanted to go to the emergency room. I did manage to get it covered, but it was about 3 before I could get back to sleep. I am seriously dragging here folks…

I have had to give my manage that is having a hard time some very specific instructions, and now at the end of the day he is required to bring me several pieces of paperwork that he has not been doing. Rather than going to his store to verify it, he has to bring it all to me at whatever store I happen to be in. He’s not liking it, but I didn’t design it to make him comfortable, I designed it to make him do his job properly.

My boss is off tomorrow, so even though it is the monthly closeout day for the fiscal period, I am taking it easy. I am going to try and shoot out of there by 2PM as long as everyone shows up for work when they should. I would have been home by 2:30 today, but it was after 3:30 before that guy showed up with his stuff. Serious time management issues. He’s a pretty good guy, but I am going to have to get him trained to get this stuff done in a timely manner.