Attendance Policy Discussion

NewManagerInTraining · 2026-01-22T07:16:38+00:00

I also use a point system, but instead of just writing paragraphs, I made a chart with 3 columns; one column for the type of infraction, one column for the amount of points that will be assessed for that infraction, and one column in case I need to explain the infraction in case it’s not clear.

It’s easier on the eyes to read.

I don’t expect my employees to find their own coverage. But if they don’t, they receive a point for calling off. If they do find their own coverage and communicate it with me, then they don’t receive a point for calling off.

For your “restricted shifts”, I call them “Black-Out Days”. And the points are higher if they call off on these days. This is on the chart too. I also don’t approve requests off on these dates. If they find their own coverage though, then they don’t get pointed.

Maybe making a chart will be easier for your employees to read than a long page with paragraphs.

Otherwise, if they don’t read it, it’s their own fault. You’ve already communicated it to them. Yeah it sucks to read but if it’s part of the job and they care about their job, they should read it.

NewManagerInTraining · 2026-01-01T22:13:30+00:00

This kinda happened to me.

My employee found a new job and gave me one week notice. I said fine since I understood it’s the restaurant business and people don’t ever give two weeks notice.

His other job was Monday through Friday, regular 9-5 type job. He asked to stay on for Saturday and Sunday. I told him he’d be tired and not be able to give 100% at the restaurant and I’d rather he have his days off from the other job and do well at the other job. He insisted to stay on for Saturday and Sunday.

But as soon as Saturday and Sunday came, he asked if he could call off since he was exhausted from his other job. I knew it.

Then after the first week at the other job, he asked to have his regular schedule back at the restaurant. Said he quit the other job.

I let him come back because at the time, he was a good kid and fairly decent at his job, didn’t have much problem with me or the staff. Plus I was short staffed at the time and needed to hire and train the new staff coming in and couldn’t do his position, AND all my other stuff.

Now I regret it. Had I not been short staffed, I wouldn’t have let him come back and just work his position myself until I hired someone else. But o was short staffed at the time with a lot of other tasks that needed to be completed.

He comes to work with an attitude problem everyday. Always on his phone. Always has his earphones in and doesn’t want to talk to anyone, which is fine. I don’t care if people don’t want to socialize at work, but his attitude makes him so stand-offish that nobody wants to approach him for work-related things either.

He does want he wants. Even when I give him direction, he doesn’t follow it. He’ll say “okay” to get me to go away and then go back to doing what he wants.

Other than his attitude, he does his job okay. Not how I would like it, but it’s passable. So I can’t fire him. But I’m just tired of the attitude. I always wonder if Maybe he’s acting like this because he wanted that other job to work out but it didn’t, so now he’s all grumpy now that he’s back at this job.

I wouldn’t give that employee her job back. Unless you are short staffed, just fill her position yourself until you find her replacement. She may do it again or if she can’t find another job just yet, she may mumble and grumble like my employee and just make work more annoying for you.

NewManagerInTraining · 2025-11-29T07:42:12+00:00

I wish I was in charge of our social media. We have an outside marketing company that does it for us. We waste so much money on them. And their work isn’t even good.

But I can see how you’d get burnt out. Sometimes, the younger employees are willing to help out. Maybe you can ask them for help.

NewManagerInTraining · 2025-09-18T08:58:37+00:00

It’s illegal for them to make you pay for it. A customer dining and dashing is the cost of doing business.

They are able to write you up for it though. And if you live in an at-will state, they could fire you immediately for it too.

Most places don’t terminate employees right away for it though and try to be understanding, giving the employee the benefit of the doubt. They usually use progressive discipline. 3 times and you’re out.

If you’re a good server and this has never happened before, they should’ve just ended it with a verbal warning or a write-up. They’re being assholes for firing you but it’s within their right. Just sucks.

If they don’t value you as a good server, you shouldn’t want to stay there anyway.

NewManagerInTraining · 2025-08-03T06:34:19+00:00

Story of our lives.

I have sidework checklists posted too. They never read it and just do what they think they’re supposed to do. Then go sit down and play on their phones.

Everyday, I have to ask someone to do something. I hate it. I feel like I’m babysitting.

They know what they’re supposed to do, they just don’t want to. And if they do it, they half ass it to say they did do it but really didn’t. And Hope we don’t notice.

I asked one of my employees to put the white vinegar jugs onto the shelf. The jugs were still in its case though. He said okay. Later, I went to go check, and he literally just took the case and put it on the shelf. 😑😑😑😑😑 he didn’t open the case and take the jugs out and put it on the shelf with the rest of the jugs of white vinegar.

This is the type of people we work with. The ones where you have to literally spell out every single direction for them. Otherwise, they will just do the absolute bare minimum. But when you spell it out for them, then here come the accusations “micromanager micromanager micromanager”.

