Professionalism at Work
I sometimes find myself in the dichotomy of ownership versus worker. As a worker there is nothing worse than a group of diners showing up one minute before a restaurant closes. As the owner, I am eager to accept all customers. If we are open even by five seconds we need to welcome our customers with open arms and smiling faces. This is a tough thing for employees to do. And as it happens my family tends to arrive at restaurants right at closing time much more often than I feel comfortable with. And yet it is a good gauge of the employees. If the employees are friendly, cooperative, and gracious at closing time, than I have even more respect for them and will give a corresponding tip at the end of the meal. If they aren’t…
Recently we dined at Porter Street BBQ in Eureka. Slinking in about an hour before closing, we were greeted by a young lady who was both patient and friendly. It was a slow evening – just us and one other table. I did a quick head count – as I always do – and saw six employees. Six workers and seven customers. Not a good ratio.
If you haven’t eaten at Porter Street let me set up the restaurant for you. It is an order at the counter restaurant, though they do bring the food out to your table. The register is near the front door with an open kitchen behind the counter. There are seats off to the left of the register. The food comes out to you dry. That is, they don’t add any BBQ or fixings. All of that is on a salad bar near the register. This evening they had all already packed everything away – leaving a few small portions of each condiment on a table near the salad bar. I won’t even go there. As we walked to our table I noticed they had even taken out the trash – putting a tray over the trash cans so that customers couldn’t use them anymore. At this point I checked the time. Yep we still had a good forty-five minutes before closing time. I went to the bathroom to wash my hands and they had the door wedged open and a wet floor sign in the middle of the doorway. I maneuvered my way around the sign and walked in. I don’t know what they were mopping with, maybe stick-em.
We ordered a little bit of everything – pork, beef, and chicken. I’m thinking that we should have gone at lunch time. Or at least a few hours earlier. The meat was dry – even after slathering on BBQ sauce. The chili was actually really good – big chunks of beef and bacon. Sopped up with garlic bread. Mmm mmm.
While we chewed our way through dinner the employees had an impromptu Frisbee game with metal lids that they soared back and forth in the kitchen. I thought for sure they would stop once they hit the hood system with a loud bang. It merely got them more excited. No one thought of going home or finishing up the cleaning. Not with such a fun game to play. By this time we were the only customers, but looking around there were at least three dirty tables. And this is a restaurant where the customers throw away their own trash! Once Frisbee was over they had an argument that I hear at home quite often. Of course my children are 10 and 14. “No it’s your turn to take out the trash. I took it out last night.” “Well I’m not doing it.” “Are to!” Now that’s good times. I don’t care who you are. As we were walking out I looked back and saw that the kitchen crew had switched to snapping towels at each other. Now if my employees were doing that…well if I caught them they would be turning in their resumes at…Porter Street.
