Bad puns aside, let’s go ahead with this.
If you recall last time, I had decided to go back to work at the Bad Place and we were short exactly two shift leads. I may not have said that latter part of last article, but I’m sure I implied it.
I also left you hanging with a question that had an obvious answer.
That’s right, it’s me!
So, I ended up running the Night Shift, and it was pretty fun. Except for the part where I didn’t get any sort of pay increase, or anything like that. But, I did take away some more invaluable things. So, whatever. Now, I could stop here, but I did give the page a funny title based on things. Rather than making this a blog, we’ll just have fun.
Now, we were open for lunch and dinner, with now downtime between the meals–unlike real restaurants. Meaning that you could literally walk in at 3 in the PM and get a dinner if you were so inclined. This sets us up well enough were you can understand some stuff. Usually we’d drop off hard after lunch then pick up a bit before dinner, using that downtime to get ready. Alright, now I’ve explained basic kitchen work to you. We can really commence now.
As I mentioned, another person and I ran each respective shift. She’d worked the days and generally get the more mature staff–by age, at least. While I’d get the teenagers and 20-somethings. Yeah, this is fair.
Except, here’s the thing. We formed some bonds and became this crazy work family. Not only did we have some really good business for awhile, I had kids kicking ass doing it. Not only could I get them do work I asked, they started to develop into these people that could just do things without being asked to. While, apparently, the day had their share of..winners. Eventually, though, the day got their act together and we really kicked ass. I kept forming bonds, we kept doing better. Until. Well, until something happened.
What happened, you might be asking yourself. Simple, people grow up. My teens and 20-somethings grew by a few years. Some had left, and I got my fair share of Winners , but I dealt with it. As time marched forward, more and more of my guys left because they had either finished high school and wanted more, or left for college. Others left because the Bad Place wasn’t right for them. That’s fine, because about that point–completely unrelated–business started declining. One could blame it on the crash we had, others could blame it on the owner. We didn’t know at the time, and had our doubts as to what it really was, but had our ideas.
Turns out it was a mix of both, about a quarter of the crash and three-quarters of someone not knowing how to run a business. NOW, NOW we get into headaches. With business down we were allotted less people per shift. This led into food being worse and taking longer–after all if a line runs with three people and suddenly it’s two or someone new then things are going to suffer. This snowballed on and on. Both shifts were cut to the minimum, sometimes cut to two people in the kitchen. Period. Meaning a cook and a dishwasher. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT GETS BUSY! And then it snowballed more. Eventually, one of my guys made an observation to the day leader:
“Are we going out of business?”
It was BAD if he could see it. When things got better economically, we assumed we’d get people back. NOPE! During the crash, and the cuts we burned too many people one too many times. We started losing people. It snowballed too much. Enough for the day leader and myself to start looking for new jobs. The future was that uncertain.
It turns out we both found new jobs, and we both were working both jobs–because we cared about the business and the staff at the Bad Place. Until something sent the owner into a tuft, and started blaming us for problems that we really had nothing to do with. I knew this was enough, and it was time to focus on my future. It was finally time for me to leave the job I had grown up in. I decided to give notice, and I’d be down in early February. It was fair. Turns out that my daytime counterpart had given her notice, too.
The date? The exact same date as mine!
Stay tuned for more!
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