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…not my immediate boss, but hers. I found that out last night, and it blew me out of the water. I have known him since he was a manager fifteen years ago. It kind of sucks because now I have to break in some other asshole.

What should make it interesting is that it screws up all of their plans for the next few months. My boss was supposed to be stepping down and taking a voluntary demotion. I already turned down her job, so the other guy that got blasted last night was going to take the district, and I was going to answer directly to the next level up. Not having to pay a district manager would be a bump up in pay for me because it would be money that I would save in profits, 10% of which belong on my paycheck. Only problem…the guy that is taking the division position went to school with my friend, and he hates his guts, or at least that was the impression I got last night. Maybe strong dislike is a better word. I doubt seriously if he really hates him. He told them last night that he would no longer take that district and asked for a transfer to the other side of Atlanta. Damn. Drama.

That either means they will leave my boss alone for awhile (I hope) or come back to me. I told them last time that if they absolutely had nobody else I would take the promotion but I really didn’t want it. I can afford to bide my time and wait for a better one to come along. It might be another year, or even five years, but it will come along, and I will still be on the immediate promotion list at the top just as I am now. I’ve turned down three promotions over the last three months, and can keep going until the right one comes up. Since we are growing so rapidly the need for people that can get stuff done the right way is not going to ever leave. Not only that, but I have trained most of the division now, and they are like my kids. Fill up all of the districts and stores with them, and maybe a couple more divisions and I will et exactly what I want. Either that or they will eat me, like spiders.

The meeting last night lasted about three hours. The format itself changed slightly from the last one I had to attend. We started out with my SVP and his three AVPs speaking about sourcing and recruiting, which is a pretty big deal for a growth company. I don’t go into that side of the equation that much as I tend to just bitch about my employees and whatever their daily drama might be, however it is one of the biggest issues for us right now.

In the twenty years I have been with them, we have grown a thousand stores. Over the next TEN years, we plan on opening a thousand more, but the only thing that will hold us back is not having enough quality people. One of the things that they have been on us for the last couple of years is sourcing and recruiting. Obviously I am not a recruiter, but I am a damn site better judge of who can run a successful restaurant than someone NOT in the operations end anyway. That is pretty much how our upper management team feels as well. We source names, they bring ’em on board.

One of the things my SVP asked/stated last night was a question wanting to know how we can make sourcing as important as food cost/sales/profits. Pretty simple to me, base part of our pay on it. I see it coming. I don’t know if anyone else figured that one out yet or not, but it’s coming. I am going to have to start working my ass off on that one, because that is my weakest area.

Anyway, after their speeched and a short (thank god) video on leaders and leading, we ate, and then got into the role-playing. We had one of four things that we had to do, and we didn’t find out which on until we were up there. We were each paired up with an AVP (but not ours) and the situations were stuff like ‘manager waiting in line at a car rental is impressed with the assistant manager’s professional customer service, how do they recruit him’, ‘waiting in line at the bank you notice a very professional guy in line, he works a comfortable 9 to 5, how do you approach him’, ‘you run into a family friend who is laid off, how do you approach her’, and one other I don’t remember. I got the bank one.

I also got the AVP who decided he needed to be an over the top asshole. He only did it to me and one other guy, the one who is in my old store and next up for promotion after me (or instead of me when I turn down the next district is more like it). I started talking to him, and asked him if he had been in the store local to the bank. He immediately went on the offensive, asked if I didn’t remember him, and started raising hell about having burned his food. I tried to get him to come back and let us fix it, and steer the conversation to talking about him, but he wouldn’t have any of it.

By the way, we only had four minutes to introduce ourselves or ‘break the ice’, get them interested, sell them on the idea, and then wrap it up, or ‘close the deal’. In most cases this is just simply inviting them in for a cup of coffee to talk to them later, or getting their card and phone number. With something like that our recruiter will call up and tell them, “Hey, I got your name from so-and-so, they were really impressed with you, and think you would make a good addition to our team” or some bullshit like that. It works well though, and is flattering. For someone who has a good job and is not looking, that is one way to pique their interest.

Anyway, I never even got past breaking the ice. The other manager had the exact same problem and ended the role-play, but me being stubborn kept going until I ran the clock out. Fuck you, I’m not quitting just because you are making it difficult. Obviously I would never be able to recruit an individual like that, but it might be someone I could get a coupon or offer a free meal to, and get back in as a customer. It made it difficult because obviously if it was someone I ‘remembered’ he should have told me that before we started, and also because you are not going to come into my restaurant and have me burn your food four damn times. I am the best operator in the 28 stores in my area, and one of the best and fastest cooks in the system. I used to be very modest about that and would never say it, preferring to let other people say it, but the facts are the facts. If I fuck up your food I’m going to fix it then and there AND buy your damn meal as well. He just decided he needed to be an asshole to myself and one other manager to prove a point about real life.

The only problem with that is that 90% of the people in the room are new, having been with us anywhere from 3 months to five years, and the only learning experience they get from that type of situation is that they don’t want to get paired with him next time.

