So Far

The Restaurant

It was just before nine on a gray fall morning when I handed my car keys to the parking lot attendant.

I clicked the car locked, turned over the keys, and walked toward the back door.

The alley smelled exactly like a downtown Denver alley should smell. Dumpsters. Overflowing bags and boxes. Whatever had accumulated overnight. Just down the alley was Cheba Hut, and even at that hour you could already smell the weed.

The restaurant's back entrance was a big gray metal door with no sign on it. I didn't need one.

My work keys were in my right front pocket. Most were silver. Several, I was pretty sure, no longer opened anything. The back-door key was gold.

I slid it into the lock. The tumbler resisted. A little pressure. Turn. Then a hefty tug because the door liked to stick at the top.

Beep, beep, beep. Thirty seconds.

I stepped onto the terracotta kitchen tile, turned left, and punched the code into the alarm panel.

Silence.

I headed down the expo hallway and flipped the switches. The fluorescent lights flickered awake before settling into their familiar faint buzz.

And thank G-d the dirty linen bin wasn't blocking the switch. I had knocked that damn thing over enough times in the dark to know better. Apparently knowing better and doing better are two entirely different management competencies.

I turned left toward the office.

The keys were still in my hand. Without looking, I moved through them until my fingers found the office key. I can't explain why, but I knew what it felt like.

The computer came on while I rolled the chair over to the safe.

Left. Right. Left. Bingo. Got it on the first try.

A few minutes later, Hans poked his head into the office carrying a giant bag of Santiago's burritos for everyone opening. He's good like that.

I reached for my wallet, as I always did when he bought breakfast, and somewhere in the process I came across a folded piece of paper I hadn't thought about in a while. My cheat sheet.

I had made it when I first started at the restaurant. Codes. Instructions. Things I needed to remember. The kind of information that seems impossibly important when everything around you is unfamiliar.

I unfolded it. Most of what was written there I had already done that morning. I better save this just in case. I folded it back up. I didn't need it anymore.

I kept it. Of course I kept it.

…

A few weeks before I made that cheat sheet, I had been sitting at a round table in the dining room behind the bar. Michael and Robert sat with me in black wooden bistro chairs. I had been helping at the restaurant for a few weeks. I knew the team. I thought we were catching up.

Instead, they asked whether I would consider staying. As the General Manager. Wow.

I've never run a French restaurant before. It was a familiar feeling. Would what I knew translate here?

Robert didn't seem particularly concerned. “We can teach you the menu. We can teach you the mechanics.” And then: “The staff wants you.”

I knew that the people there liked working with me. I liked working with them, too. So no, I wasn't shocked. But hearing it said out loud was different.

They wanted me to stay. And I wanted to stay.

…

Katie was less enthusiastic.

Katie had followed Michael from the restaurant where they had worked together before. She wasn't technically the lead host, at least not by title, but it didn't take me long to recognize that she behaved like one.

She knew things. She was good. And she wanted a raise.

I learned about that part while the three of us were standing beside the long marble community table between the bar and the kitchen.

Michael, Katie, and I were standing there when the subject of her raise came up.

Michael looked at Katie and told her it was my decision now.

She crossed her arms. “Of course.”

I didn't know how long she'd been having this conversation with Michael, but her crossed arms told me she wasn't thrilled about having to start it again with me.

Michael smiled. And without another word, he walked away.

“Okay,” Katie said. “Yes, I'd like a raise, please.” I've known Katie long enough now to be reasonably certain the please was obligatory.

“I had no knowledge of this until 68 seconds ago. But Katie, I'd love to sit down with you and have a conversation about what brought you to where you are to ask for a raise.”

And we did. I started asking questions. Katie wasn't particularly fond of that at first. She later told me she saw those questions as a threat. I was the new guy. Quiet. Observant. Always around. Always watching.

Or, as Katie remembers it, lurking. Which sounds much creepier than I remember it, but it's her story too.

I wanted to understand how she thought. Why did she do something that way? What did she notice that I hadn't?

And then, eventually: What if? What if we tried this? What if we changed that? What do you think would happen?

So we kept asking questions.

…

Somewhere along the way, Katie started becoming curious about things that had nothing to do with the host stand.

She wanted to learn expo. Not because I told her she should.

She wanted to know how I could stand beneath the pass during a Friday night pre-theatre rush, manage everything coming out of the kitchen, keep track of a private party happening somewhere else in the restaurant, and somehow not lose my shit.

So I showed her. She learned expo. Then she learned to serve.

The restaurant started getting bigger without adding a single square foot.

There were more things Katie wanted to know. And the questions weren't only coming from me anymore. I don't remember the moment when that happened. I don't think there was one.

