yay! Congrats! Well earned, but the recognition and official-ness of it has to make you smile!
Congrats to you!
Congrats! May all your problems be few, small, ridiculous, and easily solved.
Congratulations are definitely in order, sir. After two years of following this saga, we’re all thrilled for you!
YAY!!!
Congratulations! You deserve every penny of your raise.
StG
While I am more of a newbie here at the SD, I have been following your career arc with great interest. My best wishes on your new job, from which I look forward to many adventures in the world of Corporate Management… ;):eek:
I’m going to be an outlier here in my response to the job change.
Congratulations!!
(um, what? everyone else is congratulating Rik as well?)
(dayum, I hate going along with the crowd)
(but for Mister Rik, I’ll do it)
CONGRATULATIONS!!
With all the frustrations with the job - staffing, lack of control, etc., you have really been there for the residents, and made their lives better. Kudos to you, and I’m glad the powers that be are giving you the credit you deserve.
Thanks, all. One nice thing is that our Regional Director of Operations is here, and she has heard from the residents that things have steadily improved over the last month or so that I’ve been running the dining services.
You go, Mister Rik! A toast to your continued success!
Congrats, Rik! That company is lucky to have a devoted, hard worker, who CARES in that manager role.
What really impresses me is how genuinely you talk about your guests, and how seriously you take your job of providing for their nutritional needs. As I was catching up on your thread, reading about the guy who didn’t temp the chicken in the steam table, I thought, “If he hadn’t quit, Mister Rik needs to fire him as his first official act.” I hope you can inspire the same level of integrity and work ethic in your staff.
Remember this one bit of advice about being a manager: Your success is not measured by what you accomplish, it is measured by what your team does.
Also, just to hijack your a thread a bit… I’m now the Executive Chef of the restaurant I mentioned upthread. Promotions are awesome. The Chef who hired me turned out to be a worthless tool, and was fired for theft (although, he should have been fired months sooner for his outrageous food costs and total lack of professionalism).
I had to really act the part of “manager” today.
Today was a complete clusterfuck, from the point of view of “customer service”. Basically, I had too many noobs waiting tables today.
The problem started with the fact that my two most-experienced servers were unavailable today. One has a second job that she works on Fridays and Saturdays, and the other one requested today and the next two days off to attend a family reunion, out of town.
One of the servers I had scheduled for today (the aforementioned 16-year-old whom I suspected had a crush on me) pointed out to me yesterday that I had scheduled her to work 10 days in a row. That was a complete fuckup on my part. I apologized to her, and pointed out that I am as new to scheduling as our new servers are to serving. I told her to take today off.
That left me with exactly zero experienced servers to work lunch and dinner. The most-experienced server I had on duty today was another 16- or 17-year old girl who has been working here for maybe two months. And she had to work with one server who has been here for less than a month, another server whose first day was yesterday, and another 17-year-old kid who was hired to be a cook (hired by a chef from corporate, on my day off, and whom I didn’t find out about until later) but whom I’m cross-training to also work as a server.
Like I said, clusterfuck. I informed my own boss that tonight’s dinner was probably going to be rocky, due to all of the noobs.
At closing time, that 16-17 year-old girl called me at home to tell me, “It’s time to leave, but there is still all this stuff that needs to get done.” So I put on my “manager hat” and gave her permission to stay as late as she needed to get everything done. And I reassured her that, since I had officially given her permission, as her manager, that it would be me who got in trouble, not her, if there was trouble to be had. And I am going to reward that girl. She has stepped up every time I’ve needed somebody to step up.
Hurray for you. Congratulations!
So I think I’ve randomly solved this. I’ve heard this girl going on and on about some boy named “Fernando”. Tonight, I made a trip to Safeway, and I randomly picked the shortest checkout line. I spotted the checker, a very young Mexican-American dude, and noted that he was wearing nerdy, black-rimmed glasses very similar to mine. And as I moved up in the line, I spotted his nametag: “Fernando”. I asked him how old he is. He’s 20. And then I asked him if he knew a girl named [my subordinate’s name]. He admitted that the name sounded familiar. I described her physical appearance in a very general way, and Fernando said, “I think I know who you’re talking about.”
I left it at that, though I had to fight the urge to go back into Safeway and tell Fernando, “Dude, if you don’t hit that, mumble mumble mumble”
But, yeah. I think I found her Fernando. And her staring at me can be explained by my (reading) glasses. Though why my nerdcore glasses would draw any comparison between my old ass and this good-looking young Fernando is beyond me.
Also, I’ve finally gotten another cook hired, so that I can get a fucking day off (I can’t even remember my last day off). But let me just repost what I posted on my Facebook page yesterday evening … I posted this about 19 hours ago:
Insomnia sucks. I find that I cannot say exactly how long I’ve been awake. I only know that I didn’t sleep worth a damn Saturday night, and that I spent 14 hours at work on Sunday, and I’m still awake 4 hours after I left work.
Which is weird. By this time of night I’ve usually already fallen asleep in front of my computer (only to be awakened by my bladder one or two hours before my alarm goes off at 4:00AM and finding myself unable to fall back asleep after emptying my bladder.
I saw this convenience store clerk Sunday morning, at the end of his shift, and I just saw him a few minutes ago at the beginning of his next shift.
