Baxter's Buzz
So there's a Coney Island that I'll go to from time to time to buy breakfast. Every now and then, I'll have enough time to call my order in, pick it up and still get to work on time. It feels like every time I go inside the restaurant, there's a new cook working. One day while I waited (waay too long) for a simple order of eggs, hash browns, and sausage, the server apologize profously and even went as far to say, "He won't be here long," in reference to the latest cook. He had this look on face: Annoyed. Confused. The staff of servers seem to remain consistent, but the only thing consistent about the revolving door of cooks was the look on their faces.
Why is that? Why do some people last at a job and some are sent packing?
A friend of mine left my current employer because, quite frankly, they were made an offer they could not refuse. The other issue was the lack of support they received at their former employer. They weren't the favorite of some of the more influential people at work because those folks did not know how to handle a genuine person who happened to be comfortable in their own skin. Yes, my friend is loud, but never malicious. By the time people realized that, in fact, this person was truly awesome, the narrative was already written. They lost a good worker and an even better person when my friend took another job.
Why do certain people hang on at a job? Is it because they get the blessings of the "cool kids"?
The other thing is leadership. Bad managers will run off good people. Sometimes you hire a bad manager and before you realize that they're awful, you've lost a handful of quality employees. Sometimes the managers have been there so long, it sort of becomes a situation where folks just accept it and throw their hands up. Poor management/leadership kills an organization from so many angles. You lose good personnel, your team is underdeveloped and you kill morale because everyone can see this proverbial train is headed nowhere fast!
Companies have these surveys, wanting to know if employees are happy, but many times they're missing the obvious. Leadership is weak and won't get rid of the cancers in the organization, or the leaderership is, in fact, the cancers and nobody above them (if there is someone above them) recognize this or have the guts to make a change.
Do all of the cooks at the Coney Island I frequent suck? Let's peel the onion back slightly. Who's hiring these guys? Are they doing something wrong? Are they being picked on by these spiteful servers, and are the servers the real issue? Has anyone talked to them? How many "bad hires" can there be until they look at some other issues?
FYI, I started this blog weeks ago and since then I have decided that I'm NEVER going back to that Coney. The servers are careless and indifferent at best, and rude at worst.
But what do I know?
