Tribute to An Awesome Fast Food Manager

This post was sent a few weeks ago from RHU Blogger Twink. Because of the backlog of stories, we are a little late in getting it up.There are great Managers out this and this story from Twink proves it:

This is a little late, as it's a Black Friday story, but I kinda thought with the hell everyone's been going through, a story that serves a little justice might brighten things up. 

I've spent a total of 12 years in retail, 10 of them in fast food.  I've worked for BYB on three separate occasions, the last of the three being the one I remember the most. I willingly gave them nearly 3 years of my life. Why? Because I had a GM that most people would kill to work for.

 

Lisa was notorious for breaking company rules, and never getting caught (she was really good friends with a higher up, we knew about every "surprise inspection" waaay before Liz (the DM) ever showed up). We were NEVER written up (not even when I slammed the drive thru window shut on a customer, and flipped him off), broke the dress code on a daily basis (incorrect shoes, painted nails, untucked shirts, you name it), and jammed music all day long (we had a morning spatula toss to see which station would be motivating us through the day). 

 

As a result, even though we didn't do the most business (we were closed 4 days before Christmas because we were the slowest store in the region, which is no surprise, considering people drove past us and never knew we were there), if you knew anyone who worked there, you wanted to work there too.

But my favorite time of year to work for Lisa? Thanksgiving and Christmas. While we couldn't call out on Black Friday, after one year of particularly nasty sales, she devised a plan. We sat in a mall parking lot, and as a result, people often parked in our mini lot in order to walk to the mall, leaving our actual customers with no other alternative but to go through the drive thru.  And with mall traffic being bad, we were usually avoided at all costs. After getting chewed out the year before for bad sales, Lisa came up with a way to keep it from happening again.

Two weeks prior, we started running a message on our billboard "Black Friday Exclusive, Inquire Within".

The Exclusive part was that we were giving out business cards that had a note from Lisa on them, saying they had permission to park in our lot. I think we handed out a total of 5 (you had to ask us about the message on the billboard).   

Now, back then cops could eat for free, so we had no shortage of officers willing to do us a favor or two. In exchange for lunch, a couple of them agreed to block our lot off, and only allow those who had the cards, entrance to park. They were to stop, when the mall ended their sale at 11am. We brought em drinks all morning, at the flash of a light.

Lisa and I (the senior cashier, I always got to pick my shifts, and I opted to work an "opener", from 7am to 11am, which is when we opened to serve the BF customers) had an absolute ball sitting in the dining room watching people get pissed off because they couldn't pull into our lot to park and walk. If you said you were going to eat, and then didn't, you got a citation (but I dunno what the charge was).

To this day I've always wondered where she went (got a job as a manager for another fast food chain somewhere in Atlanta when we first closed, no idea where she is now), and if she's got a new crew that loves her as much as we all did.

So keep your chins up fellow slaves, there are managers out there who really do care more about their employees, than the company they're both slaves for. 

 

Twink

Comments

[atombomb1945]

Needs to be said, Management like that is to rare not to have someone speak of them. Good idea on the parking lot too.

[mudflapgirl]

Not allowing people to park in your lot unless they spend money in your store?FUCKING AWESOME!
I'd give my left tit to see the looks on their faces when they were cited.

[Logan]

At the fast food place I used to work at we had several signs up that our parking lot was for customers only. It was near a busy business district and surrounded by bars. People liked to ditch their cars there and shop or hit the bars.

During times when we didn't have someone to watch the lot, the entire lot would be filled but we would have 0 customers. It would turn away potential customers, because there was either absolutely no place for them to park, or they figured we were extremely busy.

I used to laugh at the people who would abandon their cars right beside the signs, then be pissed off when they came back and their cars had been told. People would park their cars and then run real fast pretending they didn't hear us telling them they couldn't park there. Since there were signs up we didn't even need to tell them, that was just a courtesy. They seemed to think that if they didn't acknowledge us we couldn't have them towed.

Some people would get really pissed that they weren't allowed to park there. Seriously the lot is owned by the restaurant and they had to pay property tax on it. Would you let me park my car in your driveway and leave it there while I go shopping?

My favorite was when they would call us parking nazis. Seriously? You're going to compare mass genocide with not being able to ditch your car on someone elses property. Not to mention that the other problem with the nazis was they tried to occupy territory that didn't belong to them.

[Eric]

A courtesy card that entitles the customer to park in the lot! Best idea I've heard all day. Impossible to enforce in my Heroic HoC dungeon though. (Halls of Cement)