Have you ever made a HUGE mistake at work? This past weekend, I did. I mean HUGE! In the restaurant business, there’s always something going on. People are different and the boss or manager has to figure out how to navigate through and try to solve the problems. There’s no way for a business class to teach the owner of a small business how to deal with these problems. You just have to figure it out on your own.

There was a lot of he say, she say going on with my people. I won’t get into the details. That’s really not that important. I will just tell you how I handled it so that hopefully, you will not make the same mistake that I did.

I asked the 4 employees that were having problems or issues to each write down their issues and email them to me. They did. There was some constructive stuff but a lot of it was stuff about other people. Some of it was not very nice. I collected all of the emails and got everyone together in the conference room at my apartment at 9am Saturday Morning. I bought cinnamon rolls, OJ, muffins just to get everyone in a great mood.

Well, I started the meeting welcoming everyone and telling them that our objective. To get everyone on the same page so that we could be a cohesive, happy team.
Then, I told them that I would be READING their emails aloud. I THOUGHT this would be the answer to our problems…BOY, Was I Wrong? By the time I read the 4th email, tempers were hot and that is an understatement. One person even walked out. I ended the meeting because it was going sooooo badly. What was I thinking?

Big Al’s Human Resources department! “If you have a problem on the job, come see me. I’ll create so many New Problems, You’ll forget about the Old Ones!”