Restaurant Managers Without Line Check Technology Are Just “Putting Out Fires With Gasoline!”
“Lexi” Without A Line-Check App vs. “Lexi” With a Line Check App, With OpsAnalitica to the Rescue.
Don’t be embarrassed if the person we describe sounds exactly like you. Actually, it may be you, but not for long. You won’t have to read far to see how transformative technology can be to your workday…and your career.
The Bad Manager
8:03 AM: Lexi the restaurant manager shows up to get ready for putting out 125 meals, the lunch rush just four hours away. But as she walked through the door, she thought she’d walked into a frog dissection class at the high school. She was met with a putrid smell at the door of the walk-in.
Rotten food.
No temp check was run at closing last night, and the breaker on the walk-in had tripped when the closer had set the burglar alarm. All the food has spoiled. Even the hard boiled eggs.
Eyeing the staffing chart from last night, Lexi tries to recall the distinction between murder and manslaughter and which brings a shorter prison sentence.
8:17 AM: “I’m being poisoned!” is all that Lexi can hear the line cook repeatedly screaming. She dashes back to see him rinsing out his mouth. Someone had mistaken his water bottle for the bottle that holds the sanitary solution and filled it up to the brim with fresh bleach. The line cook is staring at the owner’s smarmy nephew, Randy, who no one wanted to hire anyway. The cook eyes the knives but realizes they are too dull to hurt anyone.
Not for the first time, Lexi wonders why she didn’t become a nun, like her mom wanted.
8:22 AM: On the phone to Sysco for an expedited delivery of food for lunch, Lexi has to separate two waitresses who are arguing over who will fill the salt and catsups. Every single table needs complete restocking. No one ran post-dinner side-work check last night to make sure all the smalls were topped off.
Lexi almost hangs up with Sysco to call the Army recruiter, hoping for a lower stress position in Afghanistan. In active combat.
8:44 AM: Lexi gets a text from the hostess. It’s the board of health and they are pulling a surprise inspection. Inspector wants to meet her in the lobby. Now. She sees him holding his nose and writing something on his clipboard.
Lexi thinks back to when her parents urged her to take the SATs seriously in high school. She’d be a wealthy lawyer now in Cabo had she only listened.
10:00 AM: Board of health inspector asks for extra paper for his writeup. Lexi is frantically signaling behind the inspector’s back for the wait staff to crank down the temps on the salad bar. The wait staff signals back, but they need just one finger to convey their true feelings. Board of health inspector finds the guac tray on the salad bar is at 71 degrees. Should be 37 degree.
Lexi wonders how far one must fall to actually die when jumping off a building. All nearby buildings are just two-story. She wishes she’d taken a job in city center.
11:00 AM: Sysco truck driver calls, furious because no one warned him that road construction would force him down an unfamiliar road. They are letting air out of his tires so he can fit under a low bridge. The refrigerator unit was smashed. “Do you know someone with a pickup truck who can pick up all this fish before it rots?”
Lexi looks longingly at the line cook’s water bottle. She wonders how much grenadine will knock back the taste of bleach long enough to get a few mouthfuls down.
11:15 AM: Cook texts Lexi to say there is no propane. No one checked the tanks, and the crew is dead in the water until another delivery is made.
Lexi logs into Monster.com, and searches: “Anything, anywhere but here. Compensation unimportant.”
12:00 PM: Regional manager calls Lexi all excited, says he’s bringing the chain owner over for lunch. He asks how lunch is going. Lexi says that things are going “really well” and that there is sushi for lunch, because the raw fish is “fresh off the truck.”
“I thought we were a Mexican restaurant,” regional manager says. Lexi says that she’s been changing the menu every so often “to stay with today’s truck-to-table model.” Regional manager says, “Wow, news to me, but whatever works. Be there in five.”
Lexi leaves a sticky note on the walk-in door: “I eloped with Sysco truck driver. Good luck sorting out the wreckage of this doomed madhouse. PS: Randy — good luck in prison.”
Click here to read part two, the Good Manager.
