I had a melt-down this evening.
Up until now,
I’ve been able to keep these things quiet. I’d go somewhere where no one
could see or hear me and just sob like a two year-old. Tonight,
unfortunately, my husband was in attendance when I just…lost it.
The theme of
this month’s incident was "It’s all too much." I have way too many
things to think about, to do, to accomplish….complete with deadlines.
And I’m SOOOOOO friggin’ tired.
Today was a
fourteen-hour day that followed a fourteen-hour day. One of my key
employees is out on vacation this week, and the only one available to
stand in the gap is, of course, me. When I made the schedule last week,
it looked almost easy. It looked doable. I thought I’d gotten off pretty
easy, only having to work TWO double shifts. But hours on paper and
hours on my feet dealing with a constant barrage of shit hitting the fan
are two different things entirely. The last straw was our last group of
customers last night. A party of eight who began arriving twenty
minutes before we closed. They stayed until nearly 9:00 (we close at
8:00) racked up an $86 tab (which is really a pretty reasonable cost to
feed eight people), displayed some kind of inappropriate sticker shock
when they got their bill, and left all of ten dollars for a tip (which
is not even 12%, in cast you’re trying to do the math…) Talk about a
"WHY THE F**K AM I DOING THIS, AGAIN?" moment…
I struggled to
get the money counted and paperwork completed (the first thing I lose
when I’m tired is my ability to count money…) All I could think of was
that I had to be back at it in less than ten hours. I reached into the
closet to grab my purse and coat, looked in my briefcase and spied the
stack of bills I’d been carrying around for two days that I would have
to deal with before I could go to bed. And I burst into tears.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
An Old Fart's Talking Points
From time to time, I try to look back and assess the
progress I’ve made in any given area of running the café. I must say, I
thought there would be a lot more marks in the "nailed it" column after
fifteen months of the most intense education I’ve experienced in my
half-century on the planet. Then again, I realize I thought I
already knew a lot more than I actually did. It’s been mighty
frustrating, and humbling, to find that I was not half the restaurateur
that I believed I was.
One of the things on which I used to pride myself was my ability to build a team. I had developed a little cache of guidelines that I used to evaluate and reward employees. Rule number one was "Show up and wear the uniform." I always considered that one a "gimme." Once that was accomplished, we went on to the more specific things, like learning the menu or understanding how to handle cash register transactions. Having mastered those basics, we went on to the more abstract things, like what constitutes good customer service, and how to work in tandem with the rest of the team.
In the universe of running a business in a medium-sized university town, where there was an endless supply of poor college students ready and willing to work to keep themselves from starving, my system worked brilliantly. Prospective employees came to me pre-wired with the basic knowledge that they were going to work, for which I was going to pay them. They needed the money, and I needed the help. Seems pretty…basic, doesn’t it?
The reality of the first decade of the 21st century, out here in the sticks, has turned out to be life on a completely different planet. I’m hard pressed to dig up one applicant with anything I recognize as a work ethic…and generally if I find one, I realize they really don’t want to work at a café. It seems that all the competent, experienced people I’ve interviewed would consider working for me only as a last resort. They’ve done their time in the food industry, and now they’re eager to put that part of their resume in the past and "move up" to a real job. Nothing less exciting than a career in some satellite of the booming medical industry or designing web pages for the next dot-com start will do. Working in food is the job that everybody is getting mad at the illegal immigrants for taking away, but is way too much like grunt work for Mr. and Mrs. Suburbia-wannabe or their kids to want to soil their hands with.
The kids! I know I sound like a total old fart, but I honestly believe these kids are in big trouble. They don’t know how to work! They haven’t learned—either at home or at school—the most rudimentary basics of employment. Like that work has to have SOME kind of priority in your life. And that you have to care enough about what you are being paid to do to bother to remember what you’re taught from one day to the next.
Last January, my chronic inability to find people to hire caused me to embark upon a "Great Experiment." The café had never, in its history, hired children under 18. With good reason…first of all, the fact that we DO serve alcohol presents one dimension of problems—since you have to be 18 to serve, we would have to jump through some hoops to make high school students useful in the front of the house. And if they’re under 18 they’re not allowed to run any of the more complicated equipment, like the slicer or a mixer, so that puts a crimp in how useful they could be in the kitchen. Still, I kept getting a steady stream of applications from high school students, and I was becoming more and more disenchanted with the quality of "experienced" help I was able to dig up. I figured maybe it would be a good thing to give a couple of "blank slates" a go.
So, I hired myself two bona-fide High School Students. Two bright girls…or so I thought. One is an honor student at the high school just a few blocks from the restaurant. The other hailed from the next town up the road, but seemed eager to make the commute (mostly because her boyfriend worked at the pizza place a few doors down from the café.) I sat them down and gave them the whole serious talk, about how I was going to limit their hours to two weeknights and one week-end day per week, because I didn’t want their jobs to interfere with their studies. And all the things I expected from them to be able to learn, like customer service skills, and handling money, and cleaning bathrooms, and showing up and wearing the uniform.
