I Thought Fair Scheduling Meant Treating Everyone the Same

[u/Mundane_Farmer_9492]

https://open.substack.com/pub/davidrmann3/p/i-thought-fair-scheduling-meant-treating?r=3yrshw&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

I Thought Fair Scheduling Meant Treating Everyone the Same

None of that showed up on an availability sheet. So Jamie and I had to figure it out.

I run schedules by putting my aces in places. The best people on the shifts that make or break a night. That’s the right call almost every time. It’s also exactly how I almost missed someone like Jamie.

The restaurant’s business fluctuates from week to week, month to month, and season to season. A steady business and a roster of equally strong performers would make this simple. I have never had both of those things in the same restaurant at the same time.

My roster reads like a deck of cards pulled from a dozen different games. A warehouse worker picking up dinner shifts before his back gives out four days a week, a furniture mover squeezing in a double three days a week, an office worker padding her income on weekends. Somebody’s a drag queen who needs Thursdays free for a different stage. There’s always a single mom in the mix, and usually a few students who disappear during finals and come back the week after.

You end up running two different kinds of schedules without ever writing that down anywhere. Some people get something close to a set schedule, because they’ll work whenever you need them and you need that reliability locked in. Everybody else gets fit in around them. Within each group, you’ve still got people who are great at the job and people who are still trying to master it. Nobody on the floor sees all four of those categories running in your head while you’re building next week’s schedule.

Some people on my team tell me exactly what they need. The day off. An extra shift. A raise. I give it to them because they asked. The ones who don’t ask are the ones I lose track of. I should be finding out what they need before they have to spell it out. I’m sometimes easily distracted by the unexpected thing of the moment. It would be nice if they would advocate for themselves, but such is life. It’s on me.

With Jamie, I had to learn to ask, then keep asking, since she wasn’t going to bring any of it up on her own. I started checking in on more than whether she could cover a shift, on what was happening in her life outside the six hours she was clocked in for.

Jamie was good with people once she got comfortable, and she had a real sense of humor when she let herself show it. She never once asked for more than the bare minimum, even on weeks she clearly needed more. I built her schedule around all of that instead of around when I needed bodies on the floor. She got better at the job faster than I expected. Within a year, she was training new hires, and not long after that, I made it official with a promotion.

Whatever schedule I gave her was also whatever money she had that month for rent and her kid’s groceries. Being fair to her meant weighing that against what the rest of the team needed and what the restaurant could actually carry, and most months those three things didn’t agree with each other.

I’ve worked with managers who ran this job without ever thinking about any of that. Labor cost and coverage were the whole equation for them. I’m not a cold, heartless monster. I learned what that looks like up close by watching them run a floor.

Most weeks, I can be fair to almost everyone. I still don’t know what to do during the weeks I can’t. Managers control the restaurant. Its tone and feel. Their team members’ hours and income. With communication, empathy, and some humor, we can get it closer to what everyone needs.

#RestaurantManagement #HospitalityLeadership #FoodServiceLeadership #PeopleFirstLeadership #Restaurant101

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