7/26/2012: This is more fun than I imagined.
I was sad to leave serving, but mgmt allows me to still talk to different people all day which is what I thought I’d miss. I love also seeing a problem and being involved in fixing it. After 2 weeks, I’ve begun a list of things to “fix” and have already completed one that was a problem for the past 6 months, and one that had existed from the opening 5 years ago. By the time I’m done here, I’ll be a trained manager as well as a handyman. With no experience doing any sort of maintenance, it’s proof that the only thing holding managers back from being more productive is about 5 minutes of effort.
I’m sure I would NOT have acquired this trait if I didn’t train under JD. The dude is a machine when it comes to productivity and I hope to achieve his level of relentless drive at some point in my career. If you ever read this, JD, thank you. Every day I catch myself standing still–even for two seconds–and I immediately imagine you next to me saying, “move your butt” or my favorite JD-ism “investigate that noise”. I hope I’ll just form a habit of not stopping eventually. After two weeks, our “overall satisfaction” score is up 5%; still under the company goal.
Tomorrow is my 2nd directional a.k.a. manager meeting. I don’t plan on suggesting major changes as I still need to learn their system and get more comfortable with the team. After listening to the manager tools podcast for a couple months now, I’ve become a fan of the idea of one-on-ones, feedback, coaching, and delegation. I plan on rolling out one-on-ones in a few weeks once I run it by the other managers.
Still playing guitar every night; going home for two days and will play with Tommy & Sam. Point is: if you know you love doing something, FIND A WAY TO DO IT! Not doing what you love for one week could turn into five years and I won’t let that happen. Work hard, play hard; and work to live, don’t live to work.
Quote of the week: “As a server, I just want to know what I have to do to get out and go home.” – Justin
? for next week: Had my first interview this week, and feel like I have him figured out. What is a surprise about him and how can I avoid it next interview? 8/12 – Money-hungry; team-player issues maybe.
12/5/2017 review–JD’s lesson to always be moving is still one of the top 10 lessons I learned as a restaurant manager. Oddly, it’s very tempting to slip into moderate productivity when there are so many things to do. It may feel good to end a day having done 3 or 4 tasks, but when you make a disciplined effort to be as productive as possible, you can get 3 or 4 things done in the first few hours of a day.
Looking back, that decision to find a way to keep playing guitar was a big influence on my ability to record a couple years later. Had I not kept sharp, I probably would’ve been too rusty to jump back into playing well enough to record when the brief opportunity presented itself. It’s now second-nature to me to fit hobbies into my daily routine, but I’m humbled to reflect on this moment when it wasn’t.