Well, I wish I could say that, after eight months, they had at least mastered showing up and wearing the uniform. But…not so much. When it came to "showing up," while they didn’t call in sick constantly or no-show me, they made liberal use of the "schedule request" clause. Prom. Dances. Christmas vacations. Spring vacations. One of them made the softball team last March, and was able to work about an average of one day a week thereafter. Practice was every night after school, and the coach "got mad" at her if she left practice early to go to work. The other girl landed a part in the spring play, so between rehearsals and performances, we didn’t see her much after that, either. I tied myself in knots trying to schedule their work hours around school, extra-curriculars, social activities and family vacations. But I soldiered on, hoping that I would at least end up with two semi-experienced workers who could be counted on for more hours during the summer. And when summer came, they asked for SO much time off, they were as useless as they had been all year. The capper was when the one left me a note on August 15th, saying she was having surgery (which turned out to be an elective cosmetic procedure) on August 20th and she would be able to return to work around September 20th. Apparently she had been planning this for months, but didn’t feel it important to give me more than five days’ notice that she would need a month off. Is there an appropriate expletive for that?
So, Ms. "I Need A Month Off" no longer works for me. But the Softball Queen is still hanging in there. And—get this: in desperation, I hired a friend of hers to replace the surgery girl. Knowing that it would either be a brilliant move (a way to get Softball Queen more engaged with the job) or a disaster. And after four weeks, the scale is tipping towards NOT brilliant. Right off, we discovered that we can’t schedule these two to work together because all they do is huddle and titter the entire time. And then there’s dance/prom/social activities conflict. Since they go to the same school, they both need those same days off. AND the new girl has attitude problems of her own that have nothing to do with her connection to the Softball Queen.
It all boils down to the reason these children want a job. And I have to confess, I haven’t figured out what it is. They don’t seem to need or want or care very much about the money. Softball Queen sometimes forgets to even pick up her paychecks, and then she doesn’t cash them for weeks afterward. The nearest I can figure, they want jobs because their friends have one. It’s fashionable. Like a tattoo or thong underwear. It seems like nearly everything kids do thesedays, they do because "everyone else is doing it." I know peer pressure has always been a great molder and shaper of the teenage world. But, I’m sorry, that’s SO LAME. It seems like such a cop-out to me, to let what everyone else does determine every move you make. When did being a teen-ager become so much a matter of toeing a very narrow, proscribed line or not being fit to live?
I can’t remember being a slave to conformity when I was a kid. I realize that I was a member of a generation for whom bucking the system WAS the fashion. It was the peer-pressure generated course of action. You just didn’t do what everyone else did. It wasn’t done.
You "did your own thing." But you understood early on that you needed money to do it. You needed a job, and you needed to perform adequately at that job in order to make more money. My parents worked. And we understood the correlation between what they did and what kind of life-style we lived. We had a comfortable middle-class suburban life, but we knew it wasn’t served up for free. What don’t today’s kids get about this?
I am not a parent, so I don’t like to trash out of hand the parenting skills of the public at large. I only see and have to deal with the end product of what looks to me like a less and less effective system of bringing up kids…whether or to what degree the parents or the school system or society are to blame, I have no idea. But I’m not inspired to look forward to where this generation might take us when it’s their turn to be in charge. On second thought, it appears that they might never be able—or willing—to take charge. And that is frightening.
One of the things on which I used to pride myself was my ability to build a team. I had developed a little cache of guidelines that I used to evaluate and reward employees. Rule number one was "Show up and wear the uniform." I always considered that one a "gimme." Once that was accomplished, we went on to the more specific things, like learning the menu or understanding how to handle cash register transactions. Having mastered those basics, we went on to the more abstract things, like what constitutes good customer service, and how to work in tandem with the rest of the team.
In the universe of running a business in a medium-sized university town, where there was an endless supply of poor college students ready and willing to work to keep themselves from starving, my system worked brilliantly. Prospective employees came to me pre-wired with the basic knowledge that they were going to work, for which I was going to pay them. They needed the money, and I needed the help. Seems pretty…basic, doesn’t it?
The reality of the first decade of the 21st century, out here in the sticks, has turned out to be life on a completely different planet. I’m hard pressed to dig up one applicant with anything I recognize as a work ethic…and generally if I find one, I realize they really don’t want to work at a café. It seems that all the competent, experienced people I’ve interviewed would consider working for me only as a last resort. They’ve done their time in the food industry, and now they’re eager to put that part of their resume in the past and "move up" to a real job. Nothing less exciting than a career in some satellite of the booming medical industry or designing web pages for the next dot-com start will do. Working in food is the job that everybody is getting mad at the illegal immigrants for taking away, but is way too much like grunt work for Mr. and Mrs. Suburbia-wannabe or their kids to want to soil their hands with.
The kids! I know I sound like a total old fart, but I honestly believe these kids are in big trouble. They don’t know how to work! They haven’t learned—either at home or at school—the most rudimentary basics of employment. Like that work has to have SOME kind of priority in your life. And that you have to care enough about what you are being paid to do to bother to remember what you’re taught from one day to the next.
Last January, my chronic inability to find people to hire caused me to embark upon a "Great Experiment." The café had never, in its history, hired children under 18. With good reason…first of all, the fact that we DO serve alcohol presents one dimension of problems—since you have to be 18 to serve, we would have to jump through some hoops to make high school students useful in the front of the house. And if they’re under 18 they’re not allowed to run any of the more complicated equipment, like the slicer or a mixer, so that puts a crimp in how useful they could be in the kitchen. Still, I kept getting a steady stream of applications from high school students, and I was becoming more and more disenchanted with the quality of "experienced" help I was able to dig up. I figured maybe it would be a good thing to give a couple of "blank slates" a go.
