Starting a new job

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Congratulations. I have been in a similar situation in the past - and for me the transition to management was tough. I think where I failed was in not having properly developed soft skills - I had a lot of technical experience, but that experience in my situation was only partially relevant to a management position.

In management I could not adapt to the new mindset quickly enough; for me to have been more successful, I would have had to realize that management ends up being as much about how people feel and what people perceive and not as much about actual production of an item, service or product. It is tough for most people to make that transition, and oftentimes places just go through manager after manager until they find the one guy who can do the job perfectly.

I think, for example, if you want to express things in such a way that you end up saying “I have 30 years of cooking experience,” you might want to reconsider that approach. You might also want to consider how you interact with corporate people and any one who does not agree with you or have the same opinion. For example, with the corporate guy I get the feeling you want to dismiss him to a certain extent because he does not have the background you do. If you want to be successful in that interaction and have the desired outcome you would want to spend time and energy thinking about what would appeal to him personally and it would also be beneficial to understand what he does do well. Just saying I think this and I know I’m right because I have this experience is not going to be a persuasive argument. It usually takes many years to become good at management, and some people are more natural at it than others; I could go on for three more pages, but this wall of text is probably longer than anyone will ever read.

Anyway, good luck, I really like it when I read of people in your situation succeeding after sticking things out - sometimes I think it’s the way things should always be.

22

sigh

Please allow me to return to my previous posts about the kind of company I work for.

shuffle shuffle shuffle

Yesterday, Oct. 29, 2014 was my manager’s last day.

On Oct. 28, the Executive Director, the one who asked me to submit my resume, gave me the phone number of the corporate person who is in charge of Kitchen Managers throughout the chain. I called this person, and had a nice interview, wherein I described my experience and why I thought I should get this promotion. Said corporate person informed me that she would pass her thoughts along to the ED, and pointedly said the final decision was up to the ED.

Yesterday, ED called me into her office and told me I didn’t get the job. Because [corporate person in charge of kitchen managers] preferred the other candidate.

I was not even aware that there was another candidate, given that the job was not even advertised.

Do you want to know who the other candidate was?

The 25-year-old kid who was hired as cook #3 less than two months ago.

[Corporate person] preferred him because he has experience “managing people” (which I don’t have). You know where his “managing people” experience comes from? He was a “deck boss” on a fucking fishing boat in Alaska. Not in a kitchen. On a commercial fishing boat.

Now, the ED said this was [corporate person]'s decision. I offered the possibly smartass rejoinder, “Huh. [corporate person] told me it would be entirely your decision.” ED responded, “Well, you know how it is. ‘It’s your decision, but here’s what you’re going to do.’”. And in the year+ I’ve been with this company, I couldn’t argue with that. I have no hard feelings toward the ED.

ED told me she’d given me a raise (which I immediately recognized as a sop to hopefully prevent me from walking out — when my previous manager (the one whose departure resulted in my working 24 straight days) was fired, I was coincidentally named “Employee of the Month” on the same day he was fired). Said raise brings me to $11.75/hour, which, honestly, is the best hourly wage I’ve ever had.

I told the ED, as sincerely as I could, that, while I was “disappointed”, I would support my new “boss”. And I will. Because, when it comes down to it, it’s about taking care of people (the residents of the retirement home) who can’t fully take care of themselves. And those people absolutely love me.

Also, I’ve already outlasted three managers. And I will still be here when this kid gets fired because he can’t handle it. Not that I wish ill on him. He’s a good kid, and a good cook.

But one thing is clear to me. I was hired by a kitchen manager who got fired. Then I worked under another kitchen manager who also got fired. Corporate loved the next kitchen manager (the one who just left), and this kid was hired by the guy they loved. Politics. There is a part of me that wants to be insanely passive-aggressive, and put on this act of, “Well, this just confirms what I already knew: I’m a complete failure.”

Instead, I came to work today determined to rock some socks.

I worked the dinner shift Wednesday night, and had the morning breakfast/lunch shift today. Today’s lunch special was corned beef and cabbage, with potatoes. So I prepped the raw corned beef briskets last night, and put them in the oven, at a low temperature, just before I left for the night at 6:30PM. And I pulled them out of the oven this morning at 5:30AM. This was the most tender brisket ever. Cut it with a fork.

