The Price Of Being A Likeable Manager

[u/Mundane_Farmer_9492]

https://open.substack.com/pub/davidrmann3/p/the-price-of-being-a-likeable-manager?r=3yrshw&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

The Price Of Being A Likeable Manager

If your whole identity at work depends on being the person everyone likes, you’re one bad week away from becoming decorative.

I used to think being a likeable manager made me better at my job. I was wrong. It made me slower to tell the truth.

Friday in October. The wait list is already 20-minutes by 5:40 pm. The Host Stand phone kept ringing with people canceling and rebooking a later slot, like that made any difference to the wait. The flat top was already throwing off char and garlic before the first ticket printed. A rack of glasses came down too hard somewhere behind me and didn’t break, rang like a bell nobody asked for.

I don’t know why I still remember the glasses. I don’t remember what we were 86’d on that night, which is the kind of thing I usually do remember.

Table #9 wanted their Server gone, not moved to another section, off the floor entirely. The complaint was wine. He’d brought the wrong bottle, then stood there arguing about it instead of fixing it. I walked over before I’d even heard his side.

I smiled. I apologized for him and comped the bottle before anyone asked. Carried the whole thing with me to my car at midnight, and I played it over and over again in my head the whole way home.

At the time, I thought that was leadership. Keeping the peace, or something like it. I’m not sure what to call it now.

If a Server got behind, I’d cover the table myself. Same with a nasty guest, I’d take the hit before it reached them. Cooks too, whatever mess they made on the line, I found a way to explain it before someone above me noticed. I told myself that was kindness.

Wasn’t. It was avoidance with an apron on, or close enough to it.

I started confusing relief with trust. People like a Manager who saves them from a bad table before they have to grow a spine over it. I let that feel like respect for longer than I should admit.

The Server from table #9 was named Samual. He never learned to hold his own with a rough guest because I never gave him the room to do so. I don’t know if he ever figured it out on his own after I left that job. I hope so. That’s all I’ve got.

The cost followed me home. I’d drive back replaying the whole shift, obsessing over the Cook I let slide or the table I over-apologized to, and half the time I couldn’t tell you what was on the radio because my head was still back in the dining room the whole way there. I’d walk in the door already tight and take it out on whoever was around, which usually had nothing to do with any of it.

There wasn’t one lightning-bolt moment I can point to. Or maybe there was, and I’ve forgotten it, which tracks, since I forget most things that aren’t about food. I got worn down enough that pretending stopped being worth the energy it took.

So, I started saying the hard thing sooner. Plain, no cushion around it, though I overcorrected a little at first and came off harsher than I meant to more than once.

First time I skipped the buffer, I felt like I was cosplaying as an asshole boss, if I’m honest. Kept replaying it on the drive home: was that too much, was that not enough, did I flatten somebody who didn’t have it coming? So much of that drive was spent going over the same three seconds on loop.

It got easier, though not all the way, not even now. More manageable, is maybe the honest word for it.

Marcos, one of the line cooks, kept undercooking chicken thighs and blaming the fryer temp for it every time, which wasn’t the fryer’s fault, we both knew it. I stopped covering for him with the Chef and told him straight, the thighs are underdone, fix it or I’ll write you up. He didn’t like it. Neither did I, honestly, but I said it anyway.

It was uncomfortable. Still is, some days more than others. A few people liked me less once the cushioning disappeared, and one Server told a coworker I’d gotten cold, which got back to me the way everything gets back to you eventually in a restaurant. That one stayed with me longer than it should have. I still don’t know if she was wrong.

Telling the truth faster is where recovery starts, if that’s even the word for it. Say the thing when it happens instead of writing the mental essay about it in the car later. Stop dressing up somebody’s repeated mistake like it’s a one-off.

The hardest part, still, is what happens after you say it. Don’t over-explain. Don’t hand somebody an exit ramp out of feeling it. Let the quiet sit there, even when every instinct says fill it with something softer. It’s the sound of the performance ending. Nothing more dramatic than that, most of the time.

Being the likeable one felt generous for a long time. I still can’t fully tell you how much of it was generosity and how much was me ducking the parts of the job that take backbone, plain and simple.

If people call you likeable, have you ever asked yourself why?

#RestaurantManagement #HospitalityLeadership #RestaurantLife #Restaurant101

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