So, I hired myself two bona-fide High School Students. Two bright girls…or so I thought. One is an honor student at the high school just a few blocks from the restaurant. The other hailed from the next town up the road, but seemed eager to make the commute (mostly because her boyfriend worked at the pizza place a few doors down from the café.) I sat them down and gave them the whole serious talk, about how I was going to limit their hours to two weeknights and one week-end day per week, because I didn’t want their jobs to interfere with their studies. And all the things I expected from them to be able to learn, like customer service skills, and handling money, and cleaning bathrooms, and showing up and wearing the uniform.
Well, I wish I could say that, after eight months, they had at least mastered showing up and wearing the uniform. But…not so much. When it came to "showing up," while they didn’t call in sick constantly or no-show me, they made liberal use of the "schedule request" clause. Prom. Dances. Christmas vacations. Spring vacations. One of them made the softball team last March, and was able to work about an average of one day a week thereafter. Practice was every night after school, and the coach "got mad" at her if she left practice early to go to work. The other girl landed a part in the spring play, so between rehearsals and performances, we didn’t see her much after that, either. I tied myself in knots trying to schedule their work hours around school, extra-curriculars, social activities and family vacations. But I soldiered on, hoping that I would at least end up with two semi-experienced workers who could be counted on for more hours during the summer. And when summer came, they asked for SO much time off, they were as useless as they had been all year. The capper was when the one left me a note on August 15th, saying she was having surgery (which turned out to be an elective cosmetic procedure) on August 20th and she would be able to return to work around September 20th. Apparently she had been planning this for months, but didn’t feel it important to give me more than five days’ notice that she would need a month off. Is there an appropriate expletive for that?
So, Ms. "I Need A Month Off" no longer works for me. But the Softball Queen is still hanging in there. And—get this: in desperation, I hired a friend of hers to replace the surgery girl. Knowing that it would either be a brilliant move (a way to get Softball Queen more engaged with the job) or a disaster. And after four weeks, the scale is tipping towards NOT brilliant. Right off, we discovered that we can’t schedule these two to work together because all they do is huddle and titter the entire time. And then there’s dance/prom/social activities conflict. Since they go to the same school, they both need those same days off. AND the new girl has attitude problems of her own that have nothing to do with her connection to the Softball Queen.
It all boils down to the reason these children want a job. And I have to confess, I haven’t figured out what it is. They don’t seem to need or want or care very much about the money. Softball Queen sometimes forgets to even pick up her paychecks, and then she doesn’t cash them for weeks afterward. The nearest I can figure, they want jobs because their friends have one. It’s fashionable. Like a tattoo or thong underwear. It seems like nearly everything kids do thesedays, they do because "everyone else is doing it." I know peer pressure has always been a great molder and shaper of the teenage world. But, I’m sorry, that’s SO LAME. It seems like such a cop-out to me, to let what everyone else does determine every move you make. When did being a teen-ager become so much a matter of toeing a very narrow, proscribed line or not being fit to live?
I can’t remember being a slave to conformity when I was a kid. I realize that I was a member of a generation for whom bucking the system WAS the fashion. It was the peer-pressure generated course of action. You just didn’t do what everyone else did. It wasn’t done.
You "did your own thing." But you understood early on that you needed money to do it. You needed a job, and you needed to perform adequately at that job in order to make more money. My parents worked. And we understood the correlation between what they did and what kind of life-style we lived. We had a comfortable middle-class suburban life, but we knew it wasn’t served up for free. What don’t today’s kids get about this?
I am not a parent, so I don’t like to trash out of hand the parenting skills of the public at large. I only see and have to deal with the end product of what looks to me like a less and less effective system of bringing up kids…whether or to what degree the parents or the school system or society are to blame, I have no idea. But I’m not inspired to look forward to where this generation might take us when it’s their turn to be in charge. On second thought, it appears that they might never be able—or willing—to take charge. And that is frightening.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Day Off Blues
I took a day off yesterday. I mean, I didn’t just wait for a convenient day to come around; I took
one. It was entirely a matter of self-preservation. I’d stretched
myself beyond my capacity. For two weeks before the Sauerkraut Festival,
I had fretted and worried and tried to plan and organize, to the extent
that my chronically depleted brain could plan and organize.
AND I have been sick, with some bug that my young crew members brought back from "Rock Fest"—the local popular music orgy that they had all begged for the day off to attend back in the last week of August. The one lucky break I’ve had since we bought the restaurant is that I have managed NOT to pick up every germ and virus that rampaged through town, and my staff, for the past year. A miracle in itself, considering the cocktail of stress, sleep deprivation and poor diet I’ve lived on for the last fifteen months. Not so lucky with this little virus, though—a particularly nasty one, with fever, sore throat, and head congestion so severe I was deaf for two weeks. I hadn’t felt this crappy, literally, in years.
Made exponentially worse by the fact that I couldn’t BE sick.
With my two cooks in training reduced to working evenings and weekends, my schedule has consisted of working every day, including two or three double shifts a week thrown in for good measure. I’ve steadily deteriorated from competent admiral of the fleet to a churlish, oft-flogged swabbie. Last Sunday, I was called out front to deal with a customer complaint…and I handled it SO poorly, I realized that I was rapidly approaching total burn-out. And the last thing that restaurant needs is for me to burn out.
