I'm not looking forward to it.
All the big bosses walk around and review our work.
It doesn't seem like a big deal but I've seen people get fired more than once on a yearly review day.
People start running around frantically cleaning and dusting little corners of the restaurant.
No one wants to get caught in the crosshairs of some big bosses gun.
There are usually about five or six different bosses from various parts of the organization.
We usually have our district manager and a regional manager.
We then have several General Managers from nearby stores including our own General Manager.
There is a head shelfer.........some call expo.
The shelfer takes the food that has been cooked and adds all the necessary ingredients to it before it goes out onto the tray.
For example, if a sweet potato comes up our shelfer will add sweet potato butter to it.
The head shelfer watches not only to make sure that all of our shelfers know what they're doing but also to make sure that all of the cooks know what they're doing and also to make sure that all of the ingredients we have match up to all the ingredients in all of the other restaurants.
10 years ago our restaurant got in trouble because we were actually chopping up real tomatoes in our salsa when we were supposed to be using canned tomatoes.
Since then we have switched to real tomatoes.
Our salsa is not as good as it used to be though because it is much too salty.
There is usually a head guy for every conceivable department that you can think of in our restaurant.
Even the head shelfer can fire people.
You can imagine what a fun day it is every year.
My favorite part is the passive aggression.
Everyone in a high position at our organization loves to use passive aggressive techniques to get their point across.
Therefore if you're handing someone a menu and they don't like the way you open it up, instead of telling you....... they will likely tell someone two positions higher than you.
That person will then tell their subordinate who will finally make it his way around to telling you.
It all seems very hush hush and ridiculous except that there is also a very real possibility that you could make someone upset and get fired just by wearing your shirt buttoned the wrong way.
Actually it's probably better to say that you could get fired for overreacting to someone telling you to do something about the way your shirt is buttoned.
It's always better to not be reactive.
Several years ago one of my favorite managers was fired by overreacting to a comment made by our district manager at the time.
That manager had been going around from table to table making sure all of the guests were happy.
For some reason the district and regional managers really prefer to see you have a little brush in your hand and scrub the floor boards then interact with any guest.
So the district manager went up to this manager and said....
"Hey let me ask you a question."
"You don't actually do any work around here, do you?"
"You just interact with the guests and laugh and have a good time all day, huh?"
"I see how it is."
So of course our manager got very offended by that and decided that he didn't have to take it.
So he left.
Source: Giphy.com
Of course he was calling back the next day wanting his job back but it was too late at that point.
Next week is our yearly Big Boss review.
I'm not looking forward to it and I hope we don't lose any good people this year.
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