I used the drippings from the brisket to make an amazing sauce.

Later, after lunch, one of the residents, a guy named Hal, asked me, “Were you responsible for the corned beef today?” I said, “Yes sir, I was.” Hal said, “That was the best damned corned beef I’ve had since I’ve been here, and I’ve been here for ten years!” His daughter was there with him at lunch today, and she apparently wants my recipe for that sauce.

Every cell in my brain wants me to bail on this place, but my heart has connected with the residents, my “customers”. We have to serve “treats” (sweet baked goods) at 9:30AM and 3:00PM. I don’t just go set them on the table and let the residents serve themselves. I carry the tray of treats to every resident in the common area, and personally offer the treats to them. Even the ones who are, every day, surprised by them. Only when I’ve offered the treats to everybody, letting them help themselves from the tray in my hand, and offering a napkin from my other hand, do I set the tray down on the table.

I have some wonderful residents who I love so very very much.

Jane. Jane is hilarious. I have no idea how old she is, but Jane is a pothead. Her children deliver edibles containing weed to her (we’re in Washington, so it’s legal, and in any case we can’t legally stop residents from doing what they do in their apartments). She also has a subtle, but wonderful sense of humor. I use my old T-shirts as “work shirts” under my chef jacket. One night I got off work, and had taken off my chef jacket before I went to clock out. There was some entertainment going on that night, and Jane was there watching it. I stopped to listen to the entertainment before I went home. I was wearing this shirt: http://www.offworlddesigns.com/fools-i-will-destroy-you-t-shirt/ . Jane hobbled by with her walker, saw my shirt, and stopped to read it. She got the most mischievous smirk on her face, gave me a smile, and hobbled on her way :smiley:

Jane also takes very good care of Irene. Irene is just the sweetest old lady you’d ever want to meet. Physically, she reminds me so much of my own, departed grandmother. She’s in a wheelchair. When I would deliver the aforementioned sweet treats and offer them to Irene, Irene would always give me the most brilliant, beautiful smile, and say, “Thank you!” in the most sincere, grateful way. (The manager of the caregivers actually pulled me aside one day and thanked me for being so nice to Irene.) I only recently learned that Irene is stone deaf. I mentioned already that Jane takes care of her and watches out for her. I was on my way to a staff meeting last week, and Jane pulled me aside to tell me, “We need somebody to take Irene home.” Irene can’t operate her own wheelchair, and needs somebody to push her. So I tracked down somebody to push Irene back to her apartment.

Dick. This guy is actually a thorn in my side, but I still love him. Dick’s wife recently passed after a thankfully short bout with dementia. Dick loves hot chocolate, and has somehow gotten it into his head that we cooks are the ones to make hot chocolate (we don’t - that’s the servers’ job). So he’ll ignore all of the servers and all of the other employees, and wait until he sees a cook (me) to holler, “Can I get some hot chocolate?” He’s a thorn in my side because he always yells this at me immediately after I’ve clocked out for my lunch break, or right after I’ve clocked out at the end of my shift. But, dammit, I’ll make his damned hot chocolate and deliver it to him personally.

Nancy. Nancy is a “special snowflake”. She is compelled to make some sort of pain-in-the-ass special request for every damned meal she orders. If everything on the menu is something she likes and she can’t think of a way to make a special request, she’ll order some ingredient “on the side”. Just so she can feel “special”. And dammit, yes, she’s a royal pain in the ass. But ya know what? I do everything I can to grant her special requests.

Because I always come back to something that the guy I replaced said to me:

“The special requests can be a pain in the ass, but then you have to remember that every meal you cook might be that person’s last meal.”

In the last year+, I have cooked so many last meals. I hope they enjoyed them.

23

This whole saga reminds me a lot of my dad. I worked with him in a kitchen for 10 years and always knew he should have been doing something “better.” I left because I didn’t want to kill myself. After doing the kitchen grind for 40 years, he can’t work at all now. He applied for management positions a couple times but mostly stayed in the same job(s), where he really RAN things but wasn’t technically a “manager.” In those cases, you had to be a relative or bed partner of ownership for that title. Being a reliable cook in the labor/non-management position is something that corporate types love to take advantage of, underpay, and under appreciate.