So even though I had already posted a schedule which had me working yet another seven-day week, I sat down Sunday night and re-wrote the thing. A little thinking outside the box (and begging) accomplished what I needed: an entire day with absolutely no contact with the café. I honestly couldn’t remember when my last day off WAS, so I looked back at the old schedules hanging on the wall. August 23rd. Ah, yes! Summer! Back when I still had a complete staff… In fact, I realized I’d only had two days off since our nutsy-busy Scandinavian Festival back in mid-August. That was information I didn’t really need…it only made me feel more desperate to get out of there forat least one day.
The list of things I could do, that I wanted to do, with an entire 24 hours off started to grow: Clean the house. Take the dog to the beach. Do the "Goodwill sort" through my overloaded closets. Go up the river to the outlet mall. Go to Binyons and get new glasses (which I desperately need.) And the husband wanted me to meet him and a business associate for dinner. Sigh! Not only was twenty-four hours not nearly enough time to accomplish all this, but I quickly realized I didn’t have the energy for one-tenth of it. In the end, I chose the closets, the shopping, and the dinner. And the rest of the day, I pretty much sat around and stared at the walls. So I didn’t have a productive day. It was restorative, though.
But of course I couldn’t keep my mind completely away from café issues. And I couldn’t completely banish the nagging guilt for wanting, needing to get away from there. It’s not that I’m a control freak, though I think you need to lean a little in that direction in order to run your own business. I just feel like I wanted this so much, I shouldn’t feel negatively about it, EVER. I should always love being there, always revel in the freedom and the self-determination. Of course, that’s a crock, and I know it. But that doesn’t keep me from carrying the guilt around anyway.
I indulged in a little self-assessment as I puttered around the stores. I realized that I haven’t figured out where my "off" button is. I just keep going full-speed until I run out of gas. That’s the way I’ve always been, no matter what job I’ve had. My work ethic is to go to work, work until the job is done, and then go home. I’ve never done a lot of socializing at work. I’m very much a "nose to the grindstone" kind of person.
The problem is, you really can’t apply that sort of work ethic to your own business, especially when it’s a hospitality business. First of all, the job is NEVER done, so you end up just working and working and working; you do go home, of course, but you’re still working. And working and working. And if you don’t turn yourself off, make yourself STOP working, even for short bits of time, you work too much. And then you start to hate the thing you started out loving and wanting with all your heart.
And this thing about not being social on the job…this has been the biggest problem for me.
Not only am I not a normally social person, but the harder I work, the more exhausted I become, and the more I draw into my shell and just want to be left alone. And you cannot do that when you are in charge of a restaurant. You need to set an example for the crew, and you need to be friendly with the guests.
I’ve always known that I was going to have problems in this area. I’ve managed restaurants, and my solution for this particular deficiency of mine was to make sure I hired people who could DO that part of the job for me. For the most part, that has been a successful strategy. But, especially in this tiny café, with no real "back of the house," I’m too visible. Everyone knows I’m there all the time, and everyone knows I’m the owner. The regulars expect ME to greet them, and chat, and treat them like they’re the only customers in the restaurant. And, yes, if I want to be successful, I should do that. And when I’m rested and full of energy (and caffeine) I can almost passably play that role. When I’m exhausted, stressed out and have a million things on my mind—which is all the time—I suck at it.
And now it’s time to get ready and head to the salt mine once again. Let’s see, what’s on my plate today? Write next week’s schedule, see if the new lighting has arrived yet, plan the next promotion, design the new table tents, find out what’s going on with the sign, source a new bread bakery, source a new food purveyor, look through applications, hire two more people, but try to make sure everyone is still getting enough hours… But first I have to make soup and don the apron to cook lunch. Gad…I’m tired already.
AND I have been sick, with some bug that my young crew members brought back from "Rock Fest"—the local popular music orgy that they had all begged for the day off to attend back in the last week of August. The one lucky break I’ve had since we bought the restaurant is that I have managed NOT to pick up every germ and virus that rampaged through town, and my staff, for the past year. A miracle in itself, considering the cocktail of stress, sleep deprivation and poor diet I’ve lived on for the last fifteen months. Not so lucky with this little virus, though—a particularly nasty one, with fever, sore throat, and head congestion so severe I was deaf for two weeks. I hadn’t felt this crappy, literally, in years.
Made exponentially worse by the fact that I couldn’t BE sick.
With my two cooks in training reduced to working evenings and weekends, my schedule has consisted of working every day, including two or three double shifts a week thrown in for good measure. I’ve steadily deteriorated from competent admiral of the fleet to a churlish, oft-flogged swabbie. Last Sunday, I was called out front to deal with a customer complaint…and I handled it SO poorly, I realized that I was rapidly approaching total burn-out. And the last thing that restaurant needs is for me to burn out.
So even though I had already posted a schedule which had me working yet another seven-day week, I sat down Sunday night and re-wrote the thing. A little thinking outside the box (and begging) accomplished what I needed: an entire day with absolutely no contact with the café. I honestly couldn’t remember when my last day off WAS, so I looked back at the old schedules hanging on the wall. August 23rd. Ah, yes! Summer! Back when I still had a complete staff… In fact, I realized I’d only had two days off since our nutsy-busy Scandinavian Festival back in mid-August. That was information I didn’t really need…it only made me feel more desperate to get out of there forat least one day.