My Area People Director (recruiter) called me at my store at shift change last night. He told me that all of the recruiters and avp’s had their discussion and all agreed that he was way over the top. Basically apologizing to me. They didn’t have to apologize to me, but I hope they called the other manager and did the same with him. I did start getting pissed off during the four minutes I had, and I did very well to restrain myself from telling him to shut the fuck up. Not something you want to do with an AVP. I may not particularly want to advance very far anymore, but it’s not a good thing to actively piss too many people off. I like to stay under the radar and get left alone to do my job.

Still no connection. Maybe we should just nap or something.
I’ve reset and provisioned the modem several times now. After I get a little cleaning done I may call Charter tech support. Haven’t sat on hold for an hour in quite awhile.
I have managed a few posts though, just cannot upload them.

The meeting sucked. It was horrible. I will go into it in more detail tomorrow, but I just got home and am pretty beat. I knew I would be. I have been up since about 4:30 this morning, have been hung on all three shifts, and sat through that fucking meeting for four hours, then went back to work. Not a particularly fun night. I guess we all have our days.

…and I haven’t even gotten to the meeting yet. I forgot to take my vitamins this morning, but there is no time like the present. At least they will be feeding me tonight. I feel so unprepared. Possibly because I AM unprepared. It’s about time to shower and get changed into the shirt and tie.

Oh well, it will only last a couple of hours, then I have to show back up at work at 9 PM for shift change. I have a couple of waitresses to scream at tonight. They decided to have a mustard and ketchup fight last night, which we spent most of the day cleaning. They managed to get the obvious stuff cleaned up before I got there, so in my foggy head first thing in the morning, I didn’t notice for an hour or two. They are not going to be having fun tonight. I have a huge cleaning list waiting for them.

What a major PITA. For the LDS Seminar tomorrow I have to bring several things. Two of them are my 30 day goals for people, profits, and sales and a copy of my 30 day personal and professional calender. Those two are easy. I keep that stuff in Outlook, as well as my daytimers, so it’s a matter of adding a couple of minor items and printing. I also have to do a write-up covering the four key areas of recruiting on how I will recruit a quality management candidate during the next quarter. This one is a bit more difficult as my views on this differ than company policy over the last few years.

We have had our major focus on recruiting outside of the company. In particular we look for people with at least four year degrees or a good bit of experience in the business world. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in the restaurant industry, just some sort of experience. It is a very difficult job, occasionally with long hours, ALL holidays, most weekends, and occasionally strange hours. Just because the shift ends at a certain time, as manager I still don’t get to leave. In general I average 50 hours a week. A short day is eight or ten hours. The longest day I have ever had with them lasted about 36 hours. That was about 18 years ago, so it is not something that happens all the time, but it does happen. My former trainee that worked a triple Sunday is proof of that. It is a job of preparation, and constantly putting out fires.

In the 20 years that I have been there, I believe that the best qualified people for my job are the hourly associates that work for me. Currently they only allow 20% of the stores to be hourly to management types, and we need to increase that number. That’s why I’m just a manager though, and not CEO I suppose.

Taken at Trader Vics in the Plaza in November of 1984.

I had initially planned on getting up and going in to work a bit early to get some stuff done, but just didn’t want to. I suppose I will get there at the regular time today. I should be able to squeeze everything in that I want to get finished today. I am cooking but generally I can get everything done as long as I don’t fool around.

I do have to sit down and go over my presentation for Wednesday’s meeting at some point this evening though. That is one thing I am NOT looking forward to this week. My division manager says I did very well at the last one though. As long as I can keep from bopping my head around while I talk, it will be OK. I never realized it until I started video taping stuff that I do that. It looks really stupid.

…but not physically. I have been in a horrible mood all day long, as my waitresses figured out pretty quickly. I generally treat everyone the same way no matter the mood, but I am always much quieter, and at one point I snapped at one of them after she had done something stupid.

The wife went to pick up new shoes for the girls, so I asked her to pick up some vitamins for me. I have been just plain exhausted at work for the last couple of weeks, and I think that attributed to my mood a bit. It might just be that I am about a month overdue for a vacation, and opening this new store back in October has worn me out.

Either way, I need to seriously get some time off and R&R very soon. I don’t particularly care what’s happening at the store, and am only interested in getting the hell out as soon as I can in the afternoon. I go on vacation at the end of March, and can’t wait. I don’t think I am going to end up going anywhere on this one, so I will be getting my yard right and getting my garden planted. Believe it or not, that is just as relaxing as being at the beach. Maybe not as relaxing as being there with beer, but it’s close.

…One can only wish. I don’t know what it is but I have had the hardest time getting out of bed the last two mornings. I feel like I just went to bed a couple of hours ago, which is far from the truth. I suppose it could be worse. I could actually have had to work all night. They called at 10:30 PM. One of the waitresses was sick. I think I pissed her off. I told her that if she had to go, then go, but that there was nobody else to call in, and I couldn’t work 1st shift, and 3rd, and then 1st again, unless she was going to cook in my place this morning. Then I went back to sleep. It means that the place is going to look like shit this morning. We’ve got to be there this morning anyway, so we have seven hours to get it cleaned up.

I have done a couple of advertisements for the Nutz that you hang off the back of your truck. Well, apparently Maryland delegate Leroy E Myers Jr. has filed legislation to get them banned there. I could really care less about the things, but it’s just one more case of someone in the government thinking that they know more about morals than the rest of us. I call bullshit.