Blogging Saves Trees

As someone who externed in San Francisco, my love for all things tree-hugging and nature has become as big a part of me as my...whoa, alright we won't go there but let's face it my hair has gotten a bit long. Anyway blogging "like totally" saves the trees, and I think saving the trees is good because I enjoy breathing and trees are semi-helpful in the production of oxygen. Who needs paper when you have incredibly confusing technology? Now without any further stalling in an attempt to lengthen this blog, onto the topic: Management.

Where to begin? Like I stated earlier I externed at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, a well known vegetarian restaurant located in the Fort Mason District. I had the privilege of being around for Greens 31^st anniversary celebration. I don’t have to tell you that a restaurant that exists for 31 years is no small feat. There are a number of factors that have attributed to the success of Greens. The beautiful location of the restaurant (Fort Mason is literally located on the bay with a view of the golden gate bridge), the food (one of the first vegetarian restaurants in the nation to serve upscale and gourmet vegetarian food), the staff (a very knowledgeable and friendly front of house staff), great raw materials (it’s San Francisco so of course the local produce is going to be amazing), and the management to a certain degree. My experience with Greens’ management was hit and miss over my 5 months as a cook there. There were times when everything seemed to run very smoothly, food went out fast and efficiently, there was always enough of the proper product available, and the quality of the food was good. However on these nights there would usually be problems with the front of the house manager and the servers he supervised. Servers wouldn’t run the food; they would come in and grab the complimentary bread and butter for the guest without taking any food out to the customer. This was a problem that would often infuriate my usual kitchen manager who would then start yelling and make life for the line cooks more difficult than it needed to be. Over the time I was at Greens this did change somewhat but depending on who was running the front of the house these bad habits seemed to rear their ugly head every now and then.

Was this to say that the back of the house management was always at peak performance and only would break down due to the front of house’s mistakes? No of course not. The same kitchen manager that would be infuriated by the front of house staff, would often infuriated that same staff. He yelled a lot at certain servers, would make fun of people when they made mistakes, would rarely help out someone when they were in the weeds, and who’s temper was just not enjoyable to be around. He was a decent cook, and he would often boomerang, coming back behind the line often to cook and let someone else expedite.

The man who did the majority of the ordering and scheduling was also somewhat of a bumbling buffoon. A very nice guy but he screwed up more than he succeeded. He would order the wrong product, not check deliveries, worked a 9-5 schedule (in a restaurant…seriously), and he would mess up scheduling…and in an attempt to fix his mistakes call the people of whom he forgot to schedule and tell them that they were supposed to come in (despite not being scheduled).

These are just a few negative comments on the overall management scale, and it is only the negative comments. There are a lot of positives to the management at Greens but that is another story for another time. You don’t thrive for 31 years without doing something correct. A lot of good examples and bad examples of management but the negatives are sticking out to me more at the moment.