Saturday, 30 June 2007

Staff and new things

I'll do the products first, it is easier:

--We now have BBQ pizza. It has a BBQ sauce base, bacon, chicken and red onion on it. It is vile.

--We now have cheesecake. It has cheese, cake and no fruit. It is also vile.

--We are getting a meatball pizza. It will probably - be vile.

Now we stock bacon I scrounged a bun from KFC to make a bacon butty. I was told to put it on a full oven pass. Gradually the kitchen filled with smoke and the distinct smell of cat wee. Then out popped my bacon! It was extremely crispy, black and about a fifth of the size it started. The smell put me off entirely so I didn't bother trying again.

Then the staff...we have some new team members.

They worked well for about 2 weeks. Now they just stand there. Doing nothing. They're all desperate to work BOH but they can't even be arsed to do their front jobs properly. It isn't that they don't know what to do, they just leave it...and have no sense of urgency EVER. I taught them my good ways (ha) with "If you have no one to serve then do things which will make it easier later." So for example, rather than standing there playing Snake, restock the fridges...clean up that puddle of Pepsi...get receipt roll for that till which has had an error message for 2 hours etc.

I mainly work BOH now so I don't get to watch them all the time but I'll go out to the front to fetch a drink and the tiled floor for customers will be sticky with patches of black dried drinks. I look round, and there are 3 front team members standing there staring at their tills but with no customers. Because I trained these people I try and make sure they do things right. So on one occasion I asked "Umm maybe one of you could get the mop out here, it's sticky and going black with dirt..thanks.." and I smiled. The response was "You ain't a manager!" by the gobbiest of the lot. "I know but I trained you to not just stand there doing nothing, and when you do, it makes me look like a prick who hasn't showed you anything". "K." "Are you going to mop it then..?" "Later". A manager then walked in returning from his break, and the first thing he said was "___ clean this floor if you're doing nothing." to the person who gobbed off. Ha, I smirked at her and walked off!

Also, when they get out late, they are surprised - but blame it on being busy not that they stood there doing nothing.

5 comments:

Al said...

I'm training someone at the moment but thankfully she looks like she's going to be much better than the three you have there. In fact she's already better than some of the staff I have to work with.

I did wonder how your cheesecake would taste! I'm not a fan of anything with BBQ in the name so I wouldn't even have attempted the pizza.

Pizza Hut Team Member said...

I've tried everything we have because, I want to be able to inform customers - which is obviously my main reason...!

The cheesecake really is terrible. It is very heavy to eat, as well as being bland. You could empty a bottle of sauce on it and it would still taste bad. It needs some real fruit to break up the cheese bit. Interestingly everyone agreed with this, except for the gobby new girl who said it was "Ohh so gorgeous"

Al said...

So if someone asks you about the cheesecake you'd tell them it wasn't worth paying for? :)

James (UK) said...

Do you think these people just don't want to work because they believe that they aren't going to be there "for life" and so, if they were to be sacked, it wouldn't matter?

I see this all the time from a customer point of view, and know what you mean.

The only place I've ever seen a real "team" work is in the Chelmsford Starbucks, which I visit every couple of days... All the staff there seem to work together, and actually seem to realise that by doing that, it's easier for all.

Changing the subject, out of interest, anything happened since the smoking ban came in today?

Oh, and just realised what your profile picture actually was! (I'm a Splenda man myself...)

;-)

Regards

Anonymous said...

I work for a pizza hut also and i see these things all the time. but our team members for the most part work together just kind of slow becuase they are all new. we have cheesecake at our also, i dont like it. we put cherry, chocalate, and caramel as sides for it but still no good.

try this i think it is good ranch for suace, bottom cheese is cheddar not regualr pizza cheese, the bacon and tomato, then topp cheese is cheddar again. run throughe oven once. it does kinda burn the cheddar cheese but it taste is really good..