Tag: example

Too Little Too Late

Todd came into the kitchen to talk to me after we called the police on Will for stealing. During our conversation, he told me he had fired Will and he indicated he had decided not to help himself to our food anymore. He didn’t say it in so many words, but we both knew what he was talking about. He followed his indication by saying he wanted to set an example for his people. I was appalled. We had to call in the police to get the general manager of the building to stop stealing from us. My feeling was he realized his job was on the line if we caught him on camera.

Todd never admitted he was stealing. He never apologized for stealing or helping himself, however you want to soft sell your bad behavior. Todd never offered to pay for what he had taken. He never apologized for setting a poor example for his people. Even after this, he never helped us put a stop to the stealing by fixing the security cameras or coming in late at night to check up on his people or hiring an adult to work late every night. He also never stopped his people from trash talking us to the customers as they vented their anger that we called the police on their friend.

The sad part is an apology wouldn’t fix it anyway. He was already leading by example. All his people saw him help himself and assumed it was ok to take whatever they wanted. The damage was done. People notice what you do. They rarely notice when you stop doing it.

Be a Good Example

From the very beginning, we gave our employees something to eat on every shift. We wanted to make sure they tried everything. Many customers ask about the different menu items and we wanted our employees to be able to describe and recommend our food. That is especially important when you’re cooking food in a non-traditional way. Most people have never had baked French fries so we wanted our employees to honestly say they are good. And they are – especially when you dip them in the nacho cheese.

We also made a rule that our employees could not bring in food from another restaurant. It’s very hard to build a restaurant when people are allowed to bring in outside food, so we couldn’t risk customers seeing our employees eating outside food.

The only person not on board with this plan was, of course, Pierre. We tried to tell him how important it was, but he still brought in food. How can anyone go around telling everyone that they own the cafe and then not eat there??? Sometimes, I wonder why in the heck Pierre ever wanted to do this. He never seemed at all engaged in making the cafe a success.