Experience accumulated. So did trust. Definitely some irritation.

Katie still wanted the raise. Of course she did.

This wasn't a story about discovering that money didn't matter. It most certainly did.

…

I think we sometimes talk about belonging as though it were a door.

You're outside. Someone opens it. You walk through. Now you belong.

There are certainly moments like that. Sitting at that round table and hearing that the staff wanted me to stay was one of them.

But I'm not sure the door explains what happened next.

Katie was already inside.

She had worked with Michael before I arrived. She knew the restaurant. She knew the people. She knew where things were and how things worked and which things weren't working nearly as well as everyone pretended they were.

She didn't need me to let her in.

And learning expo didn't make her more deserving of the chair she already occupied. It just made the restaurant bigger. Not the building. Her experience of it.

Maybe belonging isn't something we cross into once. Maybe it keeps revealing itself through participation.

I think about the language we use when that happens.

My section. My shift. My tables.

Nothing wrong with any of those. They describe responsibility.

But somewhere along the way another word sometimes begins appearing.

Our.

Our restaurant. Our team. Our problem. Our guest. Our close.

Nobody announces the change. There isn't a meeting where someone hands out revised pronouns.

Effective immediately, all employees are authorized to begin using the first-person plural. Although I've worked for companies where I'm reasonably certain someone would have created a form for it. Probably in triplicate.

Together

Years earlier, I pulled into the parking lot of an Islands restaurant in Arizona.

The building was pristine.

The yellow and orange Islands logo was illuminated against the building, palm trees above it, the tagline in blue underneath. Before I ever walked through the door, I could tell somebody gave a shit about this place.

I parked in back and went in through the back door.

Bob Thelen was waiting for me.

He was wearing a Hawaiian-print button-down shirt, khaki shorts, and possibly the brightest white shoes I had ever seen.

Big smile. Hand already reaching toward mine. “Welcome, Andrew!”

Bob asked if I wanted something to drink.

Coffee? Water? Soda?

We walked through the back of the house and into the dining room, where we sat down at a table.

From where I was sitting, I could see the bar with its thatched roof and bamboo supports. Surf videos were playing on the TVs. I would later learn that surf videos were always playing on the TVs.

We talked.

I couldn't tell you most of what we said more than twenty years later. I know Bob wanted to know where I was from. What I liked to do. The kinds of things you ask when you're getting to know someone.

Somewhere in that conversation, we discovered we were both Packers fans. Joy!

Over the next several weeks, I went through the Islands management training program.

And there was a program. Prep. Line. Host. Server. Bartender. Expo. There was a specific way Islands did things, and I needed to learn it.

Bob's approach was essentially show and tell. He would show me. Then I would show him.

And we would talk. What did I learn? What did I see? What did I think?

Sometimes those conversations were about what Islands did and why. Sometimes they were about what I had done somewhere else.

And then we'd do it again. Until we didn't need to.

Because once Bob saw that I understood something, he didn't seem particularly interested in making me prove that I understood it over and over again.

“Awesome. You've got this.” And we moved on.

The more we worked together, the more Bob learned how I thought. We didn’t always arrive at the same answer. He was more interested in the way I thought about the question.

And when he saw competence, he gave me more room. He didn’t need to stand over my shoulder every time I did something that had become mine to do.

Show me. Now you show me. What did you see? Awesome.

You've got this. And then he let me have it.

…

The Applebee's in Prescott, Arizona was brand new.

So were we.

Some of the people opening the restaurant had grown up in Prescott. Others had come to town to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Some people knew each other from around town. Some were meeting for the first time.

And all of us were learning how this particular restaurant worked.

At the end of a shift, the sidework chart told you what belonged to you. If you were working Section 7, you had a list. Do the list. Clean your section. Get checked out. Go home.

At the end of the night, two servers stayed to close. One was responsible for the front of the house. Tabletops. Blinds. Lights. Floors. The other handled the back. The expo line. Salad cooler. Dressings. Soda fountain.

Eventually, the chairs went up on the tables for the cleaning crew that would arrive after we left. The doors were locked. The dining-room lights were turned all the way up. Sometimes the music got a little (ok, a lot) louder. Sometimes somebody turned it off and put Loveline with Dr. Drew on MTV.

The guests were gone. The restaurant looked completely different.

Each closing server would walk their area, make sure everything was finished, and then come find me.

I was the closing manager. They were ready to be checked out. Usually, I would walk the restaurant with them. If we found something, we fixed it.

Once I said they were good to go, they were good to go. Anything I missed after that was mine.

One night, I offered them a different arrangement.