The list of things I could do, that I wanted to do, with an entire 24 hours off started to grow: Clean the house. Take the dog to the beach. Do the "Goodwill sort" through my overloaded closets. Go up the river to the outlet mall. Go to Binyons and get new glasses (which I desperately need.) And the husband wanted me to meet him and a business associate for dinner. Sigh! Not only was twenty-four hours not nearly enough time to accomplish all this, but I quickly realized I didn’t have the energy for one-tenth of it. In the end, I chose the closets, the shopping, and the dinner. And the rest of the day, I pretty much sat around and stared at the walls. So I didn’t have a productive day. It was restorative, though.
But of course I couldn’t keep my mind completely away from café issues. And I couldn’t completely banish the nagging guilt for wanting, needing to get away from there. It’s not that I’m a control freak, though I think you need to lean a little in that direction in order to run your own business. I just feel like I wanted this so much, I shouldn’t feel negatively about it, EVER. I should always love being there, always revel in the freedom and the self-determination. Of course, that’s a crock, and I know it. But that doesn’t keep me from carrying the guilt around anyway.
I indulged in a little self-assessment as I puttered around the stores. I realized that I haven’t figured out where my "off" button is. I just keep going full-speed until I run out of gas. That’s the way I’ve always been, no matter what job I’ve had. My work ethic is to go to work, work until the job is done, and then go home. I’ve never done a lot of socializing at work. I’m very much a "nose to the grindstone" kind of person.
The problem is, you really can’t apply that sort of work ethic to your own business, especially when it’s a hospitality business. First of all, the job is NEVER done, so you end up just working and working and working; you do go home, of course, but you’re still working. And working and working. And if you don’t turn yourself off, make yourself STOP working, even for short bits of time, you work too much. And then you start to hate the thing you started out loving and wanting with all your heart.
And this thing about not being social on the job…this has been the biggest problem for me.
Not only am I not a normally social person, but the harder I work, the more exhausted I become, and the more I draw into my shell and just want to be left alone. And you cannot do that when you are in charge of a restaurant. You need to set an example for the crew, and you need to be friendly with the guests.
I’ve always known that I was going to have problems in this area. I’ve managed restaurants, and my solution for this particular deficiency of mine was to make sure I hired people who could DO that part of the job for me. For the most part, that has been a successful strategy. But, especially in this tiny café, with no real "back of the house," I’m too visible. Everyone knows I’m there all the time, and everyone knows I’m the owner. The regulars expect ME to greet them, and chat, and treat them like they’re the only customers in the restaurant. And, yes, if I want to be successful, I should do that. And when I’m rested and full of energy (and caffeine) I can almost passably play that role. When I’m exhausted, stressed out and have a million things on my mind—which is all the time—I suck at it.
And now it’s time to get ready and head to the salt mine once again. Let’s see, what’s on my plate today? Write next week’s schedule, see if the new lighting has arrived yet, plan the next promotion, design the new table tents, find out what’s going on with the sign, source a new bread bakery, source a new food purveyor, look through applications, hire two more people, but try to make sure everyone is still getting enough hours… But first I have to make soup and don the apron to cook lunch. Gad…I’m tired already.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
This and That and the End of Summer
Just a little fly-by in case anyone thinks I’m in divorce court, or the hospital, or the loony bin…
The fight turned out to be a not-so-big deal. I didn’t go off and get all offended because I realized that I had started the whole mess. He felt like an ass, I felt like an ass, and we kissed and made up rather quickly. Being as how we ARE each other’s support network, we can’t let anything blow us apart for too long. All better now!
The event, however, sucked. Based on our sales trends for the entire summer, I was expecting at least a 25% increase over last year. As it turned out, we did almost the same sales for the day as 2006. The first part of this week, I just felt like someone had let all the air out of me. We’d spent a lot of money on advertising, equipment, and food stock that we ended up not using, but that didn’t irritate me half so much as the fact that I had expended so much energy—something of which I am in seriously short supply these days—on a non-event. Well, we learned something, anyway: Yes, the entire community does party right outside our doors at the Sauerkraut Festival, but we have to remember they bring their own food…
So, this week, we realized that business is winding down from the summer. Folks have shot their wads getting their kids back into school, and eating out is going to take a lower place on the totem pole for awhile. I’m developing some ideas for enticing the eating public to brave the gloom and the rain to come and join us for a winter meal. And I’m looking forward to the holidays… I was able to get out of town for a rare evening of shopping "over the hill" last night, and found all kinds of goodies at Pier One. Holographic sequined spiders and a black velvet web…
Let the decorating begin!
The fight turned out to be a not-so-big deal. I didn’t go off and get all offended because I realized that I had started the whole mess. He felt like an ass, I felt like an ass, and we kissed and made up rather quickly. Being as how we ARE each other’s support network, we can’t let anything blow us apart for too long. All better now!
