I’d Rather Be Short-Staffed Than Have the Wrong Restaurant Employee

Transcript: Episode 160, “I’d Rather Be Short-Staffed Than Have the Wrong Restaurant Employee”

Introduction

Hey there, restaurant pros. It’s David Scott Peters, and welcome to “The Restaurant Prosperity Formula” podcast. For over two decades, I’ve been guiding restaurant owners to success with the proven principles of something I call the Restaurant Prosperity Formula. I originally created the formula based on the daily practices of the most successful restaurateurs I coach, and it’s now the foundation of what I teach restaurant owners like you so you can achieve success.

What do I mean by success? Success is a restaurant owner who dictates the terms of their life and their bank account instead of their restaurant dictating those things for them. Success is a restaurant owner who has freedom from the restaurant and the financial freedom they never thought possible. How you define success is up to you, but I do know the way to achieve it is using the Restaurant Prosperity Formula.

This season, I’m diving even deeper into the core elements of the formula: leadership, systems, training, accountability and taking action. Along with my insights, you’ll hear from special guests, industry experts and inspiring success stories from fellow restaurant owners who’ve turned their businesses around and found their definition of success.

In this episode, No. 160, we’re tackling “I’d rather be short-staffed than have the wrong restaurant employee.” Let’s get started.

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Episode

I would rather be short-staffed than have the wrong people on my team. I know that sounds harsh, because when you’re running an independent restaurant and somebody quits, calls out or you finally let somebody go, that hole in the schedule becomes very real, very fast. Somebody has to work the shift. Somebody has to cover the station. Somebody has to close. And sometimes that somebody is you.

So restaurant pros convince themselves it’s better to keep the wrong person than deal with the pain of being short-staffed. But here’s the problem. Being short-staffed hurts you immediately. The wrong employee hurts you every single day, and usually costs you a hell of a lot more.

This topic came up recently during one of my webinars. We were talking about protecting the standard, and somebody thanked me for saying I’d rather be short-staffed than have the wrong people on my team. It stuck with me, because I think this is one of those things restaurant pros know intellectually. But when they’re staring at next Friday’s schedule, all that logic goes right out the window.

You start negotiating with yourself. Well, maybe they’re not that bad. Maybe I can get another couple of weeks out of them. Maybe if I talk to them one more time. Maybe I just need them until I hire somebody else. And suddenly the person you knew was wrong for your team three months ago is still working for you.

The biggest danger with the wrong employee is that their real cost is invisible. You can see overtime. You can see food cost. You can see labor cost. You can see sales. But you don’t get a line item on your P&L that says “cost of keeping Steve six months too long.” You don’t see a line that says “cost of your best employee getting tired of Steve’s [expletive].” You don’t see a line that says “cost of your manager losing credibility because everybody knows Steve gets away with things nobody else does.”

But those costs are real, and they compound. One bad employee affects the people around them. That person gets away with showing up late, and another employee starts wondering why they even bother showing up on time. That person ignores the recipe, and the employee who follows the recipe starts feeling like a sucker. That person has a bad attitude every shift, and eventually everybody else either joins them or gets tired of carrying them.

That’s culture. Culture isn’t what you put on a wall. Culture is what you allow.

So why do restaurant pros keep the wrong employees too long? Usually fear. And I don’t mean fear in some dramatic psychological sense. I mean practical restaurant fear. Who am I going to put on sauté Friday night? Who’s going to bartend Saturday? Who’s going to open tomorrow? If I fire this manager, am I going to have to work 70 hours again?

Those are legitimate concerns. But here’s where restaurant pros make the mistake. They compare keeping the employee to having nobody. That’s the wrong comparison. The real question is, what is keeping this person costing my entire team?

Because the wrong employee rarely stays contained to one job. They leak. They leak attitude. They leak inconsistency. They leak excuses. They leak bad habits. And sometimes they leak directly into your best people.

One of the toughest versions of this is the employee described by saying, “Yeah, but they’re really good.” OK. Good at what? They’re a great bartender. They’re fast on the line. Guests love them. They sell. They know every system. Fantastic. And maybe they also don’t follow the rules. Or they treat other employees like garbage. Or they undermine managers. Or they constantly push boundaries.

