Firing

Being the manager (or owner) typically comes down to one thing: Hire and Fire Authority. It boils down even further to control over who works in the restaurant. You're coaching the team, and you get to decide who plays and who doesn't. A lot, I'd say a vast majority even, of managers I've worked with will Hire but not Fire. I've come to feel that's a mistake, a very painful mistake.

That does NOT mean I think people should be fired more often. I've met plenty of people who are too quick to terminate an employee over issues that could be fixed with just a little flexibility on the manager's part.

Not everyone is of equal caliber. I'm not very good with anything that involves moving my fingers fast...making sandwiches in a lunch rush, spreading pepperoni on a pizza. You can find a lot of people better than me. However, I am excellent with customers, and do a fine job coaching employees. So it makes no sense to fire me because I'm not fast with the pepperoni. Just about everyone is like that...it's not that they're bad for the team, you just haven't found the right position for them to play.

Almost all “employee problems” stem from management. When a manager fails to set a proper, consistent expectation the employee is going to do whatever feels appropriate. It's not the employee's fault they were not properly directed. Training deficiencies are not the employee's fault. Lack of tools are not the employee's fault.

But...more often than we realize...sometimes everything IS in place. The employee has been instructed how to do the job. They've been given clear goals. They have the tools to do the job. Yet...they don't fulfill the expectation. And most telling, they don't care.

It could be showing up on time. It could be following procedure. It could be something like being friendly towards customers. It could be halfway completing a task (garbage went out the door, but the can liners never got replaced). With most people, you can point out the behavior, make it clear (respectfully) that it's not acceptable, and the employee corrects the behavior...because most employees want to do well at their jobs.

Not everyone. And when you start saying the same directives over and over (“You have to be here at the START of your shift, Alec, or you're hurting the team” or “Use the ¼ size ladle with that sauce, please, Smitty” or “Lisa, we talked about this yesterday—the trashbags have to go IN the dumpster”) it's time to think about helping the employee find a place where they're better suited...'cause they clearly aren't fitting into your store's culture.

This why you want to use Progressive Discipline. It gives both you and the employee in question a chance to evaluate what's going on. The employee is made aware of your seriousness, and is given ample opportunity to change. It also protects you from wrongful termination suits, or having to pay out unemployment benefits when a termination is for cause. As long as you're being Consistent, anyhow.

But the key thing to remember is that keeping an unhappy, unmotivated, or incompetent employee on payroll is a lot like leaving a tumor in your body. It'll only make things worse. Once you've determined the situation won't improve, you need to end the drama and let the person go.