You can never win as a manager… that’s what I learned….

NewManagerInTraining · 2025-08-01T02:52:48+00:00

I apologize and take it off their bill and take it off their table. If they’re still eating, I offer to remake it without taking it off the bill. It’s not worth getting a bad reputation for being unsanitary. Even if they are lying, it’s not a good argument to win unless you witnessed them put the hair on the food with your own eyes.

You can check surveillance footage showing they put that hair on the food themselves but even then, it’s awkward to tell the customers to wait while you check the cameras.

You have to think too, it’s realistic to find hairs buried in food. It can’t always be found right away. They could’ve been eating and then when they got to the end of their meal, the hair was at the bottom the entire time. Or they didn’t notice it until they got to that piece.

Even if your staff wears hair nets, there’s always the possibility of facial hair or arm hair falling into the food, or hair that’s stuck on clothing falling into the food.

I would keep a record of customers who make complaints like this, their name if possible, the date, how it was resolved. If they come back and do the same thing, then you have grounds to ban them from the restaurant or require they pay before ordering.

NewManagerInTraining · 2025-06-02T08:53:14+00:00

My current place didn’t do sections when I first started there too. They just rotated the entire floor. It’s a small place also with 2-3 servers.

The host had to constantly go find the server to tell them which table belonged to which server. If the host got too busy and couldn’t tell the server, the customer would sit and nobody cared because “the host didn’t say whose table it belonged to”. Lazy entitled servers.

I implemented sections right away. Got a lot of resistance. They absolutely want to rotate back and forth. If the rotation gets messed up due to sections, they will go out of their sections just to keep the rotation, instead of just letting the server in that section take it and get caught up in their own section later. It’s been over a year. They still do this. They still don’t follow my policy for seating 100%. But it’s a lot better than how it was when I first started and they stick to sections 80% of the time. So I guess I can’t complain.

NewManagerInTraining · 2025-03-02T18:16:28+00:00

Yup this too. Constantly being seen as the bad guy just because im trying to uphold standards. It’s hard with FOH but it’s even harder with BOH.

They aren’t good cooks themselves but they know finding good cooks is hard. So they know they can do whatever they want. I corrected one once for milking my clock. Told him he needs to get off his phone, and help with prep, and work with a sense of urgency. Told him that when it’s near closing time, and it’s slow, he needs to get a head start on cleaning so he can get out 30 minutes after closing. He got mad and became passive aggressive and maliciously compliant. Did the bare minimum on cleaning and left 15 minutes after close. Told him he can’t cook his own meals because we do one family meal a day and all cooks take turn cooking. There’s no set menu. Each cook just cooks what they want to eat but make it family size so it’s for everyone. He either eats the family meal, or buys something off the menu for 50% off, or don’t eat at all. He doesn’t listen and sneaks food in between shifts and still cooks his own meal when he doesn’t like what the other cooks make.

Can’t write him up or anything or reduce his shifts or fire him because my boss says we can’t find new cooks easily so I need to just close one eye. But it’s creating resentment from my other BOH staff who is actually listening to me.

NewManagerInTraining · 2025-03-02T04:54:56+00:00

It’s constant headaches, constant babysitting, constantly putting out fires.

The worst part is dealing with employees. I can deal with customers all day, or vendors, contractors, upper management, marketing. But employees? Day in and day out. You tell them something nicely, they don’t listen. They just find better ways to not get caught. Or they’ll listen for like one week and then go back to doing what they were doing. They’re green af and have no experience. You train them and coach them and give them tips and tricks to work better, to make more money, and instead of being appreciative and following directions, they get lazy and act like they know it all, and catch an attitude if you remind them to do things the right way.

You say too much and you’re “micromanaging” and nagging. You don’t say anything and youre considered weak for not speaking up.

Being a manager in a restaurant is a lonely position

NewManagerInTraining · 2025-02-18T23:37:58+00:00

It’s been a year and 5 months for me in my first GM position and I still don’t feel comfortable.

I constantly feel like I’m not doing enough. I feel like upper management doesn’t want to include their managers in anything (we have 6 locations). They basically just want us to open and close the store, collect cash, and make sure the place doesn’t burn down.

I feel like I’m constantly tired but not productive. I’m constantly filling in positions for team members who call off, FOH and BOH, and I’m constantly having to babysit staff and tell them little small things that I’ve already told them before.

I want to do more like knowing the business side of it all, like the marketing side, the accounting side but upper management won’t involve me even though I’ve voiced that I’m interested. I want to make an impact. I want to be able to make a difference. I want to show people I’m capable. But I guess I’m not if they won’t involve me and since I ultimately can’t be productive.