The event, however, sucked. Based on our sales trends for the entire summer, I was expecting at least a 25% increase over last year. As it turned out, we did almost the same sales for the day as 2006. The first part of this week, I just felt like someone had let all the air out of me. We’d spent a lot of money on advertising, equipment, and food stock that we ended up not using, but that didn’t irritate me half so much as the fact that I had expended so much energy—something of which I am in seriously short supply these days—on a non-event. Well, we learned something, anyway: Yes, the entire community does party right outside our doors at the Sauerkraut Festival, but we have to remember they bring their own food…
So, this week, we realized that business is winding down from the summer. Folks have shot their wads getting their kids back into school, and eating out is going to take a lower place on the totem pole for awhile. I’m developing some ideas for enticing the eating public to brave the gloom and the rain to come and join us for a winter meal. And I’m looking forward to the holidays… I was able to get out of town for a rare evening of shopping "over the hill" last night, and found all kinds of goodies at Pier One. Holographic sequined spiders and a black velvet web…
Let the decorating begin!
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Tough Going
This is one of those nights when it’s really crashing
down on me. Our biggest sales day of the year is coming up this
weekend—on Saturday, our community festival takes place right outside
the doors of the café. Last year’s festival was the busiest day of 2006,
with sales for that one day equal to almost half what we were doing in a
normal week back then. In an effort to maximize our opportunities (what
with having the community block party right outside) we’ve gone out on a
limb and advertised a "Wine Garden" for that day. The festival itself
has no alcohol venue. So we have chosen to become "it." What am I thinking?????
I have no clue what kind of attendance we should expect. It’s our plan to have wine tasting, wine and beer by the glass, and a munchie bar. Haven’t even completely firmed up the menu, and here it is almost Thursday. Sigh! I know it will all come together in the end, but I just wish I was a little more on top of things. Doesn’t help that I am chronically stressed out by a million little details of the everyday running of the restaurant, and perpetually exhausted as well…
So I have this whole load of worries that I’ve been carrying around since we decided (at the last minute, more or less) to do this thing. And so, tonight, the husband and I proceeded to celebrate our arrival at home after a long and slightly disorganized dinner service at the café by…having a fight. A real knock-down drag-out, by our standards. Doesn’t matter what it was about. I mean, it does, but the story is long and convoluted, and you kind of "had to be there." In other words, it was a stupid fight, and if you tried to explain it to someone outside the relationship, they’d say, "Uhhh…What????"
The thing about it was, I was really taken aback by how mean we were to each other. I mean, the gloves were off from the get-go. And that just isn’t the way we argue. Or at least, it hasn’t been up ‘til now.
Yeah, we’re both totally stressed out. And we’re both weary to a degree that we never thought possible. But…I don’t know. Is that a good excuse for treating each other like crap?
And here’s the really crappy part: I know it’s my fault. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve gone through some insanely stressful days at the restaurant. Like the huge Sunday breakfast I had to cook by myself because my two "cooks in training" were both out of town and my "cook’s helper in training" decided to call in sick. The only one available to help me out was the poor husband, and I was SO freaked out that I was an absolute bitch to him. I can’t believe the things I said to him, the way I treated him, but I was so overwhelmed, I had absolutely no control over the things that were coming out of my mouth.
So, tonight, here we are standing in our kitchen at home, duking it out…and I can’t believe the things he’s saying to me. I can’t believe that he’s calling me names and accusing me of every nasty thing under the sun. And I am absolutely livid…until I realize I’m looking in a mirror. That I am reaping exactly what I have sown. And I just want to cut out my own tongue and strangle myself with it.
I know that if it came to a choice between our marriage and this stupid restaurant, there would be no choice at all. But I really don’t want to have to make that choice…
I have no clue what kind of attendance we should expect. It’s our plan to have wine tasting, wine and beer by the glass, and a munchie bar. Haven’t even completely firmed up the menu, and here it is almost Thursday. Sigh! I know it will all come together in the end, but I just wish I was a little more on top of things. Doesn’t help that I am chronically stressed out by a million little details of the everyday running of the restaurant, and perpetually exhausted as well…
So I have this whole load of worries that I’ve been carrying around since we decided (at the last minute, more or less) to do this thing. And so, tonight, the husband and I proceeded to celebrate our arrival at home after a long and slightly disorganized dinner service at the café by…having a fight. A real knock-down drag-out, by our standards. Doesn’t matter what it was about. I mean, it does, but the story is long and convoluted, and you kind of "had to be there." In other words, it was a stupid fight, and if you tried to explain it to someone outside the relationship, they’d say, "Uhhh…What????"
The thing about it was, I was really taken aback by how mean we were to each other. I mean, the gloves were off from the get-go. And that just isn’t the way we argue. Or at least, it hasn’t been up ‘til now.
Yeah, we’re both totally stressed out. And we’re both weary to a degree that we never thought possible. But…I don’t know. Is that a good excuse for treating each other like crap?
And here’s the really crappy part: I know it’s my fault. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve gone through some insanely stressful days at the restaurant. Like the huge Sunday breakfast I had to cook by myself because my two "cooks in training" were both out of town and my "cook’s helper in training" decided to call in sick. The only one available to help me out was the poor husband, and I was SO freaked out that I was an absolute bitch to him. I can’t believe the things I said to him, the way I treated him, but I was so overwhelmed, I had absolutely no control over the things that were coming out of my mouth.
So, tonight, here we are standing in our kitchen at home, duking it out…and I can’t believe the things he’s saying to me. I can’t believe that he’s calling me names and accusing me of every nasty thing under the sun. And I am absolutely livid…until I realize I’m looking in a mirror. That I am reaping exactly what I have sown. And I just want to cut out my own tongue and strangle myself with it.
