Working Hard.

Today, my whole team worked hard.

First of all, I showed up over two hours later. The reason is unimportant, the fact that it occurred sucks. The reason was, in fact, stupidity. I did not know my schedule for today.

So I showed up late, just in time to arrive before the Store Owner. Each of the organization level employees (there are three) has chosen one or two of the stores to be their focus. The owner chose my store. Our focuses are on inventory control including ordering the right products, get waste under control and other factors to food stat loss controlled, there are in fact a whole list of focuses listed out in a commitment we all signed last week Wednesday at our manager's meeting.

So today P. was at our store for 4 hours or so and he lately has been been at our store for at least 3 hours every day. It was a day of working hard but we all worked well together. There were rough moments and such, but it was still a relatively good day.

Myself and M., the only other manager I really respect as a professional, were discussing how well we each were doing with one another, how respectful we've been of each other and how hard we've been working for each other. I felt great to have someone I have a respect for tell me about their respect for me. That's why I work every day.

Short Operations Review - Breakfast Day Part

Last Saturday morning we had our first visit from a McDonald's representative (I'm honestly not sure of his title), who gave our store a S.O.R., partly based on the execution of Breakfast Optimization - which we started just two days before. Yes, two days before, which was also free Southern Style tasting day. That was fun! I got out of it due to a previously mentioned recovery from a norovirus experience.

Which means I arrived to my first shift after ASM training, which was also the day of an S.O.R., to learn the Breakfast Optimization system - breakfast really isn't my strong point (it's an opportunity in fact, specifically breakfast grill). So it was a slightly stressful day.

Also, the Director of Operations threw a ton of negative at us, in many small ways. I don't know if it was his own expression of his stress, but he really was sharp tongued about quite a few things. It was pretty unnerving, I try not to subject myself to negativity, and I think he was being a bit unfair on most of it. We scored a 92.5% on the S.O.R. We missed a few procedural points, some really dumb shit that no one really even knew was a procedure, like using rubber trivets under the aluminum thermal pots, UHC liner paper in the Burrito drawer of the UHC, 3 or 4 really stupid little details like that.

On Service, which I completely ran and owned nearly all the time the S.O.R. went on, service scored a 99%, and I was written up for doing an "exceptional" job running the store by our Rep, B. and for how I filled the role of an Ambassador of Hospitality. My service team has got it's stuff down. I owned that store, and made sure I used my lot and lobby person (we had so many people floating around) for the store's benefit that it too was mentioned by B. in his S.O.R. review. My Presenter E. rocks. He pwns the Drive Thru. I think there was a swing manager at Front Cash, someone who did a passable job throughout. They all rock, my maintenance guy the most.

I like praise, and it was three days later that I learned of what the review said. It was the only positive feed back that I had heard, well after the fact. Pretty good stuff, considering I thought from the way the D.O. was carrying on a non-stop stream of negative feedback during that day. We got a 92.5% not bad when all we lost points on was some details (and dry scrambled eggs).

What's Up?

It's been a while since I wrote because I've been incredibly busy, like stupid busy, for about 3 weeks, basically since that post called "Long Day".

I spent two weeks working ridiculously long hours, 6 days a week, about 46 hours each week. Basically, just getting a taste of the Assistant Manager position and the amount of dependency my store really has on my input in the role of an Assistant Manager. I also developed quite a few new responsibilities.

For about 4 months that I was doing what I thought was a pretty good job of taking care of many of the responsibilities that an Assistant Manager has, including schedules and training crew and trying to have input on hiring crew, and especially dealing with volatile crew relationships and interactions. Trying to solve problems involving crew and management egos, emotions and senses of esteem is like trying to carry a couch made of something.. well I tried to think of some object to use as an analogy but I just can't. It's like trying to carry something that is heavy and delicate at the same time - a difficult task.

I got even more of that put into my responsibilities when I actually got the "promotion" of being Assistant Manager. Also, at the same time, my store lost one manager who worked there for 6 years, and another that worked there two months and no managers were created to fill their positions.

Back to topic - last week I worked like 30 hours in my store, and spent 20 hours over 3 days in ASM (Advanced Shift Management) training. I took alot out of that, in knowledge, how to gather knowledge, some McDonald's operational systems, and quite a bit more. We had an S.O.R. (Short Operations Review) of our Breakfast day-part. I'll talk all about that S.O.R. and some things I've begun to understand from it. Last week was especially rough because my whole family (along with like 5 other people from my neighborhood) got a foodborne illness from a Mexican place that just opened up (the food was really good at least). I spent 3 days (thankfully during my training) suffering from a norovirus - stomach cramping and all the rest that goes along with it. So I finished ASM. I'm working on my Post Class Action Plan with the manager who went to training with me, J.L. It's been a great week so far since Sunday. W00t!

Time Off.

I've been ridiculously busy with life, work and home. I've got to take a little time off (if you haven't noticed, by the dirth of posts).

I'll be writing again sooner or later.

Wednesday.

Today was quite the long day (in fact, it was yesterday, because it is well into tomorrow (today) already). It was also incredibly productive, and it was my first full shift working absolutely away from the customers. I helped one single, $1.08 customer today.

I worked for about 3 hours doing next weeks schedules. It's really an involved process doing the schedule through the ISP. It's also frustrating and difficult to balance everyone's needs and desires, for hours and availability, against the store's needs, what the business needs to remain profitable.

Then, for about an hour and a half I did a truck, with two other guys for the first time - normally it's two people for 3 hours. We had some unique receiving to do. My store's freezer has been out a few days, and we have a GSF trailer parked in our back parking lot, and it's where all our frozen product is currently located. What a pain in the ass! However, it's a great solution to the problem we're having.

After that, I counted a full, end of month inventory (so should you!) with the store manager. By hand. Our TelXon hand-held device is being repaired and we won't get it back for a few days. So, I did a phenomenal amount of hand writing today.

Lastly, I had to hand-enter those items into the ISP, then double-check it all. I got out at almost 1:00 AM.

All in all, a productive day. Now, sleep.