I have a feeling the kid won’t last very long. So, maybe the opportunity will come up for you again, but I guess you have to decide what it is you want. Everything i’m reading from you makes it seem like you are a great worker who takes pride in what he does, and a nice guy who gets taken advantage of.

24

Your company does not deserve you. And seriously they are getting a bargin. IMHO you are seriously, drastically underpaid. I have worked in Long-term care /seniors residences for years. PM to follow.

25

Ha ha ha ha ha… choke

Change that “have” to “had”.

When I posted that, we had two older, very good servers, Melissa and Neita. Plus a much younger, but very competent server, Laura. Let me point out that Laura is one of the most stunningly beautiful young women I’ve ever met. My goodness, I’m deliberately celibate, but she makes my dick hard. She’s like six feet tall, natural platinum blond hair, and blue eyes that I swear glow.

Right before my previous manager’s last day, Melissa just walked out. I didn’t get the whole story, but before she walked out I heard her making some comments about how she wasn’t getting any help.

The servers here also wash the dishes (plates, glasses, silverware). And it didn’t take me too long to add up 2+2 and figure out that she was fed up with Mr. Manager (a married man) always hopping over to help Lovely Laura with the dishes, but not being so eager to help the less-attractive servers wash up.

So, BOOM, now we’re shorthanded on servers.

And now, today, I learned that Neita has put in her two-week notice. She’s tired of being the only server who always says “yes” when asked to cover a shift, because all these younger girls have better things to do. She got stuck last night one-womaning a shift that should have been a two-woman job. She told me her husband actually wrote her resignation letter, because he was tired of her being taken advantage of. I told her I don’t blame her, but I really hate to see her go. Because she’s been the only server scheduled to work the morning shift who actually shows the fuck up on time.

Aside from the “help with dishwashing” thing, let me tell you the other major mistake the outgoing manager made.

The original kitchen manager who hired me also hired a fantastic server. Bonnie. Bonnie was 60 years old, and had around 40 years of experience as a waitress/bartender. Utterly competent, wonderfully personable, and totally professional. But she was tired of the restaurant/bar grind, and was actually willing to work for minimum wage with no tips, in exchange for a satisfying job.

She was put to work with some 20-something Mexican girls. And on her first day, these Mexican girls made fun of her for not knowing exactly how things were done. She looked at these girls and told them, “I’m new, not stupid.” One of the upper-management people overheard this, and came into the kitchen and proceeded to go off on these 20-something Mexican girls, and demanded that they apologize to Bonnie. Whereupon these girls played stupid, like they had no idea what this manager was talking about.

So to shorten this story, all of these young, obnoxious Mexican girls quit, leaving Bonnie in peace. And I so loved working with Bonnie.

Then, Mr. Manager had to hire some new servers, and the identical-twin sister of one of those Mexican girls who made Bonnie miserable was one of the applicants. Everybody, including upper management, told him not to hire that girl. He hired her anyway. She wasn’t as bad as her sister, attitude-wise, but …

Mr. Manager proceeded to give Miss Identical Twin most of Bonnie’s hours.

What a way to fucking insult the most competent server you have.

Bonnie said, “I’m out” and left.

Since then, and continuing to today, we are short on servers. We just hired a new one, who happens to be my neighbor girl, and she’s turned out to be completely awesome, but her hiring is now offset by Neita’s departure, so I hope we get some damned good servers hired soon.

My actual approach, when I did the telephone interview, wasn’t “31 years of cooking experience”, it was “31 years of foodservice experience”. Because, while I’m a cook, I know the other aspects. Aside from my cooking, I also have a diploma from a “business school” (which was, unfortunately, one of those fly-by-night “get a degree in one year” schools), but I learned how things work. Which is why I toss around my “jokes” about “corporate”. While my “business” diploma is bullshit (I refer to my education there as my “$5000 typing class”), I really did learn a few things from that school, and I’m actually a lot smarter than this company expects its cooks to be. (Hey, I’m a Doper, ain’t I?)