I know that if it came to a choice between our marriage and this stupid restaurant, there would be no choice at all. But I really don’t want to have to make that choice…
Thursday, August 16, 2007
In the End, You Create Your Own Luck
Of course, the reality is that there aren’t
three more events "just like that." That’s why we decided to go for the
restaurant in the first place. We ran the concession trailer for five
years before we bought the café. We searched high and low for profitable
events. County fairs, art festivals, craft fairs, "taste of" events,
all over northwest Oregon. We changed, we shifted, we adjusted, we added
and subtracted menu items. And still, the BIG events eluded us.
We grossed over $20,000 at our one big event this year. Our next highest-grossing event, ever, was our own local five-day county fair, where we endured long hours, dust, late nights, flies and cowboys to top $4000. Once. In subsequent years, sales were eroded by things like terrible weather (triple-digit temperatures and/or rain), presence or absence of decent entertainment, location within the fair of said entertainment and our proximity thereto, the addition/subtraction of other vendors, and declining attendance at the fair itself. All things completely outside our control. And those same frustrating conditions applied to every event we did. One year you would have them eating out of your hand; the next, you felt as if you were trying to peddle the vilest poison.
It didn’t take long for us to realize that a $3000 event was a good one, and an event that grossed us over $10000 for a weekend—besides our beloved Scandinavian Festival—was an impossible dream. That, and the frustrations of all the uncontrollables, are what sent me in the direction of a stationary, consistent, open-every-day restaurant under a solid roof of my very own.
So, we’re not going to cash in our hand on the restaurant yet. There’s no going back to the concession thing, since it was the concession thing that pushed me into the café in the first place. I’m bound and determined to solve this damn labor puzzle; I need a decent, dependable staff so I can detach myself enough to become full-time captain of the ship, rather than the jack of all trades (master of none…) I have some ideas up my sleeve. And I’ll just have to indulge in some creative problem-solving. I can do that. Just let me get a couple extra hours of sleep under my belt…
We grossed over $20,000 at our one big event this year. Our next highest-grossing event, ever, was our own local five-day county fair, where we endured long hours, dust, late nights, flies and cowboys to top $4000. Once. In subsequent years, sales were eroded by things like terrible weather (triple-digit temperatures and/or rain), presence or absence of decent entertainment, location within the fair of said entertainment and our proximity thereto, the addition/subtraction of other vendors, and declining attendance at the fair itself. All things completely outside our control. And those same frustrating conditions applied to every event we did. One year you would have them eating out of your hand; the next, you felt as if you were trying to peddle the vilest poison.
It didn’t take long for us to realize that a $3000 event was a good one, and an event that grossed us over $10000 for a weekend—besides our beloved Scandinavian Festival—was an impossible dream. That, and the frustrations of all the uncontrollables, are what sent me in the direction of a stationary, consistent, open-every-day restaurant under a solid roof of my very own.
So, we’re not going to cash in our hand on the restaurant yet. There’s no going back to the concession thing, since it was the concession thing that pushed me into the café in the first place. I’m bound and determined to solve this damn labor puzzle; I need a decent, dependable staff so I can detach myself enough to become full-time captain of the ship, rather than the jack of all trades (master of none…) I have some ideas up my sleeve. And I’ll just have to indulge in some creative problem-solving. I can do that. Just let me get a couple extra hours of sleep under my belt…
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
As Luck Would Have It...
Jeez, I made that sound awfully dramatic, didn’t I?
Did the place burn to the ground? Were we closed down by the OLCC
(Liquor Commission)? Did every major piece of equipment pick that day to
roll over and play dead?
No, nothing as earth-shattering as all that. I just discovered that at the end of this month, I will be losing most of my staff. Again. Out of nine girls on the payroll, I will, for all intents and purposes, be losing six. One is going back to college as of the end of the month (which I knew when I hired her), one is expecting a baby in October and only wants to work through the end of this month. These two departures, while a bummer, were not unforeseen, and I had anticipated hiring one or two more girls to beef up the staff at the end of the month.
However, when I walked into the kitchen Monday morning, I was greeted with a huge pile of "schedule requests" from everyone else. One girl—completely out of the blue—dropped the bomb that she will be having surgery (don’t ask) next week and plans to be out for a month. One of my "cooks in training"—again, without any forewarning—decided to sign up for an "intensive" course at some career college and informed me that as of the beginning of next month she will only be available to work weekends. One of my high school students, who will also be going back to school next month, requested off the day of our community festival, which basically takes place right outside our doors and causes us to be crazy busy. And my other "cook in training" has been telling me for months that she was going back to school in the fall, so I know her availability is going to be drastically reduced.
I was about to write that I cannot get a break when it comes to staffing this restaurant. That’s not completely true; I have two dependable, trustworthy employees who have been with me since I bought the place. One of them has been at the cafe since the doors opened in 2005. And without the other, my good and faithful "D", I know I would have perished long ago. Unfortunately, it takes about 260 labor hours a week (not including administrative time) to run the place. And I’ve found that I can’t expect anyone to work actual full-time hours…even "D" starts to burn out if I schedule her for more than her normal 35-38 hours a week. And we need four people on shift during any given rush period. So, obviously, my two decent employees and I cannot do the job by ourselves. We do have one other girl who is not planning to leave or go to school or have a baby. And she has been begging me for more hours. But she is, of course, the most useless piece of dead wood on the staff and I have been planning on cutting her loose at the first available opportunity. Sigh!
