Usually, banquet servers are the cut-throat kings of this business, ready to steal away a shift from anybody they can, or they'll bitch and moan that someone else got more shifts than they did, but not my guys and girls.
They willingly will give-up a shift to another team member if needed, no questions asked. That's why I go to bat for them every chance I can. A great bunch of people I've got.
But now, during the slow season, they're beggin' for shifts. Hope it gets busy soon...for all our sakes.
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4 comments:
The wedding season will soon befall you and everyone will be wanting to give up a shift when it does arrive.
I can appreciate this.. several co-workers of mine that only have the banquet server job are angry that there are no weddings/ etc. during feb/march.. Come July/Aug they will be angry there is one every weekend....
That switching shifts thing.
Do you reserve the right to approve them?
People have different abilities.
I used to schedule people based on that.
How many of your staff are students?
Those ones will come back to you after final exams.
Thank God that I didn't work when I went back to school.
I was there every weekend and almost every holiday.
Ironically, banquet manager me would have fired student me.
School was more than a full time job.
So, it's better that I didn't work and drive banquet manager me crazy.
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I remember one of my early banquet captain shifts.
I had the first of three incompetent banquet managers before they gave me the reins.
I came in and all the staff scheduled had called in sick.
(The popular banquet manager and the popular banquet captain had been fired before I got there.)
(It was a hill to climb.)
(I was just the new guy who wanted to get his job done.)
So, with ten meeting rooms to refresh or setup I began to call everyone else on the list.
And they all said no.
I was all by myself and I spent fourteen hours doing it all alone.
In the morning, at 7am, I went down to the cook's line and helped myself to a big portion of bacon.
The sous chef said what the hell are you doing?
I said I just worked all night saving the banquet manager's ass and I'm hungry.
He said you worked all night, here, here, take what you want.
So I ate.
Went home.
And came back eight hours later.
I noted then that none of my higher ups came to pitch in.
But we just couldn't fail so I stayed.
In hindsight, I can't believe they left me there alone.
Maybe they wanted me to fail.
Maybe someone wanted something to go wrong.
Well it wasn't going to be me that was the weak link in the chain.
I needed that job.
It occurs to me now that I wonder what they all thought of me when I pulled that off.
It should have been the end of me and it wasn't.
I must have acquired some respect from that night.
They never screwed me over the same way again.
Well not exactly the same way.
But that's the story of the setups and the staff Christmas party.
Business will pick up again, it invariably does. And then you'll have to go through that period when no one's used to being busy, and they moan about not having time to study, or clean their house, or even sleep. By the time everybody's game is on again, it slows down.
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