Case Study: The Harried Hostess
“I think I hate people.”
Roberta’s family has been in the restaurant business for three generations.
She was raised in her Nonna’s kitchen. She was serving tables before she started high school, and she’s been greeting guests for over thirty years.
When she called, Roberta told me, “I just don’t understand this younger generation. Nobody wants to work hard! And the minimum wage keeps going up–it’s like these kids want something for nothing.”
I asked her why she felt that way.
“You’ll see,” she said. “Come for lunch.” And she put the phone down in my ear.
I love lunch. So I went.
I’m chronically early for things, so I arrived ten minutes before noon. Roberta was clearly flustered: “Oh, I didn’t expect you yet!” she looked around the room. There were empty tables, but her mind was already juxtaposing the lunch crowd on the filling restaurant. “Um, why don’t we sit on the deck?” she said. We did.
I told her not to rush. She said, “No, no, I should be fine. I have lots of staff working right now.” and rolled her eyes. She hustled back inside to check her staff. I didn’t see her again for fifteen minutes.
When she returned, she noticed that the wait staff hadn’t delivered menus to our table, and that I didn’t have anything to drink. “Are you kidding me?!?” she said, exasperated. And burst back inside the restaurant to berate one of the waitresses. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could imagine. The flustered waitress came out right away, practically tripping over herself to take a drink order.
I could see Roberta through the restaurant windows. She took a phone call–probably a reservation request. She frowned as she listened, pursed her mouth into a tight line and shook her head. I read her lips as she said “Nothing” to the caller, and when she caught me watching, she rolled her eyes. Then she held up a finger to show me she’d only be a minute. I signaled that I was fine. I was happy to sit out on the deck and sip lemonade while the boats went by.
Before she could leave the phone, however, Roberta was approached by some new patrons. They asked her for a table. She did the same scan as before, and pointed outside. She looked as if she was daring them to say “We prefer to eat inside”–and when they hesitated, she grabbed menus and simply walked out onto the patio without looking back. The guests looked at each other, shrugged, and followed her. But the empty tables on the patio weren’t yet set for lunch, so she smacked the menus down, apologized to the guests, apologized to me for taking so long, and went back inside to berate another waitress. She looked frazzled. She looked MAD. And it was only twelve o’clock.
When Roberta finally sat down at the table, I had eaten a sandwich and ordered espresso.
“I’m really sorry to keep you waiting–what must you think of me?!” she was really embarrassed. “But you see what I mean?! The place would fall apart if I didn’t do every little thing myself!” and then the dam burst. She talked for ten straight minutes about millennials and work ethic and kids who don’t want to work. She talked about lazy help and impatient clients. Finally, she summed up by saying: “People!” and then taking a long drink of wine.
I waited for a moment and then said,
“Roberta, it sounds like you have a horrible job.” I smiled, because I was half joking. But only half.
“Yeah, well, my boss is a slave driver!” she said. She was obviously talking about herself.
“So why don’t you quit?” I asked.
Here are Roberta’s real problems:
She needs to get out of the way and let her staff–young, energetic and happy–do their jobs. Even if they do their jobs less effectively than she does, they’ll do them happier without her. And in the service industry, a smiling server is more important than almost anything else.
She needs to stop micromanaging. That’s obvious. That means teaching her staff what to do instead of waiting for them to make the wrong decisions.
She must replace herself as hostess.
She should probably take a few weeks off.
In the restaurant business, the hostess is really the sales manager. They set up the patron and influence their purchase. The sales role is the hardest for most entrepreneurs to give up, but they must, or they’ll never move beyond Farmer Phase. And many owners simply aren’t the best salespeople for their own service.
Roberta has begun to hate her job, and it shows. The food is still good–heck, it’s amazing–but Roberta’s attitude sours the sweetest dessert. As Maya Angelou wrote, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Success in the restaurant industry–like the gym industry, the legal industry and the preschool industry–isn’t determined by how the food is plated, or even how it’s priced. Success pivots on how people feel after a night out at your place. Roberta might once have been the best hostess in town, but now it’s time to fire herself from that role and be an entrepreneur instead.
I said, “Roberta, tomorrow I’ll take YOU out for lunch. We’ll go somewhere else. Don’t be late.” And we started talking about Farmer Phase.