I’m starting to recognize the role I fill. I’m that guy who is too valuable right where I am. I’m the guy who is uber-competent, and who shows up every day ready to work. Hell, even my new, 25-year-old “boss” introduced me to the other new cook he just hired by saying, “this guy knows what he’s doing” and basically turned the new hire over to me to train. (And thank Og that this new 21-year-old kid actually knows what the fuck he’s doing, unlike the older-than-me woman we tried beforehand).

Well, if the kid doesn’t last long, it won’t be my fault. I promised the ED that I would support him, and I made the same promise to him. I stand by my word, and I’m not vindictive. When it comes down to it, like I said, it’s about taking care of the customers, and I love my customers.

One bonus under my new management is that I now, finally, after 14 months with this company, am working 100% day shift, instead of splitting my days between morning and evening shifts. I have the Tuesday-Saturday 6-2 shift. (although, realistically, I actually show up at 5AM)

I’ve taken this as my theme song:

26

Also, on a completely rebellious side, after 14 months of being completely clean-shaven on this job, I’m now growing a goatee. And just waiting for some manager to tell me to shave it off.

27

Tell 'em it’s for Movember, and for charity. :slight_smile:

28

My young boss has put in his 2-weeks notice, to take a job as an apprentice mechanic. He and I have worked out our differences, and when he put in his notice, he told both our local Executive Director and the corporate-level manager-type who happened to be in town to promote ME into the kitchen manager job.

It’s been a week, and my big boss, the ED, has not said one word about it to me. In fact, the position is being advertised outside of the company, on Craigslist.

So I am going to forward my resume to the address in the Craigslist ad, so that the ED knows that I want the damned job. (I have to do it electronically, because my printer is effed up.)

Literally everybody who works here, aside from the ED, is assuming that I will be the new kitchen manager, and are asking me about it. All I can tell them is, “who knows?” I already got robbed once, when they promoted the kid over me.

I’m now at the point that I do not know what the fuck this company wants. I am older than every department manager in our location, and have more professional experience in my field than any of the current managers have in theirs. I am older and more experienced than the Executive Director (and older and more experienced than the latest corporate rep). I am utterly devoted to providing for the needs of the residents in this retirement home. I have watched one coworker after another be internally promoted. Even my current “big boss”, the Executive Director, was formerly merely the Resident Care Coordinator, i.e. the manager in charge of the caregivers/CNA’s/Med Aides. The residents absolutely love me, and love the food that I cook for them.

Yet for some insane reason, they think they need to look outside of the company for a fucking kitchen manager. And it’s not just me, it’s at every one of our locations. They think a kitchen manager needs to have a fucking diploma from a culinary school (though that didn’t seem to apply to my now-departing 24-year-old boss). What kind of fucking diploma outranks 32 years of experience?

I am going to, once again, formally apply for the management position. I want to stay here, because I honestly love my customers/residents. But if I’m turned down again … I’m fucking OUT. Being turned down again will make it clear that I have no future with this company. And it’s complete bullshit that, with 32 years of experience in my profession, I have to settle for making $11.75/hour.

The “official” reason that I was given for not getting the manager position last time was that “the other guy had experience managing people”. Yeah, but his experience was on a fishing boat, not in a kitchen. So, they want to point out my lack of people-managing experience? Everybody in the kitchen likes me. The only people I need to manage. I’m fucking smart. I can do it.

29

Damn, dude. I hope you get it, and if not I hope there’s a management spot you can dive into somewhere else, even though switching jobs can suck when you like everyone at the current one. I hope you at least get a big raise!

30

Good luck. Being under appreciated is never pleasant.

31

Your extensive experience may be counting against you. They may have pigeon-holed you as someone who can’t make the leap because they haven’t already.

This is another point. As manager your job will not be to be liked but to be respected. There’s a difference.

