restaurant psychobabble

I’ll just preface this by saying that this entry is super hard to follow and probably doesn’t say much you’ll find interesting…so I apologize in advance.

Last week I decided to try and make my way back into working in restaurants. John and I need to be on the same schedule, and I need to work at a job where I can have more than a little self-worth. Banking doesn’t appreciate me, and no one there thinks I’m anything more than just another glorified teller with future management potential. It’s lame, they micro-manage me, and I don’t make any sort of real impact on the business. At the end of the day it’s a good job, and I’m grateful to have one, but I want to go back to the career that I left behind.

I had my first interview last night with an old employer (the restaurant that Matthew and I worked together at a few years ago), only to find out that, while they do want me for my old position right now (I planned private events), what they really want is someone who can be ready to be the GM within a few years. This restaurant does $3 million in annual sales….and they want me. Whaaaat???

It felt really good to hear, but it’s a super, crazy, intimidating idea. In any case, now I get the feeling I’ll be interviewing for both jobs at once. Not only does the current GM (who I interviewed with last night) need to approve/like me, now I’ve got to impress the investors in a full series of interviews. Hands down, they definitely need me in there to clean up their banquet business, but this GM thing is going to hang over my head and turn me into a nervous wreck.

Restaurants are my career. I had always planned on eventually having my own place with John. I’m not the best floor manager (because it’s insanely boring), but I do a fabulous job with private events, marketing, budgeting, human resources, and all the other braniac stuff that needs to be done on the back end. I like crunching numbers and making things profitable. I’m great at project management, and I’m a good team leader. 

…but a GM? Of a 600+ seat restaurant owned by a group of twenty (very vocal, opinionated) investors? Wow. The current GM is not the same guy I worked for. The guy I worked for (we’ll call him…."JD") was a mess. He was a good boss to me, but he was overloaded, he was in over his head, the investors made his life hell, and he had almost no people skills. I would not want JD’s job in a million years. But the new GM ("Bob") makes it sound like he has repaired all the craziness and made it into a manageable job. One that he thinks I could do. But do I want to do it?

The good news is I don’t think I have to sell him on hiring me for anything other than the Banquet position. I’ve already let him know exactly what I’m interested in doing, and that I would have to see him in action before I knew whether his job is one that I would be interested in. So I’m covered, I’ll get what I want, and I’ll have opportunity for advancement if I want it. 

It just feels weird. That GM job should have been Matthew’s. He was the AGM when I worked there before. JD actually fired him 3 days before he gave his own notice that he would be leaving…just so that Matthew wouldn’t be offered the job. It was shitty on a thousand levels, because Matthew could have actually been good at it, especially without suffocating under JD’s rule. And now that’s supposed to be my job? PLUS…restaurant management is a boy’s club. Is anyone going to take me seriously? They do as a banquet manager, and they did when I left to be the restaurant manager of another place, but in both cases I answered to a man, and everyone ultimately knew I didn’t have the final say on everything. In two years, I’ll still only be 30 years old…it just seems like a long shot that they would actually want me for the job when it comes down to it.

Anyway, being a GM, if I did take the job for even a few years, would be resume gold – if I could do it well. I could permanently place myself in a position to be hired in upper management, no matter where I went. Food for future thought.