Hi Ray.
First of all, I’m really glad you enjoyed the pizza. That means a lot to me. Thanks for saying that.
As for the rest:
As Judith Viorst would say, Monday was a “Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” Thanks for making my shitty day a matter of public inquiry. Isn’t the internet wonderful?
I had one employee call in sick, another one just not show up at all (he’s fired now) and my wife who I absolutely depend on was not available either. We were vastly understaffed. Between the hours of 6:00 and 8:00 I received 38 phone calls for pizza orders, (on average that’s a new order every 3 minutes, but nobody wanted to wait 3 minutes) in addition to having to handle a full house without any people. As you may have noticed, I am the one answering the phone, and making the pizza, and coordinating the orders with the kitchen, and trying to get food out the door. And yes, as you were kind enough to point out, my stress level on Monday was at maximum.
We had an employee’s bike stolen.
And my employees, who know better and usually do better, were walking out the door with incomplete orders, incomplete tickets, or just not walking out the door at all.
As Rachel said, it doesn’t happen all the time. It doesn’t even happen most of the time. However, it certainly happened on Monday.
But let me take a minute and talk about my employees. The ones that I keep/have stayed with me are amazing. They find houses and addresses of people who don’t know where they live and they do it fast. Do you realize how many customers give me incomplete or just plain wrong addresses and these guys still figure it out? And take a minute to compare my people to any other food delivery service in Chengdu. I was watching the security footage today trying to find who stole my employee’s bike, and I was amazed by how fast my people were getting out and back again. And those deliveries are often pretty far away. Also, the girl in the kitchen and the girl helping me on pies and ovens on Monday were flawless. They are superstar class A ninjas at what they do and they saved my ass all night on Monday. I’ll say it again, my people are amazing.
So I’m really not sure what you think you heard, (a lot of Monday is a blur to me right now…I do recall smashing a plate with my fist) but I can guarantee you took it out of context and the recipient was not as offended as you were. They know me and they know how I talk. Yes, when they are washing dishes instead of doing deliveries I will yell, “Get out the Fucking door NOW!!!” When they forget the cheesecake and I have to send out another person who I can not spare to make up for their mistake, I will let them know, in no uncertain terms, that walking out the door without double checking your ticket is UN-FUCKING-ACCEPTABLE. But they know that, and they accept when they made a mistake, and they take responsibility for their actions. And 98% of the time, the same person doesn’t make the same mistake twice.
(And, Jerry, I do have to add that you absolutely hit the nail on the head with the hygiene and the 3 strikes comments. The first time I had an employee walk back from the bathroom and try to get past me without washing his hands, I told him nicely to wash his hands whenever he came back from the bathroom. The second time it happened I SCREAMED. There should not have been second time, I wish there wasn’t, but if the first time didn’t sink in…and there is no third time.)
However, Ray, while we are talking about your sensitive nature, I did not appreciate you giving my employee a lecture on what you thought was or was not polite. He went to your table, in the middle of the 23 other things he was doing simultaneously because he is also a ninja rock-star, to see if you needed anything else. I think that’s pretty polite and considerate of him. But still, for some reason, you had to pull my employee aside and waste his time, and my time, because he didn’t say any magic words before he asked if you needed anything. Was that really necessary?
Which brings me to my final point. I hope that you are a rational human being. I sense that part of you might be. You might also have had a bad Monday, like me. But this shit:
is unacceptable.
First of all, as I said before, I guarantee you are taking something out of context.
Secondly, the masked threats of violence diminish your attempt to make a rational statement. Everyone who knows me knows that I one hundred percent appreciate constructive criticism. And the fact is, I am grateful to you for voicing a reminder (ill-phrased though it may have been) that disciplining employees in front of customers in our tiny, open kitchen causes awkwardness and discomfort. However, when what could have been constructive criticism is, instead, phrased as both a threat and an insult then how am I supposed to engage you in any kind of intelligent discourse?
Which brings me to the third point:
I have to be honest with you, Ray, I do find that offensive. In fact I find that very offensive. If someone made a similar comment about someone’s race or ethnicity you would call them a bigot, wouldn’t you? But why, then, do you feel it is okay to make denigrating remarks about my genetics?
And what exactly are you trying to say there? If you follow that argument to it’s logical conclusion, then short/small people everywhere should choose their words carefully because there will always be a tall/big person waiting around to smack them down.
Is that really the argument you were trying to make? At exactly what size does one become, ‘big enough to talk like that’?
And who is the bigger person that is going to make me regret ‘talking like that’? Is that you?
The rational part of me knows that the rational part of you did not mean it that way, yet those were the words you chose. So maybe both of us chose words on Monday that were ill-advised and could be taken out of context?
I didn’t choose to be short, anymore than you chose to be tall. Yes, I happen to be shorter than you are, but if you feel superior because you happen to have been bred by taller parents, through no choice of your own and with no action on your part, that really says more about you than it does about me, doesn’t it?
Anyway, Ray, I’m glad we had this talk. Thank you for voicing your concerns and thank you for letting me vent. (Who am I kidding, no one has the time to actually read this whole post.) Today was actually a much better day, we were just as busy but things ran so much smoother because my amazing wife was there to do all the managing and coordinating and all I had to do was answer the phone and make pizza, which is what I love doing anyway.
@Charlie: Thanks for making me laugh, I really needed that today.
@Wes: Thanks, and you are absolutely right about the atmosphere of my tiny 40 square meters of heaven. At it’s best, it is a cleverly choreographed cacophony of chaos; and at other times it’s just chaos.
@Jerry: Remember that post you put up after the Lazy Pug Halloween last year? I’ve been dying to tell my side of the story, but you have to PROMISE that you won’t get mad.