Office Organization

It's just after the end of the rush. You're trying to get the store put back together, get people off the clock, do cash drops, till changes. Time is flying by, things are chaotic, decisions are being made in split seconds based on routine and a dash of information. To say time is a precious commodity is to call China a well-populated nation.

Jimmy comes up to you, reminding you about the vacation time he wants to use. That means finding the approval form in the office.

Right. Finding...the approval form. In the office.

You walk into the office, and there's papers and small wares everywhere. A new spatula for the promo sandwich starting next week is on the printer. New PoP materials are half out of the envelope, sitting on the desk chair. Cash reports, last week's Key Business Items sheets, applications, employee files, and a coffee cup are all laying at random in the 4 square feet that make up the work area. Post it notes with random, unexplained numbers are stapled to the wall. Notes about schedules, requests, product outages—dammit, looks like you need to find some more ketchup packs to transfer in—are everywhere they'll stick.

The filing cabinet is jammed shut and won't open. That's where the vacation request forms are supposed to be...but considering there's a Gamer's Monthly magazine in the Nightly Paperwork in/out tray, you're fairly sure nothing is in it's right place.

By now, you've got three other employees looking for guidance, a customer wants to “talk to the manager,” and Jimmy needs to go to his second job. Oh well, maybe you can get the form in tomorrow and still be ahead of the cutoff for vacation hours...

You don't have time to hunt for things. Not on the line, where you'd never think about starting the rush with utensils missing and the food in a different spot every day. You have even less time to spend in the office, going “Where are the I-9s? The work permits? I know I have seven orientation packets left...where did they all go?”

When you have off-line time, it needs to be maximized. Whether you're stepping into the office for a pen or sitting down to do a food order everything needs to be where it can be found. Nothing will destroy your lunch or dinner rush faster than stepping into the office to grab some sort of training aid...and then not coming back for 15 minutes because you had to dig through four drawers to find it.

Organize the work place, including your office. This is a challenge in part because most companies don't offer guidance. They assume (correctly) that if you're smart enough to run a multi-million dollar operation on a day-to-day basis, you can keep a tiny closet-sized office tidy. The hard part is the restaurant itself...the office is for people like you to worry about.

The other part of the issue is the management team. When you have four or five people using the same space, you'll have problems. Someone doesn't feel the pens should be kept in a holder on the desk—pens should be left in their box in a drawer. Or “I work too hard when I close to put everything back where I got it.”

You're the boss. It's your office. It's gonna be you explaining to your boss why the place is a wreck, or why you haven't filed the XYZ paper (because you have no idea where the blanks are). You're responsible for what goes on the office, and that gives you the authority to say how it goes. That's not the say don't take the management team into account—as with anything, there's no advantage to alienating people. But if you have a part time shift supervisor who refuses to put her nightly paperwork where everyone else does...go ahead and use progressive discipline.

For the love of all things good, lead by example. If you clearly make an organized office a personal priority then it's harder for everyone else to blow it off.

And trust me, you want to make it a personal priority.