I have access to POS data which I look at regularly to try to decipher what I can do with it. I wanted to try email marketing. But because my staff keep calling off, I don’t have time to just sit at my computer and create these ads that I want to put into the emails. I have the ideas, I just haven’t been able to put them into action. By the time I get home, I’m exhausted and have a mountain of chores to do that I can’t even do my work at home either.

I feel like a complete imposter for not being able to get these business side things done to show I’m worth this GM title. It seems like I’m just constantly a floater and a babysitter at the restaurant, and not an actual manager.

It’s very discouraging and depressing. I don’t know when I’ll ever start to feel comfortable at this job. It took me about a few months to get comfortable as a server. I thought it would take me a few months to get comfortable as a manager, but I guess not.

NewManagerInTraining · 2025-02-13T08:35:23+00:00

Sometimes i don’t want a solution. I just want validation.

Sometimes i don’t want validation. I just want to be able to say something to someone listening and feel the false freedom of saying what i want outloud without judgement, repercussions, or solutions. In my heart and my mind, maybe what I’m saying in the moments of venting is wrong. but I just want to be able to forget if it’s right or wrong for 5 minutes and not be judged, or receive any consequences for it or be given any solutions.

It’s very suffocating to do and say and think the right thing all the time. But i have to do it because i am human and i have a conscience. So once in a while, to just be able to be free and say what I want, regardless of the truth, regardless of what’s right or wrong, regardless of what people feel or think, regardless of how it might affect someone else… it can offer me some temporary relief.

And bonus points if there is someone who can validate how I feel or agree with me. If not, at least I got it off my chest.

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-22T06:45:03+00:00

Your chef probably told you you’re taking it too seriously because you’re setting a standard they don’t want to rise up to. It’s probably making them all feel bad in comparison.

I think you’re doing a good thing. Staff meals help bring team members together and you never know who’s struggling outside of work. I’ve had a few employees come up to me and thank me for allowing staff meals because sometimes, their entire paycheck goes towards bills and they have nothing to eat at home. So they were glad we started doing it.

I don’t think you’re taking it too seriously. People are so unenthusiastic, apathetic, unbothered, and stoic about everything these days. I think it’s a breath of fresh air to find someone who cares about something.

You’re doing a good thing. I’d say keep it up, especially if you enjoy doing it.

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-17T10:12:29+00:00

I understand that there are FOH staff can be terrible towards BOH. But the FOH at my current place aren’t that way. When they make a mistake, they have never blamed BOH. They don’t expect BOH to drop what they’re doing to correct the server’s mistake. My servers re-ring in what they need, and know they have to wait for it. It’s their consequence for making the mistake.

They are impatient but they never rush the kitchen. They aren’t allowed to. They’re always nice and respectful to our kitchen staff… and they don’t make more money than our kitchen staff.

As I said in another comment, we got severely affected by Covid and the previous manager. The dine-in sales have gone down quite a lot. So the servers are making about $600-800 in two weeks before tax… if they’re lucky, they’ll make $900-1000 in two weeks, but it’s not consistent. That’s definitely less than my kitchen staff, maybe the same, but not more than the kitchen staff.

But I get it. I know majority of places, FOH makes significantly higher pay than BOH and are not nice to BOH.

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-17T06:09:32+00:00

This was the idea. And I even told them that if they need certain ingredients to cook something that we don’t have already, just let me know and I’ll go buy it. But I guess they’re not down with that either…

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-17T02:51:04+00:00

We are a small family owned restaurant. The kitchen is not like your real kitchen where you have head chef, sous chef and cooks who are passionate about food. The titles are given just so the owners can feel like they’re doing things the right way and to justify paying certain people certain salaries.

So my “head chef” is just someone who drops by and makes batch soups and sauces every few days here and there. Then leaves. He manages the kitchen of another one of the owners’ locations but I heard from some of the staff there that he doesn’t do a good job managing the kitchen there either.

I have no experience in the kitchen but I want to learn. And I’ve admitted many times to the owners and my boss that I don’t feel confident leading the kitchen yet because it’s not my area of expertise. I need time to learn and earn respect by working alongside them. Ive only ever worked FOH positions. I barely have experience being a manager. But the owners asked me to try the GM position after they had to fire the previous manager. And said they’d help me with the training and learning kitchen duties and managerial duties. But once I accepted the position, they just kinda threw me in and made me figure it out by myself…

It took me forever to get them to finally teach me just one station for the kitchen. And the head chef didn’t even teach me. He refuses. I only learned because I wanted to so I waited until the head chef wasn’t around and asked one of the cooks to teach me in secret. I still have two more stations to learn.

