You're a Bad, Bad Manager!!!
So in addition to my "Restaurant Species Guide" which I promise to add to next post I've decided to do a few of my favorite management blunders.
Here is the first.
Desperate for good press after an appearance in "Dirty Dining" on the local CBS affiliate and less than stellar reviews in multiple local papers, my old restaurant had the corporate marketing suits come up with a few brilliant schemes.
And I do mean schemes.
The "Best of Des Moines" feature was coming up in a local alternative newspaper...
The paper depended on votes from the local community for various categories such as "Best Business Lunch," "Best Overall Restaurant," "Best Food" and such...
Well our assistant manager walked in with stacks of dozens of voter forms and informed the staff that the corporate marketing managers had decided that we were to vote for our restaurant.
You heard me right, they wanted us to vote for our own restaurant for the above topics and send them in.
He wanted each of us to fill out ten forms each and they'd send them in.
Democracy in action right there.
I laughed in his face and walked away.
posted by Waiter @ 1:46 AM
9 Comments:
While it may be immoral, I'm sure lots of businesses do it... Especially privately-owned business. Making the "Best of (insert city" list is undoubtedly good for business.
But forcing the employees to do it? That's just funny.
Besides, corporate-owned businesses don't belong on "Best Of..." lists anyway.
Not an uncommon practice. Our local "alternative" has stopped using reader polls to determine their "Best Of" list anyway. The results were ridiculous when left to the public: Wendy's had the best chili and Dominoes was the best pizza store. The whole point of the list was to hip people to unkown gems in the city but most of the rubes who picked up the paper for the transvestite hooker ads only knew about chain restaurants.
Wow, packing the ballot box never occurred to me. I figured the chains were just buying the placement, and that it was another sign that our media is shilling for money, instead of reporting facts.
Wow, that's pretty ballsy of them. But hey, if they insist you do them, insist you'll only do it on company time.
Nephew Dude:
I hope someone would have tipped off that local alternative newspaper.
Love,
Uncle R.
Hi - just dropped in to say I have spent the last couple of days reading every post in your archive, right up to the current one. Great blog, some real good stories and a nice style
From a fan in London, England
Our corporate marketing people came up with this promotion for a new dish, a four item combination, with the slogan "Size Does Matter!"
We had menu inserts, table toppers, the works. Well, two weeks later they had to redo the whole thing because someone finally realized that we basically had a reference to someones's penis on every table. Probably not ideal for a family-oriented restaurant.
At the restaurant i work at our door to our outside seating area says "Joe's big deck" "because size does matter". We are a family restaurant and nobody has gotten offended by it. As a matter of fact people enjoy it and find it funny. Most children do not understand the "size does matter" thing and if they do then there's a problem with the parenting. I have 3 children I bring to my job to eat all the time. The oldest is ten and he doesn't think of it in a bad way so i don't see what the big deal is. Also is not because he's stupid he's in the principals honor roll, gifted classes and scored above average on the FCAT.
woah...anonamous @ 10.03. "transvestite hooker ads only knew about chain restaurants".
I am trans and I am a waiter...please remember we are hard working people and our gender does not come into it.
As for this post, yeah my restaurant doesn't do this other because it is one of the unknown gems and we just advertise via leaflets near the shop, and often the customers are pretty happy with the service and food they tell others about it.
<3 your blog btw :D
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