How do you respond to problematic situations?
How does that process change under the challenging and stressful conditions of emergencies or disasters?
I’ve recently experienced a major catastrophe of my own and it has caused me to question my own problem-solving strategies and the effects that managing crises have on leaders.
Last Monday, my brother and assistant general manager, Justin opened the restaurant, only to find that there was water pouring down from our ceiling, to the point that ceiling tiles were falling to the floor. A little backstory: Our restaurant is located in a particularly old building that just so happened to be a Friendly’s back in the day. The design and structure of the building is honestly ridiculous and has pondered every electrician, plumber and contractor that its seen. One example of this ridiculous building design is that the three hot water tanks are stored on the second floor, in the attic. We are told that when a hot water tank fails, its supposed to leak from the bottom into the drip pans. When our tank failed, it did not. Instead it ruptured a hole in the side of the tank and flooded our attic with gallons of water. The building suffered extensive flood damage and we lost what was almost the entirety of our dry-storage and walk-in cooler stock due to this contamination.
This began a long and painfully stressful week of navigating the negative effects of having to repair the building’s damage, interacting with insurance claims, health dept and fire dept inspectors, fostering a communication network among a confused and disgruntled staff, organizing the drive towards normalcy, and brainstorming and implementing preemptive measures to avoid this sort of thing happening again. Needless to say, it was a busy week.
We had to close for a week. We were initially hopeful that we would be back up in a few days, but the restoration team needed to demo a few walls in the back to properly dry the building and that kept us from cleaning, restocking and prepping everything. This was problematic because although we were closed, we were still paying employees for hours scheduled and thus needed to find work for them to do within the restaurant. Our management team works salary, so we were expected to continue working through the week, but the rest of the staff assumed that they’d be off work. We notified them that they’d still be required to work their scheduled shifts, albeit we didn’t have them working their full shifts, and that led to even more frustration. It was difficult finding things to do during those first few days because we were so limited by the restoration work.
Anything that wasn’t damaged by the water was saved and stored up front in the dining room along with all of the dishes from our bake room. We had to pull all of our dishes from the back because the restoration team were planning on using fans to dry out the walls. This was a long and tedious process, which ultimately stalled due to our lack of a functioning hot water heater. (We had three total tanks, one burst but the other two were smaller in capacity) Once we emptied the bake room and removed all of the dishes from the back of the restaurant, we were limited with space in the front of the restaurant.
We had called off Front Of House employees as they weren’t able to earn tips, but Back Of House was still required to work because they were still being paid hourly. (We were told that insurance would cover employee wages during the closure, so we still needed to utilize labor hours since we were still paying them and the back-of-house employees were the priority; this also caused some discord between staff members but there was little we could do about that.) So we put all back-of-house employees on call. They were notified not to come in at their scheduled time and that we would contact them if we needed them during the shift.
But we couldn’t clean anything in the back of the restaurant because of the restoration efforts, we couldn’t wash dishes without potentially overloading the other water heaters, we couldn’t clean anything in the dining room because all of the tables and booths were full of dishes and whatever random products survived the flood and we couldn’t prep any food because we couldn’t order any food because we couldn’t get into our walk-in cooler.
We were tasked with getting as much labor out of the employees as possible while not being allowed to do any of the things that we actually paid them to do. This was hard. We crafted cleaning lists and targeted hard-to-reach areas where we could, but those first few days were incredibly frustrating because we felt like we were punishing crew members for something that wasn’t at all their fault by having them come in to work for the sake of it.
On top of that, the restoration team gave us a window of 9 am – 4 pm for when they’d show up each day and we were essentially waiting around until we got the call that they’d be on their way. We also had our everyday vendors who had us scheduled on routes and we had to be there to accept/return their deliveries. We also had visits from the fire department, the health department, the city building official, the building insurance claims inspector and the restaurant’s insurance agent. All of this meant that someone had to be in the restaurant during business hours, and that someone was either the owner or a manager.
We also had to deal with our guests. We put signage up in our windows and posted on Facebook when we had to close, but those types of signs do little when people are used to choosing a place to eat because they typically aren’t looking for them. We fielded dozens of phone calls over the past few days and tried our best to mitigate the anticipation by keeping the front lights off or leaving the chairs turned over on the table tops to show we weren’t open, but it didn’t stop people from trying and that was probably the most depressing part of the whole thing: having to turn away people who simply wanted to enjoy a meal at our restaurant. It felt like we were betraying their loyalty.
On the first day of the closure, I created a game plan. It outlined which staff were scheduled on which dates, the revised schedule of the management team, each employee that had to be notified of the closure/schedule change and when they should be notified, a detailed to-do list & a prep list of everything that would have to be prepared and reset for us to open and potential scenarios on which we’d operate to open the restaurant by Friday.
Unfortunately by Wednesday, the Friday open became a Saturday open and by Thursday morning, a Sunday open and by Thursday evening, a Tuesday open.
Each time our ETA was pushed back was a demoralizing blow. It was hard enough trying to organize a return to status quo in such a tight deadline, but having to continually change our plans required a great deal of collaborative effort on our part and we were quickly feeling overwhelmed. We were working frantically to get open as quick as possible but all of that work felt invalidated each time we were told, “actually it’s going to take another day.” This feeling was intensified as our time frame and to-do list was dependent on external factors. We couldn’t work on prep until we had a truck deliver all of our stock and we couldn’t order a truck until we had access to the back of the restaurant, which we didn’t have until the restoration team removed their equipment. We were also uncertain about the requirements from the health department and were stuck waiting until they could confirm whether or not we were okay to open.
This was very stressful for me, because I was trying my best to keep the public, staff and management team informed on every update, but each update was moot and hanging on confirmation from another party.
We were finally able to open, and of course that didn’t stop the stress or anxiety. We still have quite a bit of work to do and just as soon as that problem seemed to be solved, more problems have appeared. But this is the job and to steal a quote from Hemingway, “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” Problems, conflicts, crises and disasters will occur, but what is important is how you choose to respond and persevere.
My lessons learned from this endeavor:
1. Leaders have a responsibility to look out for the possibility of crises and handle the preparation process to eliminate any factors that could have been avoided.
Simply put, if you can prevent a problem from occurring, take advantage of that opportunity and do what is necessary to prevent it. If you neglect outdated systems or equipment, it’s going to reflect negatively on your ability as a leader when those neglected systems fail.
2. Leaders have the responsibility to make final decisions and in doing so need to make sure that they set reasonable goals or expectations during a crisis to avoid potential disruption.
When you’re making decisions that affect the entire team, consider all of the varied outcomes that may come from those decisions and any workable solutions that will help lead to that outcome.
3. Leaders are always in the limelight and charged to direct the public in the right direction. It is their ultimate responsibility to motivate the community to believe that they will get through this situation.
Communication is the most important aspect of leading in crises. If you do not successfully communicate what is happening, your team will begin to speculate on their own and this may cause significant reluctance in getting through the ordeal.
4. The leader must keep all parties on track to eventually achieve the desired results for success and an opportunity to move on past the crisis.
During times of crises, it is imperative that leaders are not only calm and collected, but also optimistic, creative, and willing to improvise. Respond to a crisis as a team with a shared mission and vision for success.
5. It is important that the leader evaluates the situation and comes up with lessons that can be learned from either the shortfalls or the successes of the entire response efforts.
Keep note on what went wrong and what went right. Make necessary corrections but remember that crisis-induced reform can create unknown challenges for the long term.
Thank you all for reading, Sincerely, MGMT
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