Do you want to be a good manager? If so, you need to learn to pull the weeds first.

History shows that if you become a good �weed whacker�, you won�t have to worry much about damage control. Years ago in this industry, when you were interviewing to be a manager or interviewing a manager, you wanted to know if they knew how to pull an employee out of the weeds. Does the prospective manager have the capability of seeing an employee getting into the weeds, and are they able to save that employee? A managerial candidate needed to know how to wait tables, tend bar, be a bar back, a busser, an expeditor, a cook, a valet, and a dishwasher. Whatever it took to pull the weeds was the priority of being a manager. You had to know �Weed Whacking 101�.

In management interviews, operators will often ask the candidate if they know how to read a P&L statement, if they understand average per-person guest checks and how to calculate food and beverage costs, if they mind long hours, working holidays and weekends, doing inventory, and so on. All of which is important to know, but if you can�t pull the weeds, why go any further with the interview process? Spending half of my waking hours in hotels and restaurants across North America, it baffles me that managers cannot see the problems that �being in the weeds� causes. Many managers walk around clueless to the fact that their employees are buried, that they are so deep that they are never going to get out of it. Others just ignore it because they don�t know how to be a weed whacker. Yes, they can do labor schedules, calculate pour counts and handle other intricacies of a management position, but if they can�t pull the weeds when they�re on the floor, they shouldn�t be a manager.
 

Any of us who have ever waited tables, tended bar or simply work in this industry, know the feeling of being buried, or �in the weeds.� It�s the point where critical mass is reached, when two hands and 60 seconds per minute simply aren�t enough. Maybe the hostess flat-seated your section, and you have tables of guests waiting for their drinks, their salads, or their checks. In many of those instances, managers are either nowhere to be found or are helpfully reminding you, �You�d better get to Table 26, they don�t look too happy.� It often takes a fellow server to walk up and ask, �Are you in the weeds?� for you to get your bearings and let someone else run drinks for you, or promote desserts to one of your tables while you greet newly arrived guests. When an employee finds themselves in the weeds, it�s usually one or two insignificant things that put them there. Once there, without a good weed whacker, it�s hard to get themselves out. By the time they do get caught up, the guest has paid the price and the operator has taken the loss.

The onset of being in the weeds is usually instantaneous. At one moment the employee is fine, and then�BAM! They�re buried. It can be something as small as having five customers at the bar and having a glass break in the well. The ice has to be burned, the well cleaned out and refilled with ice. When something like this happens, the five customers turn into 10 or 15. The manager walks by and sees the bartender trying to burn the ice and simultaneously service the customers, but does nothing about it. �That guy better get it together,� he thinks as he strolls by. Instead, the manager should be pulling the weeds.

�Managers should pull the weeds before employees get into them and then there will be less damage control to perform�
 

Damage control is essential, and no establishment can operate without it, but there should be more �weed whacking� than there should be damage control. You need to look at your operation and see how much damage control your managers are performing. This could be an indicator that your managers are not very good at working the floor. If this is the case complimenting them on the great damage control they�ve done is proper, but the correct action would be teaching and instructing them on how they get their hands dirty by pulling the weeds. The equation is simple: pulling more weeds = less damage control; less damage control = happier guest; happier guest = higher profits.

Allowing a situation to get to the point where damage control is needed is not hospitable. It defies the total purpose of the business that we�re in. It�s easy to understand when you look at it in its simplest form. This is not a difficult business. All you have to do is keep the customer happy. In order to do that, you have to do be hospitable to your guests and attentive to what your employees are (or aren�t) doing. Hospitality is defined as: the act, practice, or quality of receiving and entertaining strangers or guests in a friendly and generous way. Hospitality wins EVERY time. It�s that time-tested honored formula.

Most employees won�t warn you when they are on their way down, when they are about to be buried, or when they are in the weeds. They�re too busy trying to catch up. Once they�re in the weeds, there�s nobody to blame but management. It�s easier for a manager to do damage control and then reprimand the employee than it is for them to actually pull the weeds. We�ve become a culture of reprimand instead of leading by example, and that truly is a shame. So the next time you�re interviewing a managerial candidate, ask them, �Are you a weed whacker?� If that person doesn�t know what you mean or how to answer that question, you should move on to the next candidate.

Mr. Orilio is CEO of Grantham, Orilio & Associates, Inc., a Hospitality Consulting and Mystery Shopping Company headquartered in San Diego, California. For more information go to www.goashoppers.com