“How good do you guys think you are?” They had already walked the restaurant. They thought they were ready.

So I offered them a wager.

Instead of checking every table, I would choose one. One table. If that table was perfect, they were done. No full walkthrough. No checking every tabletop.

Go. Get out of here. Get to the bar a little earlier.

But there was another side to the bet.

If the table I chose wasn't perfect, we weren't just fixing that table. We were going through every single table in the restaurant with a fine-tooth comb.

They looked at each other. They took the bet.

The game was rigged. I'd already seen the table I was going to choose. I walked into the dining room and pretended to consider my options.

Then I picked one.

At first glance, it looked fine. Chairs up. Table clean. Everything where it belonged.

Almost.

Salt. Pepper. Wrong. We had a standard. White on the right. Salt on the right. Pepper on the left.

The salt and pepper on my randomly selected table were reversed. I looked at them. They looked at me.

The bar would have to wait. We checked every damn table.

The game became something we did from time to time.

And eventually, a reputation developed. Andrew sees EVERYTHING. I did nothing to discourage this entirely reasonable assessment of my abilities.

The game continued until I didn't need it anymore. I don't remember deciding to stop. I remember something else.

The closing servers started coming to find me together.

Before they did, the person responsible for the front had checked the back. The person responsible for the back had checked the front. Another set of eyes. If one of them found something, they took care of it before they came to me.

They had each done their own work. Then they checked each other's. And only then did they come looking for me.

Together.

“You guys ready?”

“We're ready.”

…

Years later, I walked around the corner from a Red Robin in Arizona to a Schlotzsky's Deli with my Regional Manager. Gary was there to give me my performance review.

My work bag was packed. My keys were in my pocket.

Gary began my review. It was average. We had just opened a new restaurant over Mother’s Day weekend. But the rating wasn't really what mattered to me. I wanted Gary to be curious.

For the previous month or six weeks, I had been trying to understand what was happening between us.

Gary had come from Colorado with ideas about how restaurants operated there. We were in Arizona. Some things were different. I had information. The people working in the restaurant had information.

I didn't need Gary to agree with me. I wanted him to ask. What are you seeing? What am I missing? What is different here? What do I need to understand? Anything.

Gary continued through my review. I listened. And waited. The questions never came. Eventually, he reached the end.

I reached beneath the table and into my pocket. Pulled out my work keys. Placed them on the brown tabletop. Then I slid them across to him.

“Gary, I’m not the person you need to run this restaurant. I don’t belong here anymore. So I’m giving it back to you.”

Or something very close to that. It’s been more than twenty years.

But I remember the keys.

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

I stood up. Picked up my work bag. And walked out.

I remember the relief. And I remember leaving the keys behind.

I had belonged there. I think that's important. Leaving didn't mean everything that came before it had been false. It meant something had changed.

Maybe belonging works that way because experience never stops arriving. The place where we felt completely at home yesterday doesn't get a lifetime exemption from what happens tomorrow.

Neither do the people in it. Neither do we.

Sometimes the change is obvious. Sometimes I think we hear it first in our own language.

Our restaurant. Our team. We need to figure this out.

And then, somewhere along the way:

They really need to figure this out.

I don't know that we consciously choose the new pronoun. Maybe we simply hear ourselves say it one day. And realize it changed before we noticed.

Our

Punch Bowl Social had two offices. Jody and I shared one. The other belonged mostly to the management team, and that’s where Brege came one day to pick up her tips from a party she’d worked the night before.

While she was there, she mentioned that something about the way the tips were being distributed didn’t feel right. Could I look into it for her?

I said I would.

Of course there was a spreadsheet. I had built it.

I looked back through the prior few weeks. Brege was onto something. A few days later, we met in one of the private karaoke suites.

The room was dark even when it was fully illuminated. Black leather sofas. Blood-red-and-black textured wallpaper. It looked like something the Munsters might have had in their house.

Brege began by thanking me for taking the time to look into it. Then I told her what I’d found. Her gut had been right. Just not about all of it.

The smaller events were where the problem showed itself. We changed the process so the tips from those parties went to the bar that had actually supported them.

The change would begin immediately. It would not be retroactive.

Brege wanted to see the evidence. We looked at it together. Then she wanted to understand how I had reached my conclusion.

So we talked about that, too.

And then we went back to work.

…

Mark Feeley had been my General Manager at Applebee’s—and a mentor.

A few years later, Mark was a Regional Manager for Dakota Steak & Seafood.

He recruited me to become the General Manager of their restaurant in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.

Shortly after I took over, I spent a training weekend in Vermont, where the concept had originated.

