No, My Stapler Really Is That Important

It was suggested to me that we have an "ask a restaurant owner" thread -- while a good idea, I thought it might be a little bit limited, especially if only one person was able to answer.

Hence, I've decided to broaden it a little bit, so we can both ask questions and offer comments.


Focus: What questions do you have for people from particular industries?

Alt-focus: What do people not know about your industry that you wish they would? Did anything surprise you at first?

 

Being a parent isn't a job, dude. It doesn't pay, you don't need any experience, and it's incredibly easy.

 

The Restaurateurs don't, but the kitchen staff will.

 

I don't know about that, photos of babies on Facebook don't post themselves.

 

Alt Focus- I am a gun dealer for a pretty large organization, so I get a good number of CS type calls throughout the day. Despite everything that you hear in the news and otherwise, there is still a huge populous that believes we have a national gun registry that licensed gun dealers can access. People get careless with their guns and the corresponding serial number and the guns are stolen or a family member claims them or whatever.

1- There is no such thing as a national gun registry. If you lose a gun and you don't have the serial number recorded, that gun is pretty much lost.
2- The sheet that you filled out when you purchased the gun was a background check. It was to make sure that you're legally allowed to own a gun. Nothing more.

 

I'm going to answer it anyway.

I have three kids. I do not have a favorite. They all have different things about them that I enjoy. Morgan is strong-headed and can drive me crazy, but I like to think it means she'll go places in life. We have a couple of sayings when we talk about her. "It's Morgan's world and we're all just living in it" and that when she goes to college she has to pick a field where she gets to tell people what to do since she enjoys it so much. But she's smart and a good kid. Honestly, a bit lazy. But not in a slob way. She can be a bit naive, which worries me when she leaves for college, but I guess it's something she'll have to learn as she grows.

Catherine is Type A personality and is very driven. She does very well at school and wants a swim scholarship some day. If she keeps going the way she is, she should be able to get one. She is my most empathetic kid and is really close to her younger brother and tends to look out for him. She drives me crazy sometimes because I have to make sure if I tell her we are leaving to go somewhere at a certain time WE BETTER BE READY. I can tell she gets antsy because she'll start wandering around outside my room and then when it's time, she'll ask if I'm ready, even though she KNOWS I don't even have pants on yet. Calm down Catherine, it's a family picnic, it's okay if we're late.

Patrick is laid back like his dad. Very calm, probably too calm. I don't think I've ever had to raise my voice to him and if I do, he looks like a deer in headlights. He's also funny and he's got a sharp sense of humor. Funny story for him was when I was packing for AZ I couldn't find a pair of his khaki shorts. I was yelling down the steps asking him where they are. He kept saying I don't know. I then said they were like the blue shorts he has but tan. He said he didn't know where they were. I paused a moment, then asked him if he even knew what shorts I was talking about. "Noooooo..." he yelled up the steps. Why didn't he just say so instead of answering me? He also told me one time that while his armpits didn't stink OVER his shirt, without his shirt on, they were pretty bad (this was after they watched the puberty video at school). A friend of mine also told me one time that she had to stop him from dragging her son into the bathroom so that he could show him the awesome dump he took. He has probably been the easiest to raise because of his personality.

Having said all that, just yesterday when I was talking to a friend of mine about my sister I commented that she was our dad's favorite. I don't know why as she was a WILD ONE and brutal during her teenage years (not much better now either) but he was always defending her to our mom, which just caused problems there. So I do think it's possible to have a favorite. I have actually witnessed stuff like that while out.

 

For the first two, I'll answer no and no. Absolutely Not! And I'll go so far as to say if I EVER caught one of my staff doing that they would be fired on the spot. We run a nice casual sports bar that just so happens to be on the beach, and we treat our employees well. Very well in fact, and in return they conduct themselves professionally. For example, we usually give two bonuses a year, one at Christmas(duh), and an end of season bonus for all their hard work from Christmas until May. This year for their end of season bonus we'll be taking the entire staff on a cruise. Our current staff have all been here for multiple years so we have very little turnover. I've owned the business since January of 2006 and before that I worked here for the previous owner since 1998. That all being said, there is truth to the saying "You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time." We make mistakes, but we try to address them immediately so our guests are happy. Some times that's not the case, and we try to part ways with those guests as amicably as possible.

As far as kids go, no I don't have a favorite.

 

Restaurants How can a person politely comment about the food without pissing the staff off? Is it ever appropriate to comment on a cocktail being underwhelming?

 

Not in my restaurant. I spend the majority of my time in the kitchen as an expediter so I see everything. In our place the kitchen doesn't fuck with the front of the house staff either, and vice versa. My wife and I won't allow it. (She takes care of the front of the house mainly.) They either all work together as a team, or they don't work here. That was hard to do when we first took over because there was a huge chasm between the front of the house and the back of the house. We just started replacing people until we landed on a staff that gelled. It was a tough process that took a few years, but we're a better business for it.

 

I can only speak for my place, but just don't be a dick about it. It is that simple. Here, if one of our guests doesn't like a dish or a drink we encourage them to bring it to our attention immediately. If they don't we can't fix the problem and they , in turn, leave unhappy. We'll take it back and either make another or ask if they would like something different.

On the other hand if a guest has modified a menu item to the point where they are just creating their own menu and then they don't like that dish when it arrives, we'll ask if they would like something different but we won't remake that item "their way". If we made it that way, then it would be on our menu that way.

 

Focus: What questions do you have for people from particular industries?

Anyone here work in the legal industry? I'm part of the way through law school. Should I just /self like everyone says?

 

Now I don't work in the industry, but I actually saw this happen at the bar below my apartment. They ran out of Bombay Sapphire Gin, so the bartender grabbed another gin pour it into the Bombay bottle, swirled it around and then proceeded to make a drink. I asked him later about it and he said it happens more than you think, but it is regulated most by the distributors who make money off selling the expensive bottles. If the rep comes in and sees 5 full top shelf bottles, but they haven't sold them in awhile, they're going to be like "what the fuck?" and can cause a shit storm.

 

Not only a shit storm, but down here if they were to catch you doing it they'd yank your license right on the spot. I'm not willing to risk my business to save a few bucks.

 

How is marrying illegal? That's the dumbest shit in the world. Its the same stuff, its not like there is backwash. That saves space. That's confusing.

Anyone have any advertising questions? Anyone?

 

How do you sleep at night?

Do you really just drink scotch, smoke and cheat on your wife all day?

 

You could have a whole separate thread about shitty and stupid liquor laws. Like our SmartServe laws here, which state that once a person leaves your bar, it is the bar's legal responsibility to make sure the person gets home safe. Let me clarify. You see a drunk customer. You, being A responsible caring bar owner get them a cab. A drunk driver hits that cab taking the customer home and hurts or kills the customer. According to the law here, it is your fault that person died. Makes perfect sense, right?

 

I used to. Out of the five guys I was really close with in law school three of us no longer practice. Take that for what it's worth. To be fair the two that do practice love it and wouldn't want to do anything else.

I had a conversation with a couple of lawyers not long ago and told them I used to be a lawyer and now do something else and the looks on their faces was like I told them my wife wanted a threesome once a week. The envy was palpable.

Also, despite what your career services office will tell you no one on earth wants to hire a lawyer to do anything other than be a lawyer, so if you don't want to practice, better figure out some good lies as to why you just spent three years for a degree you don't want to use.

 

Its more about determining which advertising media is working best. I use a different 800 number on our website but I have a hard time figuring out which print media is working vs. where I'm flushing money.

Tips?