Have you seen these?
A Year in Books - 2009-12-27
Skip Tracer, Loan Detective - 2009-11-22
New Job - 2009-11-03
The coleslaw got served. - 2009-10-21
Probably a new job. But maybe not. - 2009-10-08

Regional Manager Man
2005-03-31 11:27 a.m.

Regional Manager Man was in the "restaurant" yesterday. I've decided that I can't think of Fazoli's as a restaurant. It isn't, really. It's a place I work. It's a valuable learning experience. It's fast food hell. So, I'll call it a "restaurant." Note the quotes. If I'm ever talking about it in person, I'll do the whole finger quote marks thing. I work in a "restaurant." It serves "food." Yeah. That's much better.

Anyway, RMM was in yesterday. For the first time ever during a shift I was running, he was pleased with our "restaurant." If this had been an official Evaluation Day, he would have given us a 94. It wasn't, of course. This was just a casual visit. But it was still somehow satisfying. Hooray! I don't suck!

He even made a point of complementing me personally. "You're one of my favorite people. I love your sense of urgency." "Sense of urgency" is a quote from the propaganda. The man speaks in Fazolian buzzwords.

I've heard Head Boss Lady doing it too, and it always kind of freaks me out. The other day, she introduced me to a group of new hires. "This is Ana. She's the one I was telling you about. Seven months ago, she didn't know anything, but she decided to control her destiny and now she's an awesome AM."

It's so disorienting. I always think I work with fairly normal people, but then they start with the FazoliSpeak, and I get reminded that they're at least partly alien pod hybrids. Just how far does the mindmeld go? Do they talk like this at home? Freaky.

Where was I going with this? Ah, yes. "Sense of urgency."

You've all seen me work. I move fast, I'm usually doing at least a few things simultaneously, and I can instantly switch from one task to another. This is what a good waitress is. It's also apparently a fairly good simulation of Fazoli's Inc.'s idea of "sense of urgency." So, yaay for me.
***
This hypothetical score of 94 is very strange. As mentioned, it doesn't count. It's also strange because I know it's mostly because RMM was in a good mood. He took a few points off for stuff that on previous visits he's totally burned us on.

I was naughty with the lasagna. There were a bunch of pans of lasagna that technically expired Tuesday. I slapped a Wednesday sticker on them, over the Tues. sticker. For some reason, yesterday, RMM's brain processed that as "Well, I know they've had issues in the past with date confusion. These were probably Weds lasagnas that just mistakenly got Tues stickers, and then they got fixed."

I've seen him throw out pans of lasagna that were actually legit, merely because someone was dumb and put the wrong sticker on them. Then, he'd take off a few dozen points on our score. Yesterday's visit was like a karmic realignment for all of those visits. But, it won't go into our file, or count for anything. It just meant that we get to feel warm and fuzzy for another two weeks, until he visits again.

It's also strange because I did practically NOTHING. In the past, on RMM days, I've gone in a half hour early, found a bunch of stuff, fixed it, and then he found something else to get pissy over anyway. One visit, I knew this would happen, and vowed not to worry at all. We scored a 64, and he threatened to take away our CORE validation (More FazoliSpeak, don't ask) if the next score wasn't better.

Yesterday, I did the lasagna thing, and made one minor change on the shift planner. A was my cashier, and B was training in the kitchen. A doesn't really like cash, and B isn't very strong in the kitchen yet. If it was a normal day, I would have left it, because B needs the practice. But, since RMM was coming, I switched them.

A was happy, B was relieved, and RMM got to see a smiling B as his first sight on entering the door, instead of a surly A. Such a minor thing, but I really think that's what set the tone for the whole day. I am MANA-GOR! Behold my strange and terrible powers!!

Actually, it's probably just that I'm getting a much clearer idea of what sorts of things need to be fixed. Instead of randomly trying to solve a hundred minor problems, I was able to focus on the stuff I knew would set him off. He didn't even seem to notice that my drivethrough guy was wearing entirely the wrong uniform. On a bad day, that would have made things exponentially worse, but since it wasn't a bad day in any of the obvious ways, it didn't really matter.

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