It was winter. We were just outside Burlington. Snow covered the ground. Bare trees surrounded the restaurant. Vermont looked exactly like you would hope Vermont would look in winter. Especially when someone else was responsible for shoveling it.

Other managers who were new to the company were there as well.

I remember standing near a side station during dinner service. And I remember the conversation.

The servers worked in a tip pool. Everyone's performance affected everyone else's money, so the staff had legitimate expectations of one another.

Then the person explaining the system kept talking.

The staff decided who fit. If they didn't think someone was pulling their weight, they handled it. If they didn't like someone, they handled that, too.

Management let the staff take care of it. And the staff could make someone’s experience sufficiently unpleasant that eventually the person left.

The person explaining this to me was proud of it. That's the part I remember. They weren't describing a problem. They were describing the culture.

I found Mark. I don't remember exactly what I said. I remember what we decided. Nope. That's not happening in Connecticut.

There is something powerful about our.

Our restaurant. Our team. Our guests. Our problem. Our says I am part of something.

It can also begin to say something else. Our way. Our people. The way we do things here.

There is a difference between participation and possession. Belonging doesn't eliminate accountability.

Sometimes someone isn't carrying their share. Sometimes behavior needs to change. Sometimes someone should no longer work there.

But my belonging cannot require your exclusion. My chair at the table doesn't give me ownership of yours.

And making room for you doesn't mean requiring you to become more like me.

What Are You Seeing?

When I first became a trainer at Applebee's, much of the training program followed a familiar pattern.

Finish the day. Go home with a reading assignment. Come back the next day. Take a test.

Except I kept meeting people who couldn't pass the test.

Then I'd talk to them. They could tell me what they'd learned.

I'd watch them work. They could show me what they'd learned.

The test said they didn't know it. Everything else I could see said they did.

Other people would tell me before we even got that far.

“I can't learn this by reading it.”

Okay. So let's not do that.

If I wanted someone to learn five menu items, I could hand them a list of ingredients and ask them to memorize it. Or I could order the food. Put five plates on the table. Look at it. Taste it.

What's in this? What do you notice?

Try that one. Now let's talk about it.

The standard didn't change. They still needed to know the menu. They still needed to become capable of doing the job.

But they didn't have to learn it the way I learned it.

Or the way the training manual said they should.

…

Once you're sitting there, you start noticing things.

The coffee mugs are on the top shelf. You use them all day. And every time you need them, you have to pull out a step stool.

“Can you explain why we keep the coffee mugs up there? Could we move them down and put something we use less often on the top shelf?”

Maybe somebody knows exactly why they're there. Maybe they've been there since 1997. Maybe tomorrow morning the coffee mugs are on the lower shelf. None of this is particularly profound. That's precisely why it matters.

There are ways to make this harder than it needs to be.

“At my last restaurant, we did it this way.”

Few sentences in hospitality have produced a more immediate desire to hear absolutely nothing that comes next.

Well, then why did you leave? I've thought it. I've probably said it.

But the problem isn't that someone learned something somewhere else. Of course they did. That's part of what they brought with them.

“Can you explain why we do it this way?”

And maybe one of the best answers is:

“This is how we’ve learned to do things so far. What are you seeing?”

So far.

There were people here before you. They learned things. They tried things. Some worked. Some didn’t. Some became so familiar that eventually nobody remembered why they started doing them in the first place.

Then you arrived. Not everything should change because you're here. But something can.

Maybe you see something I've stopped seeing. Maybe I know something you haven't had the chance to learn yet. Put those together and we may discover something neither of us knew before we talked.

For years, I've carried a belief about the people I've worked with. Every person I work with should be better off when they leave because they worked with me.

But there's another side to it. I should be better because you were here, too.

Maybe you changed the way I think. Maybe you asked a question I couldn’t answer. Maybe you moved the coffee mugs.

And if we're paying attention, the restaurant should know something it didn't know before you arrived.

So should I.

Someone New

Someone new is supposed to start at four.

It's 3:52. They're not here yet.

There are invoices I could enter. A schedule that needs to be reviewed. They'll find me when they get here.

Or…

Someone new is supposed to start at four.

It's 3:52. What door were they told to use?

…

Years ago, I walked into that Islands restaurant in Arizona. Bob Thelen was waiting for me. “Welcome, Andrew!”

At the time, I don't think I understood everything contained in those two words. I just knew what it felt like to hear them.

There is a difference between being expected and being awaited.

…

Someone new is supposed to start at four.

It's 3:52.

What door were they told to use?

I want to be there when they arrive.

One Question to Carry With You

What becomes possible when someone knows there is room for them here?