I told my boss, a couple days ago, that I cannot distinguish between whether I’m dreaming about work, or whether I’m lying awake worrying about everything I have to deal with at work since I’ve been running my department. And it’s hard to distinguish. I’ve had several mornings where I’ve been convinced that I did not sleep at all, yet I felt well-rested. And other mornings where I felt like I slept all night, but can’t get moving because I’m exhausted.
And now …
Holy fuck, I now understand why my teenaged-girl-hiring predecessor “delegated” the job of scheduling servers to his favorite teenage-girl server. I have to make the server schedules now, and it’s almost fucking impossible with all the fucking requests for days off. They’re not unreasonable requests - these are teenagers who have to go along with family and school requirements. But the overlapping requests for days off paint me into a corner, into which I find that the only people I can schedule for a particular shift are my three most inexperienced, incompetent servers. And my customers don’t deserve that.
But, goddammit, I’m not hiring another teenager if I can help it. I need adults who understand what “having a job” means. Except how the hell do I hire an experienced, adult server for a job where he/she won’t receive tips?
One of my trusted friends sent her brother-in-law to me. He’s an experienced, talented cook, and he’s also an experienced server. And I would hire him right this minute … except he’s covered in tattoos, and company dress code requires that all tattoos be covered (so as not to offend a bunch of WW2-era people :rolleyes:). The long-sleeved server uniform would cover up his sleeve tattoos, but he’s got one big tattoo going up his neck that wouldn’t be covered. sigh And I can’t even offer him full-time work, which is what he needs.
On a different topic …
On the dinner shift, I normally have three servers. Due to my own mistake with scheduling servers (I admitted to my staff that I am as new to scheduling as they are to serving), tonight we had only two servers. It was my mistake, so I stepped up and covered. No, I didn’t work as a server. I told my two servers, “It’s just the two of you tonight. And all you have to worry about is serving our customers. I’ll do everything else.”
So I spent tonight as the dishwasher. I took that worry off of my servers’ minds. All they had to do was wait tables and take care of the customers.
And I noticed that, without having a third server, one of my teenagers (16-17 years old) ran her ass off. She did an outstanding job. The other server, not so much, but she’s still brand-new and learning, and I’m going to work with her, because she’s an actual adult, albeit 19 years old with no prior experience in this business (and, after watching her, I see I need to teach her how to use a broom and mop, but hey, I had to learn that myself, back when). But, that 16-17-year-old, I’m going to have a talk with her, and praise her performance tonight … and then explain that that is what she needs to do every night. The shorthandedness was my fault, but I’m going to turn it into a learning experience for both of us.
I also had to deal with an angry customer/resident tonight. She had ordered a “bacon cheeseburger, plain”. Meaning that she wanted a burger patty, with nothing but the patty, the bacon, and the cheese, on a bun.
She stormed into the kitchen (where she’s not allowed, and she was in her socks) and asked if I’m the “head cook” (I am). She told me what she ordered, and then showed me what she got. So I showed it to my subordinate cooks and said, “WTF? This isn’t what she asked for!!”
So I explained to this old lady that, sometimes the order doesn’t get written down correctly (it’s not just my servers taking orders, there are also untrained CNAs/caregivers taking her order), and all my cooks can do is put out the order they see written on the ticket. She gave me this story about how she just takes what she gets, and hopes it gets better. I told her, “NO. If you don’t get what you wanted, call your server over, and SEND IT BACK. We will fix it!”
I mean, seriously, how can I fix a problem if I don’t know the problem exists? I had a similar conversation with a server at a steakhouse where I cooked many years ago. I had overcooked some people’s steaks, and my server came back to tell me so. I told her, “Let me cook them new steaks.”. She said, “Oh, don’t worry, they’re going to eat them.” And then she kept coming back, repeatedly, to me to tell me how much they were complaining. And I kept telling her, “LET ME COOK THEM NEW STEAKS!” And it devolved into me telling her, “Either let me fix this, or SHUT THE FUCK UP.”
I’ve only just stumbled across this (fascinating) thread. And it looks like you’re in a learning experience right now… But Google 457 Chef or look for 457 Chef on au.indeed.com or Australia.trovit.com – I think you’d be making USD 35K just working as a cook.
457 is the visa classification. I dunno if a criminal record would be problem for a 457 visa.
So I had a WTF conversation with my #2 cook a couple days ago. I had to perform his “end of probationary period performance review” … which should have been conducted by the previous manager way back in May. The point of the review was to get him a $1/hour raise. Since I want to keep him, I dressed up his review somewhat.
Afterward, I asked him that awkward question, “So, what have we been paying you?” I had to ask, because I didn’t know, since he had been hired by my predecessor. He told me.
This dude, who was hired just last February, had been getting paid more than me. He was hired at $12/hour, while I was making $11-something, despite my seniority.
I was hired by a manager whom I had worked under many (20+) years earlier, and then worked alongside, and eventually replaced, at my previous job. My hiring had to be approved by the Executive Director we had at a time. The starting wage for cooks was $10.50/hour, and the Executive Director, based upon my experience and the kitchen manager’s recommendation, agreed to start me at $10.75/hour. Yeah, my 30 years of experience + the manager’s endorsement got me an extra .25/hour. I told this to my current ED, and she said, “That wasn’t right.”
Apparently, if I’m looking to hire a new cook, I can offer as much as $13.50/hour to start, if they’re experienced.
I fucking should have gotten that, two years ago.