Turnover

My former restaurant has one of the highest turnover rates in the history of restaurants. Most hosts had a shelf life of two weeks, max. Often it was more like two days, one day there’d be some fresh young thing all dressed up in her tight skirt and her little blazer earnestly rushing about trying to learn the table numbers, and the next day she’d be gone. Poof, I didn’t even bother to learn their names until I was sure I’d get a chance to use them.

I didn’t host, I served, and trained, which is worse. The new servers usually lasted more than a day, but training took eight days, and there were plenty who didn’t make it through that. Or who shouldn’t have.

Part of the reason for the turnover was that the restaurant was an evil corporate establishment in which logic was nonexistent and the management’s egos reigned supreme. The other was that it seemed to be a magnate for crazy people.

Most of the crazy people were night crew so my personal run ins with them were limited. Here is the fundamental difference between day crew and night crew.  Day crew people are in the restaurant business because they like the restaurant business. They are often older, have families, or are on a break between degrees. They bring in homemade baked goods to share, gossip a little, serve the food, pour the coffee and go home to their cats. Night crew, on the other hand, are in the restaurant business because they like to drink. They come in for their one lunch shift a week nursing a hang over and complaining bitterly about how early it is. They like the business because it allows them to sleep in, work a four hour shift, leave with a fistful of cash and immediately pour in down their throats at the bar next door. They bring store bought candy to share, gossip, and go out together. They also inter date.

There was a night bartender who was dating one of the hostesses. He was in his thirties; tall, lanky, creepy, the kind of guy who feels the need to rate every female customer who walks in the door, and ask if he can run your food or refill your waters if a girl at your table is particularly attractive. She was seventeen.  Rumor has it he took a naked picture of her and emailed it to a number of other guys at the restaurant without her knowledge or consent. Word reached management but he wasn’t fired for it. That happened the following month, when he pulled a no call no show after being late for an earlier shift.

People got fired a lot at this restaurant. Sometimes it was for legitimate reasons, like being perpetually late, or drinking behind the bar. More often it seemed to happen to people certain managers decided they just didn't like. You could sense these firings coming, the employee complaining about the managers, and the managers complaining about the employee, nit picking at them over little details in the sidework and service, scheduling them for shifts they couldn't work. In the end they would have some pretext for firing them, usually a "customer complaint", but no one was fooled. 

One disgruntled server spent a week protesting the restaurant after getting fired. He carried a large sign with slogans like “LIES! Courtesy of the Lizard King and the Dragon Lady” and, “you thought the orange juice was fresh squeezed!”. On the last day of his protest, he took one of the logo baseball caps cooks wore and set it on fire. 

There were a few other ways to leave. A lot of people just quit, especially the new hires. One day a new kid would be there, tagging along behind the host or busser, they next day they’d be gone. Just wouldn’t show for their shift. Scared or overslept, never to be heard from again.

The more dramatic method of quitting is, of course, mid shift. When the pressure builds up, and the rush is relentless, and we’ve run out of pint glasses AGAIN, and god help you if you serve that diet coke is a water glass, which is UNECEPTABLE! And you’re running around looking in every corner of the restaurant for an available pint glass when the hostess comes over sheepishly and says she’s double sat you, she’s sorry, management made her do it, and that’s when you look at the door, with its inviting entry out into a world where you don’t have to deal with this shit, and you walk through it. 

I had many fantasies of taking that mid shift door to freedom, but in the end, I went the boring traditional rout with my exit. I found a new job, put in my two weeks notice, accepted my parting gifts and well wishes and went on my way. I also lasted three years at that job, which is something of a record. While I was still there, a coworker asked me how I had survived so long, “I make myself indispensable,” I replied, “and I stay try and stay off the radar”. Staying off the radar is critical. At the time of that conversation I was the only day trainer, an important and exhausting position to hold given our astonishingly high turnover. I was important, and good at my job; In my three years I never once got written up, but I never made employee of the month either. I slid by, trying to bring each new generation up to speed, hoping a few would survive long enough to give me a break from spewing the company propaganda so I could just wait tables, damn it. We finally got another highly competent trainer and my life got easier. Still I left when I could, quietly, safely, you never know when you might have to return.