That is not a great employee. That is a talented employee with a liability attached. And sometimes the talent makes the bad behavior even more dangerous, because the restaurant becomes dependent on them. They know you need them. Pretty soon, they believe they’re untouchable. And worse, everybody else believes it, too. Now you have two standards: the standard for everyone else and the standard for your superstar. That’s poison.

This is where I want to give you a simple framework. Three words: know, can, choose. Before you decide somebody is the wrong person, walk through those three things.

First, do they know what is expected? Do they actually know the standard? Have you made it clear? Have you explained what good looks like? Have you trained them? Have you shown them the process? Because if they don’t know the standard, that is not an employee failure. That’s a leadership failure. You cannot hold somebody accountable for a target they cannot see. So if they don’t know, teach them. Clarify it, train it, demonstrate it. Make sure there are no questions about what is expected.

Then we can move to can. Can they actually do the job? That is different. Maybe they know exactly what is expected, but they cannot perform at the level required. Maybe they can’t move fast enough on that station. Maybe they can’t manage the volume. Maybe they can’t organize a shift. Maybe they understand how to coach employees but struggle to actually have the conversation. Maybe they understand the numbers but can’t manage to them.

That is a capacity issue, and capacity issues require a different response. Some people need more training. Some need more practice. Some need more time. And some may be in the wrong role. You may have a great server who simply is not going to become a great manager. You may have a great line cook who should not be your sous chef. That doesn’t make them a bad person. It may simply mean they cannot meet the requirements that particular role demands.

But then we get to the third word: choose. They know the standard. They can meet the standard. And they choose not to. That is where everything changes.

They know the closing checklist. They can complete the closing checklist. They decide not to use it. They know they are expected to show up on time. They are perfectly capable of showing up on time. They continuously show up late. They know the recipe. They can execute the recipe. They decide their way is better. They know the manager gave them a direction. They’re capable of following it. They choose not to.

That is not a training issue. That is not a capability issue. That is a choice. And choices require accountability.

That does not mean you fire somebody the first time they make a poor choice. People screw up. You screw up. I screw up. Your employees will screw up. They deserve feedback. They deserve coaching. They deserve to understand what they did, why it matters and what needs to change. That is leadership.

But coaching is not having the same conversation 14 times. At some point, coaching turns into begging. Restaurant pros do this all the time. “Come on, Steve. We talked about this.” “I know, David.” “OK, but I need you to fix it.” “I got it.” Two weeks later, same conversation. Then another conversation. Then another.

And every time you do that without anything changing, you’re teaching that employee something. You’re teaching them that your words don’t really mean anything. You’re teaching them that the standard is negotiable. You’re teaching them that the consequence is another conversation. At that point, you are no longer coaching. You are tolerating.

And there’s another group of people watching this whole thing play out: your good employees. Your best people are watching everything. They notice who works hard. They notice who cuts corners. They notice who gets special treatment. They notice when managers avoid confrontation. They notice when you avoid confrontation. And they’re constantly trying to figure out whether all the stuff you say really matters.

You tell them standards matter, then you tolerate someone who ignores them. You tell them teamwork matters, then you keep the person everybody hates working with. You tell them attendance matters, then somebody is late every Saturday and nothing happens. Eventually, your good employees stop believing your words.

This is where restaurant pros get blindsided. They keep worrying that if they get rid of the bad employee, they’ll lose somebody. Meanwhile, the great employee quits first. Why? Because great employees have options. A great employee eventually gets tired of carrying people who don’t pull their weight.

Think about what that feels like from their perspective. They show up on time. They do their prep. They follow the systems. They take care of the guest. They help the team. Then right beside them is somebody doing half of it and suffering none of the consequences. How long do you think your good employee is going to keep volunteering to be the responsible one? Sooner or later, they start thinking, “Why am I busting my ass?” And I don’t blame them.

This also has a huge impact on your managers. Let’s say you tell your managers, “I need you to hold the team accountable.” Good. That’s their job. Then the manager tries to hold an employee accountable, and you step in. “Yeah, but we really need them this weekend. We can’t lose them right now. Give them another chance.”

What did you just teach the manager? Not to manage. You just told them the standard matters until the standard becomes inconvenient. Do that enough times, and eventually your manager stops confronting people. Why wouldn’t they? You’ve already demonstrated that when things get uncomfortable, you’re probably not going to back them up.