32

That’s something I’ve considered, and I’m prepared with an “explanation”. Simply put, I’ve spent the bulk of my career working in small, locally-owned restaurants, and in most of them my immediate superior was the person who owned the place - e.g. there was no “kitchen manager” per se. So, short of buying the place, there was no room for advancement. At my previous job, at the city convention center, there were only two positions I could advance into: Sous Chef and Executive Chef. Both of those had an absolute requirement of formal culinary school training, plus X number of years of experience in fancier places than I had ever worked. Well, there was one other position, “Kitchen Supervisor”, but that position was occupied by an older woman who had already been there for years when I started, and she wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. Not to mention that her position was more secure than the Executive Chef, since she was not officially “management”, and it was a union shop. We went through three EC’s while I was there, and she’d been through three or four others before I got there.

When I left that job to take my current job, one of my reasons was that I was thinking it was finally time to advance my career, so I took, effectively, a $6/hour pay cut (the starting hourly wage was only slightly lower than what I had been getting, but at the convention center I racked up massive OT and also received a share of the gratuity from each event, which averaged out to an additional $5-$6/hour) to move to a company where there was room for advancement.

No issues there. Per company policy, I’m already officially “in charge” of the kitchen and kitchen staff when the kitchen manager is not there. I’ve had no trouble so far with giving direction and having it followed.
In any case, I submitted my resume (again) and spoke with the Executive Director, so I’m officially a candidate for the position. The ED has done me the courtesy that the previous ED didn’t, of letting me know that there are other candidates. Also, the final decision on who gets the job isn’t hers (if it was, I’d already have the job); the final decision is made by the corporate-level person in charge of kitchen managers, and I’ll have to interview with her. One factor that is better than the last time is that this is a different person from the one I interviewed with last time. I’ve suspected that the previous person held it against me that I’d been hired by a kitchen manager who got fired, and that I then worked under a new manager who only lasted a couple months - she hated that guy for some reason.

Ultimately, I think my best argument for why I’m the best candidate is pretty simple: I’m already here, I already know how the kitchen runs, the residents already know me and love me. And I love them, and love serving them. I’m the one consistent kitchen person they’ve had in the last couple years (the entire staff, aside from me, has turned over multiple times). Giving the job to me would make for the smoothest transition.

33

The very best of luck to you, but I fear you’ll find your promotion by moving to another company.

34

Good luck! I hope you get it!

35

sigh I don’t even have the job yet, and we’ve already had somebody quit because of me (and on my 49th birthday, no less). About two months ago, we hired a part-time prep cook. He was an older guy, and the first time I worked with him I realized I sort of knew him — he was one of the cooks in the restaurant at the hotel I worked for. I didn’t actually work at the hotel restaurant; the hotel provided the staff for the city convention center, and that’s where I worked. But I had to visit the hotel restaurant from time to time, and so I’d seen this guy there.

I’ve normally only worked with this guy on Saturday mornings, for three hours each time. Hardly time to really get to know him, particularly since most of those three hours were while I was scrambling to get breakfast ready, actually serving breakfast, and then getting lunch started. His job on Saturday was basically to make the desserts for Sunday, which is the day our menu flips over. Not a lot of time for conversation. The only real conversation we’ve had was the first day I worked with him, and we realized that we sort of knew each other. Our conversation mostly revolved around him telling me what an asshole the kitchen manager at the hotel restaurant was. Which was puzzling to me, because his kitchen manager there was a pretty nice guy. I never had any issues with him, and never heard of anybody else having issues with him. I chalked it up to a “personality conflict”. Those happen sometimes.

Anyway, today, the outgoing kitchen manager would normally have been working the line during lunch, with me assisting him. But, he had some other tasks he needed to address, so he put me in charge of the line with this prep cook assisting me. Right in the middle of serving lunch, this guy went to the manager and put in his two week’s notice, telling the manager, “Apparently I can’t do anything right when I work with Rik”. And then he just fucking left.

WTF? I had to try to think what might have given him that impression. But I didn’t have to think very hard.

I may have inadvertently given him the impression that I didn’t like him or something when we worked together on Saturday mornings, and I will accept the blame for that. I’m accustomed to showing up for work at 5:00AM and effectively having the kitchen entirely to myself for three hours before I start serving breakfast to the residents. And I have a very specific routine I go through every day while I get ready. I suddenly had this lumbering, slow-moving, 6-foot-plus older guy right in my way every time I turned around, setting up to work right where I needed to work, and just, through no real fault of his own, getting in my way and disrupting my routine. I tried to be patient, but my irritation must have been evident. But the only thing I ever said to him about it was to ask him to set up "over there, because I need this space here.