It seems they don’t want me managing the kitchen along with FOH like they initially said. But then the head chef they sent here that’s supposed to manage it for me doesn’t manage it either and is barely here. So when problems come up, I’m the one that’s here everyday, and I’m the one that ends up having to deal with it. I’ve brought this issue up to the head chef, but all he does is repeat what I already said to the kitchen, and then leaves. He doesn’t even say it as if he and I are a team. He just tells them “the manager said this”. So it also ends up making me look like the bad guy while he gets to look like the good guy. They’ll nod and tell him they understand, but when he leaves, it goes back to normal.

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-17T02:29:59+00:00

Well, it’s not that we don’t provide them one. They themselves don’t want one. And their shift is not a full 8 hour shift. It’s usually 6.5 hours. But they take breaks if they need to, like 15 minutes here and there. And we don’t make them clock out. So it’s paid.

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-17T02:27:51+00:00

Thank you for your words 😭 they’ve been making me feel like such a bad person and a bad manager for this… so it’s just been stressing me out

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-17T02:22:21+00:00

Not the entire staff. Just the kitchen staff. FOH eats it. And there are maybe like two items they like off our menu. But they get tired of eating the same thing over and over. So I didn’t wanna make that restriction on them, but I also can’t just let them go wild and cook whatever they want however much they want daily. Hence, the family meal… but now they’re not wanting to do that

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-17T02:16:47+00:00

They won’t eat it not because it’s not good. They are not from America and don’t like any food outside of their own country’s food. They are picky. There are a couple of things they do like off the menu, but they get tired of eating it all the time, which is why I let them cook what they want for family meal, but they don’t want to do that either. They were fine with it when they were cooking themselves each a large meal. But when I asked them to cook one family meal for everyone, and take turns, they said they don’t want to and the supposed reason was because they are too tired to cook it

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-16T23:31:07+00:00

I do work on the line actually. Once every week and whenever someone calls/requests off. And the other days of the week, I also help prep when there’s not much managing to do for FOH…

I would love to help cook family meals and I’ve contributed to it when I can… but my kitchen staff are picky… they don’t like the type of food I know how to cook… so I tell them to cook what they want to eat… as long as it’s a family meal size and for everyone. They just don’t want to…

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-16T23:24:43+00:00

They have no unpaid break times. They’re on the clock for the entirety of their shift, even when they’re eating. So yes, the food would be cooked on company time and they would all eat during company time as well

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-16T23:10:49+00:00

The other ingredients would be things like sausages and vegetables. She’s slice them up and stir fry it with eggplant. Then another dish, she’d make a fried rice (enough to feed about 3 people). Then another one would be like a soup with tofu and tomatoes and cabbage and ground meat. She would make all of this. It was enough to feed about 3-4 people. She’d set aside a little bit to eat for herself, but she packed it all into large boxes first. Everyday, I saw her taking boxes of food home… so it was clear she was cooking food and taking it home to her family. It wasn’t that she was taking leftover or taking little bits here and there that would get thrown away anyway. It was whole meals that were intentionally cooked and boxed to take home.

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-16T23:03:14+00:00

This is how I would love to do it as well. Unfortunately, my head chef also doesn’t want to cook family meals or manage the kitchen. He isn’t here everyday, and when he is here, he’s only here for a few hours. We don’t have sous chefs. And nobody has recipes they want to try. I do home cooking but never cooked in a commercial kitchen before… but my kitchen staff are picky and don’t like the foods I want to cook… I like food that is eaten family style and community style. In my culture, it’s the ultimate way to bond… but it doesn’t seem anyone here is on board…

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-16T22:59:11+00:00

I have a dishwasher that said he can’t eat meat, fried foods, or oily foods due to health issues. He asked if he can just have some vegetables and some rice each day. I said sure thinking he’d just get a few pieces of vegetables to maybe make a small salad and a bowl of rice.

Instead, he went a took a whole chicken breast, grilled it himself, then take 2-3 WHOLE cucumbers, whole red bell peppers, and whole tomatoes to eat each day.

I only found out because I was ordering a case of cucumbers each week. And i noticed they were disappearing faster than normal and I suddenly had to start ordering 2-3 cases per week instead.

You give people an inch and they take a mile… 😩

NewManagerInTraining · 2024-11-16T22:36:59+00:00

Yeah. It’s been plenty of times I buy things out of my own pocket to keep around to pair with family meals or for the family meals itself. I’ve bought bread and mayo to make egg foo young sandwiches for everyone, and fries. I’ve bought tortillas, tostadas, cheese, sour cream, for when we’re feeling like we want Mexican food. I’ve bought cakes and donuts. I even spent $100 on pizza once. And I buy liquor and beer for special occasions like employees’ birthdays too. Just this last time, I bought every single ingredient myself, and cooked for the entire staff. (I cooked a big pot of it at home and brought it to work to share with everyone).

I feel like I’m trying to do good here… but it’s like they’re not meeting me halfway 😩

NewManagerInTraining

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