Then six months later, you’re frustrated. Why doesn’t my manager hold anybody accountable? Maybe because every time they tried, you protected the employee. You cannot tell your managers they own the result and then take away their authority the moment exercising that authority gets uncomfortable. That is not ownership. That is pretend delegation.

So when do you finally cut somebody loose? Go back to know, can, choose. Do they know what is expected? Can they do it? And are they choosing to meet the standard? If they don’t know, teach them. If they can’t, coach them, train them or decide whether they belong in a different role. But if they know, and they can, and they continue choosing not to do it, now you have a different decision to make. Because at some point, protecting the standard means protecting the rest of the team from that person.

And yes, that might mean you’re short-staffed. Nobody wants to be short-staffed. I’m certainly not telling you being short-staffed is some wonderful management strategy. It sucks. You may have to reduce hours. You might have to close a section. Your managers may have to hustle a little harder. You may have to work a shift yourself. There is pain involved. But temporary pain is different from permanent dysfunction.

Being willing to operate short-staffed sends a very important message to your team: We are not lowering the bar just because things got difficult. That matters.

And something interesting often happens after you finally remove the person everybody knew should not have been there. The team gets lighter. Communication improves. People stop complaining as much. The shift gets calmer. Sometimes productivity actually goes up, even though technically you have fewer people. How is that possible? Because one toxic, negative or unreliable employee can create more work than they perform.

And when I say toxic, I don’t want you to immediately picture the screaming, fighting, dramatic employee. That’s the obvious version. Sometimes the most dangerous employee is charming. Everybody likes them. Guests love them. They’re funny. They’ve been there forever. But they quietly undermine your systems. They roll their eyes during training. They tell the new employee, “Yeah, that’s what they tell you to do, but here’s how we actually do it.” They ignore procedures when the manager’s not looking. They create their own rules.

That employee can be more dangerous than a loud [expletive], because they make breaking your standards socially acceptable. Now you’re not fighting one employee. You’re fighting an informal culture. And an informal culture wins if leadership does not confront it.

Every restaurant has standards, whether you intentionally create them or not. The question is who gets to set them. You? Your managers? Your systems? Or the strongest personality working that shift? Because if you refuse to deal with that person, you have effectively handed them control over your standards.

That is the part I don’t want you to miss. Firing somebody is not the goal. Protecting the standard is the goal. Keeping good employees is the goal. Building managers who actually manage is the goal. Creating a restaurant that does not require you to spend every day fixing everybody else’s problems is the goal.

Sometimes coaching gets you there. Sometimes training gets you there. Sometimes clearer expectations get you there. Sometimes moving somebody into the right role gets you there. And sometimes somebody has simply demonstrated they do not belong on the team you’re trying to build. You have to be willing to make that decision. Because every time you keep the wrong person because you’re afraid of the hole they’ll leave in the schedule, you make the right people pay the price. That’s the hidden cost, and it can get expensive as hell.

So here’s what I want you to do. Think about that one person on your team you’ve been making excuses for. You probably already knew who it was while I’ve been talking. You didn’t need me to say their name. You can picture them right now.

Run that person through these three questions. Do they know the standard? Can they meet the standard? Do they choose to meet the standard? If they don’t know, fix the clarity and the training. If they can’t, figure out whether more training, more practice or a different role makes sense. If they know, and they can, and they repeatedly choose not to meet the standard, stop pretending you have a training problem. You have a decision to make.

Your job is not to keep every employee. It’s not. Your job is to build a team capable of executing your standards without you constantly fixing everything. Sometimes protecting the team means coaching somebody. Sometimes it means giving somebody another chance. And sometimes it means deciding that one empty spot on the schedule is less dangerous than the wrong person filling it.

I would rather be short-staffed than have the wrong people on my team, because the wrong employee does not just occupy a position. They change what everybody around them believes is acceptable. And once that happens, you are no longer protecting the standard. You are teaching your team that the standard is optional.

Closing

There’s one number that’s quietly killing your restaurant profits, and most owners don’t even know what it should be. It’s your prime cost. Right now, most restaurants are running at least 15 points higher than they should be, which means you’re working harder and making less than you deserve.

If you’re tired of being stuck in your restaurant, tired of inconsistent or nonexistent profits, then it’s time to find out what’s really going on. I invite you to book a free 30-minute Restaurant Profit Finder call with my team, where you’ll uncover exactly what’s eating your profits and what it’s costing you every single month. Just click the link in the description to get started.