I politely asked him, like I had been asking everybody else who works in the kitchen, to not put silverware or small utensils on a certain counter or in a certain sink in the dishwashing area, because that counter is next to that sink, and that sink houses the garbage disposal, and those small utensils invariably fall into the disposal and jam it up, and I’m the guy who then has to waste 15-20 minutes trying to get it unjammed.

Three or four Saturdays ago, I mentioned to the manager that this prep cook needed to pick up the pace. I’d had him making salads (there is a Chef Salad on the menu all of the time, and each week there is another, different, special salad). We make up these salads ahead of time, because we just don’t have the space to keep all of the ingredients at hand to make them to order. It took him nearly an hour to make a dozen Chef Salads, and almost another hour to make a dozen of the specialty salad. All that time, taking up workspace that I needed.

One Saturday, I showed him how to quickly cut up fresh fruit (a mixture of cantaloupe, honeydew, pineapple, and grapes). It’s the same mixture we used at the convention center, and at the CC I frequently had to prepare absolutely massive quantities of this stuff, so I figured out how to do it quickly and efficiently. I demonstrated knife techniques that speeded up the process. He completely ignored what I had shown him, and thus took an eternity to produce a relatively small amount.

Two Saturdays ago, he misinterpreted an instruction the manager had given him, and started throwing away all of the “old” desserts. Remember me mentioning that our menu flips over on Sunday? That includes the desserts. So he was, early Saturday morning, throwing away desserts that we still needed for Saturday. I told him to stop, and he kept insisting he was doing what the manager had told him to do. So we spent Saturday without the full complement of desserts that were on the menu.

Today … One of the lunch specials was a grilled chicken sandwich, and I had to point out to this guy that he was putting those orders in the window without the top half of the bun. Then, when that chicken sandwich proved to be more popular than expected and we had to cook off additional chicken breasts, he took the cooked breasts off the grill and put them on the steam table, and I made a comment about checking the temperature of the meat first (hey, we’re feeding people who range in age from late 70s to 102 years old, a demographic that is highly susceptible to food poisoning, so I have to be fanatical about proper food temperatures).

That’s when he quit. And good riddance, if you ask me.

ETA: I’m also trying to understand the thought process behind submitting a written two-weeks notice and then immediately walking out.

36

Really? Wow. is that typical of the rates paid for that kind of work?:eek:

I must be missing something in translation here, wouldn’t roasting a piece of corned meat even really slowly come out as salty as all get out?:confused:

37

You must live in a big city. I live in a small city in the middle of Washington, where Seattle is the biggest nearby city. Yes, that’s a typical wage. And … I can live on it. Or at least survive.

No, it was fucking delicious.

38

Congratulations, hope your new job goes great.

39

Mister Rik I think of you every time I enter the door code at an Assisted Living Facility. I am happy that you demonstrate a level of caring about the food the residents and guests get to eat. The ALF my mom was in was great, too, they were wonderful in that regard. Food makes a huge difference in quality of life.

40

I don’t have the job yet, but my general manager/executive director is treating me as if I already have the job. The final decision isn’t up to her, it’s up to the corporate-level person who is in charge of kitchen managers, and that person still has not contacted me. So for the time being, I’m sort of the “acting manager”, by virtue of being the senior person in the kitchen (and, to their credit, all of my kitchen staff is treating me the same way).

I am already discovering that I need to start drawing some lines.

Until two days ago, I had never conducted a job interview, but I have since conducted three. However, I am not the one who scheduled these interviews. My boss scheduled them. So, Boss, you who has no experience in foodservice, two rules for scheduling job interviews for foodservice positions. Well, one foodservice-specific rule:

Do not schedule interviews right in the middle of lunch. I am busy serving lunch from 11:30 to 1:30. The residents of this community getting fed takes priority over job interviews.

