Week 3: Blog 2

Chapter 5: Differentiation

This is a concept I am unfortunately too familiar with. For two years I worked in a restaurant that operated this way, and although I knew it was dysfunctional, I didn't know a better way existed. Every job I had up to that point was with a poorly organized and managed company, so as bad as it was, I wasn't aware of any alternatives.

There was such a huge divide between managers and the staff that they existed as two separate subcultures that were constantly either in conflict or indifferent to one another, but never in harmony. The managers did not understand how the floor of the restaurant ran, as they were more concerned with wine tastings and maintaining a "see-and-be-seen" atmosphere. This meant that even though we had 2-3 "managers" in the restaurant during a busy Friday or Saturday night, they were no help to us (the servers).

If we had a problem, we fixed it ourselves or helped each other solve the issues. If we needed a discount or "comp" applied to a check we did it ourselves with the manager's code that we technically weren't supposed to know. Since they disliked being interrupted while shmoozing customers in order to resolve our issues, and since more often than not they didn't even know or understand why something needed a discount, they finally told us the code. Yet we all pretended that we didn't know it, in order to maintain the appearance of management holding on to some shred of control.

This is what immediately came to my mind when I read that in the differentiation perspective a common occurrence is for the named responsible person to not actually be the person everyone knows to be in charge. This restaurant had a general manager, as well as several assistant managers. Yet everyone knew that they weren't in charge of any practical aspect of running the restaurant. Under this type of management, the business should have been doomed. However, they survived their first year in business because their staff was able to pull together to keep the restaurant running smoothly and manage themselves. They have survived in the years that have followed because they found a niche in the night club scene and make a killing on cover charges and $15 cosmopolitans.

Did I mention that the "managers" of this restaurant were the owner's children?