We’ve been hobbling through the summer with these nine girls on the payroll. It’s actually worked out well, because everyone has asked for so much time off that they are getting all the hours they seem to want. And there were enough bodies to staff the place while I was gone for five days doing our Scandinavian thing. I suppose I should be grateful…and I am.
But I just can’t seem to find the solution to my labor puzzle. If I have more than eight staff members, everyone gets so few hours that it’s hardly worth having them at all. It’s difficult to train employees who work less than fifteen hours a week. You teach them something, and by the time they have the opportunity to perform the task again, they’ve forgotten how. My two high school girls were hired in January. During the school year, I held them to less than fifteen hours a week on purpose. So I ended up with two girls who were never completely or properly trained. But I kept them on staff hoping they would pick up more hours and more training, and hence be more useful, during the summer. Then they both ended up taking so much vacation time that they are STILL marginally trained and mostly unhelpful.
And I can’t beg, steal or borrow an experienced cook. Check that…after the traumas I’ve lived through with the experienced cooks I’ve had, I don’t even WANT an experienced cook. I’ll take a knowledgeable apprentice any day of the week. Unfortunately, those seem to be in short supply as well.
I had some mutinous thoughts this past weekend. Stacking the constant barrage of setbacks and headaches that have come with ownership of our very own restaurant against the relative ease and smoothness with which we cranked out a café month’s worth of sales in four days from our cramped but comfy little trailer… The eighteen-month escape clause in our café purchase contract started looking mighty attractive. "If we could just find three more events just like this," I thought, "I’d ditch the restaurant in a heartbeat."
to be continued...later.
No, nothing as earth-shattering as all that. I just discovered that at the end of this month, I will be losing most of my staff. Again. Out of nine girls on the payroll, I will, for all intents and purposes, be losing six. One is going back to college as of the end of the month (which I knew when I hired her), one is expecting a baby in October and only wants to work through the end of this month. These two departures, while a bummer, were not unforeseen, and I had anticipated hiring one or two more girls to beef up the staff at the end of the month.
However, when I walked into the kitchen Monday morning, I was greeted with a huge pile of "schedule requests" from everyone else. One girl—completely out of the blue—dropped the bomb that she will be having surgery (don’t ask) next week and plans to be out for a month. One of my "cooks in training"—again, without any forewarning—decided to sign up for an "intensive" course at some career college and informed me that as of the beginning of next month she will only be available to work weekends. One of my high school students, who will also be going back to school next month, requested off the day of our community festival, which basically takes place right outside our doors and causes us to be crazy busy. And my other "cook in training" has been telling me for months that she was going back to school in the fall, so I know her availability is going to be drastically reduced.
I was about to write that I cannot get a break when it comes to staffing this restaurant. That’s not completely true; I have two dependable, trustworthy employees who have been with me since I bought the place. One of them has been at the cafe since the doors opened in 2005. And without the other, my good and faithful "D", I know I would have perished long ago. Unfortunately, it takes about 260 labor hours a week (not including administrative time) to run the place. And I’ve found that I can’t expect anyone to work actual full-time hours…even "D" starts to burn out if I schedule her for more than her normal 35-38 hours a week. And we need four people on shift during any given rush period. So, obviously, my two decent employees and I cannot do the job by ourselves. We do have one other girl who is not planning to leave or go to school or have a baby. And she has been begging me for more hours. But she is, of course, the most useless piece of dead wood on the staff and I have been planning on cutting her loose at the first available opportunity. Sigh!
We’ve been hobbling through the summer with these nine girls on the payroll. It’s actually worked out well, because everyone has asked for so much time off that they are getting all the hours they seem to want. And there were enough bodies to staff the place while I was gone for five days doing our Scandinavian thing. I suppose I should be grateful…and I am.
But I just can’t seem to find the solution to my labor puzzle. If I have more than eight staff members, everyone gets so few hours that it’s hardly worth having them at all. It’s difficult to train employees who work less than fifteen hours a week. You teach them something, and by the time they have the opportunity to perform the task again, they’ve forgotten how. My two high school girls were hired in January. During the school year, I held them to less than fifteen hours a week on purpose. So I ended up with two girls who were never completely or properly trained. But I kept them on staff hoping they would pick up more hours and more training, and hence be more useful, during the summer. Then they both ended up taking so much vacation time that they are STILL marginally trained and mostly unhelpful.
And I can’t beg, steal or borrow an experienced cook. Check that…after the traumas I’ve lived through with the experienced cooks I’ve had, I don’t even WANT an experienced cook. I’ll take a knowledgeable apprentice any day of the week. Unfortunately, those seem to be in short supply as well.
I had some mutinous thoughts this past weekend. Stacking the constant barrage of setbacks and headaches that have come with ownership of our very own restaurant against the relative ease and smoothness with which we cranked out a café month’s worth of sales in four days from our cramped but comfy little trailer… The eighteen-month escape clause in our café purchase contract started looking mighty attractive. "If we could just find three more events just like this," I thought, "I’d ditch the restaurant in a heartbeat."
to be continued...later.
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