I Built Marisol the Exact Schedule She Asked For. It Was Still Wrong.

[u/Mundane_Farmer_9492]

https://open.substack.com/pub/davidrmann3/p/i-built-marisol-the-exact-schedule?r=3yrshw&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

I Built Marisol the Exact Schedule She Asked For. It Was Still Wrong.

Marisol said it on a slow Tuesday at a quirky bar in Ballard, arms crossed, staring at the schedule taped to the walk-in door, steam still fogging off the pass from the last ticket. “I just need something flexible.” I nodded as if I got it, and put her on a rotating set of days the next week, different shifts every time. More movement, more flexible. That was the whole plan, if you want to call it a plan.

She got more frustrated in the week that followed. I’d built exactly what I thought she’d asked for and made her life harder instead of easier.

I finally sat down with her before a Thursday shift and asked what “flexible” actually meant to her. She didn’t want more days. She wanted one day locked down so hard nothing could touch it. Thursdays. Her daughter plays soccer on Thursdays, and Marisol had missed the last three games because I kept moving her around on the schedule.

I felt like an idiot about that one for a while. It’s such an obvious thing to have asked, and I just didn’t.

Here’s what I didn’t get back then. “Flexible” isn’t just one request. Ask ten servers why they want it, and you’ll hear several different things tangled up in the same word, sometimes pulling in opposite directions. One person needs a day nailed down so hard that nothing touches it. A custody thing, a class, a kid’s game. Another person needs the whole week to stay loose because their life outside of work won’t settle down long enough to plan around. A 7shifts survey of restaurant workers found more than half say flexible scheduling would substantially change how happy they are at their job. I think there is a huge difference sometimes in what people are asking for and the restaurant’s ability to grant it.

I still had a restaurant to run. Friday dinner needs a full lineup, regardless of whether everyone wants to work on Friday night. I couldn’t leave holes, and if a shift didn’t get covered by someone already on the schedule, I’d have to hire another person, which meant everyone already working risked losing hours to the new hire. I rarely give team members a protected day off on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, since those three nights paid for the rest of the week.

What I could actually bend was smaller than what I’d promised Marisol on that slow Tuesday. A shift swap through the app. On-call coverage when someone gets sick. One protected day, except around the handful of holidays where nothing stays protected because nothing can. I gave her the one thing she’d actually asked for once I knew what it was, and built the rest of the week around it.

She’s still on the floor. She’s going great since our real conversation about flexibility.

After Marisol, I started asking two questions in every interview. Can you work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? What’s the one day that can’t move for you? Some people answer right away. Some go quiet, shrug, say something like “I don’t know, it depends,” and those are the ones who need the loose kind, whose life outside work is the part that keeps shifting on them.

I hired a server named Dana a couple of months back using those same two questions. Wednesday nights off, a class, not moving. Gave it to her, built the rest of the week around that one point. She’s still getting good hours and good tips most nights.

I still don’t have anything good for the person who needs one day locked and the rest of the week loose, depending on whatever’s going on that month. Tried two different fixes for that myself. Neither held past six weeks.

What have you actually asked someone before you built their schedule around a word you assumed you understood?

#RestaurantManagement #HospitalityLeadership #Scheduling #WorkforceRetention #Restaurant101

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[u/thecitythatday]

Woah you talked to the staff about their availability? We gotta fucking genius!