The second, non-foodservice-specific “rule”: If you’ve scheduled somebody for an interview, maybe tell me about it ahead of time? Instead of coming into the kitchen when I’m elbows-deep in essential prep work to tell me, “I have somebody here to interview for a cook position. Come talk to them.”

The “fun” thing about these cook interviews is that … whether or not we need to hire a new cook depends upon whether or not I get the manager job. If I don’t get the job, then we won’t need to hire a new cook (at least not immediately — as I said earlier, if I don’t get the promotion I am going to start looking elsewhere, but I will remain long enough for the new manager to get settled in … and to train him or her, because I will not leave my “old folks” high and dry). I will remain as Cook #2, and the current #3 cook will remain as #3, and the incoming manager will be Cook #1. If I do get the promotion, then yes, we will need to hire a new cook. The current #3 will move up to #2, and the new cook will be the new #3.

So I’ve conducted two interviews for hopeful cooks, and one of them was very promising (cook #3 recommended her). And I was up-front with them, explaining the situation, that I am not actually the “manager”, that whether the position was available depended upon whether or not I get the promotion. I’m honest like that. If they have other offers, go ahead and take them. Don’t wait for this one. Because I understand that people need jobs. I’m not going to recommend hiring somebody at this point in time, with the situation still up in the air, because I would hate to have someone turn down another offer to take this job, only to have them find out next week that we don’t actually need them, and now the other offer is off the table.

At least that promising candidate also expressed willingness to work as a server, a position that does not depend upon whether or not I become the manager. We need adults who can work as servers. The previous manager (24-year-old male) hired mostly high school girls who obviously cannot work the day shift during the school year. So we currently have this situation where we have only two adult women available to work the day shift on weekdays, and if one of them can’t make it, there’s nobody we can call to fill in.

Today … my Executive Director came to me right in the middle of serving lunch to tell me that there were two girls who had been hired as servers, and I needed to talk to them about scheduling and training. AAAUGGH! I know jack shit about scheduling servers. I have not done that. I have not been trained for that. Fortunately, our “lead server” (a 16-year-old girl, but recently emancipated from her parents, very smart, and very hard-working) happened to be working today, and since the recently-departed manager had put her in charge of scheduling servers, I … delegated. Once lunch was finished, she went out and talked to them (I figure that was less intimidating than my 49-year-old male ass), then brought them into the kitchen and introduced them to me. She showed them around, explained the job, and set up a training schedule for them. Problem solved.

Then, also today … I had to have a one-on-one with a lady who the recently-departed manager hired at the last minute as a cook (he told me that the ED had pretty much made him hire her). She has extensive cooking experience … in nursing homes. We’re not a nursing home (or whatever they call them these days … “convalescent centers”), we’re a “retirement community”. Here, we have “assisted living”, and we also have an “independent living” side, which is basically elderly people who are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but who don’t want the burden of maintaining the old family home or having to cook for themselves. The IL people get a nice apartment, and they get to come to the dining room, which operates like a nice restaurant, and get a nice meal three times a day.

What this lady is used to doing is having one “special” for each meal, which is served to everybody in the general population, and then preparing the special meals for the residents/patients who have specific dietary needs. But here, we have a daily “special” for each meal, and then three more “weekly specials”, and also an open menu that is available at any time. She has no restaurant line-cooking experience, so she isn’t accustomed to the “on demand” nature of an open grill. She wanted to talk to me privately about that. She didn’t think she was cut out for that, and wasn’t sure that the job was for her, and she was worried about what I and cook #3 thought about her.

She’s a nice lady (and older than me). And she is actually doing a pretty good job. She just lacks confidence. She thought she was screwing up on the “open grill” part of the menu, and was stressing about her ability in that area. I actually surprised myself with the way I “talked her down”. When it came down to it, I think I “managed” pretty well. I explained that I don’t expect perfection at the start. I explained that “it will come to you with time”. I pointed out that, despite her inexperience with an “open grill”, we still got lunch served in the same amount of time that we usually do. That she wasn’t messing anything up. And, since she had told me that she’d been out of work since January, I pointed out that, as long as she’s here, she’s getting paid. Maybe she won’t work out as a regular cook, but she could still be ideal as a part-time prep cook. I hope I boosted her confidence.