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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.

Five more days, five more days. Just keep saying it like you mean it. I don’t need to bitch about it too much, I am the one who made out the schedules for my managers but I needed to make sure that they got their days off and that I was able to take next Sunday off. The only was I could do that was to work twelve days but I am seriously regretting it right now.

One of my managers is having issues with being able to perform his job to the point where all of of money is suffering. In a job like ours if you are losing money (profits) in one area and can’t (or refuse to) fix it, then we make it up in other areas. Thus he and I will be working doubles and cutting some hours for a couple of his cooks which means I am working a double on Friday. That’s gonna suck but it has to be done.

One of my biggest bonuses is for hitting a profit target. Unfortunately I won’t and it is all on this guys store. That’s close to a thousand dollars I won’t be seeing on my check three and a half weeks from now and I am not particularly happy about it. What gets me is the people that steadily complain about the money they are making but can’t take the time to get off their asses and actually make it. Once I have explained several times in detail exactly why and how to make the bonus and just get ignored and get asked what the problem is again and again I start to lose patience. I guess I am going to have to practice that over and over until I get it right.

I guess I did something tonight that I have never done before, and I feel like shit right now because I know it was the wrong thing to do. I napped for a couple of hours this evening in preparation for going out tonight and checking on the stores to see what my third shift is doing. There is never enough management oversight in our stores on the graveyard shift, so they do pretty much whatever the fuck they want. If you have a good manager that has been there any length of time they mostly behave, but if you have new managers like I do or shitty managers, they rip us off blond or worse.

The first store I visited I sat in the bank parking lot for awhile spying on them with my cool little spyglass. The restaurant wasn’t busy, but it was pretty steady. A full house. After awhile I drove over and parked in the lot behind the building so that they wouldn’t see me drive up. I walked around the side of the building and when I got inside the only person on the floor was the cook. The few tables without customers were nasty and both of the waitresses were in the back room. Nobody even noticed. Hell, I made it all the way around the counter and had tapped the cook on the shoulder before he even noticed I was there. Scared the shit out of him. I could have grabbed the cash register and been gone had I wanted to.

When I walked in the back room, it was full of smoke from whatever the fuck the two waitresses had been smoking. Damn they scrambled to hide it. One of the girls was so freaked out she was shaking. I just dilly dallied around as if they had done a good job of fooling me and acted stupid, checked a few things and walked the fuck back out of the restaurant like nothing had happened. What I should have done at that point is fire all their asses on the spot and found replacements, but the place was full and I didn’t want to be out of my bed in the first place. I am sure that they will behave for a least a couple of days now, maybe long enough for me to find replacements and shit-can them, but a few years ago I would have done just as I should have and fired them all.

The other two shops were pretty good. Everyone was on the floor working and the places looked at least OK. I did find a cook to come in for one of them so they could go home, but that was about the extent of it at the other two stores.

Maybe it’s not as big of a deal as I feel like it is, but I have this shitty knot in my gut because I am ashamed that I acted like a pussy and went home to bed.

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Originally uploaded by rmiles.

Brilliant