I've worked for a handful of companies in my years, and no other restaurant ever came close the the waste of time which is the Red Lobster Meeting.
Red Lobster has meetings about meetings. It's absurd. Every menu change we all get hauled in for a waste of a morning. Every time our guest satisfaction ratings drop we get to have a meeting. Every procedural change. Monthly safety meetings. Training meetings. Meetings to yell at us. Meetings to reward us with some penny-ante bullshit trinket that they think might motivate us. Save your candy. Save your pins. Save your breath. Quit wasting my time.
Hire competent people and we could have 90% fewer meetings. Retain quality staff and you'd reduce it further.
And the worst thing? Listening to idiot managers drone on. Some managers are actually pretty good, presenting info and not putting you to sleep. But many, far too many, appear to have never spoken before a group of people before. Memo to Corporate Red Lobster: Require some public speaking training. If you are going to require me to waste half a day coming into work early, at least respect me enough to put together a quality product and quality presentation. It's like watching retarded muppets. Had there been an icepick near me during our last meeting, I might have used it to blind and deafen myself as an act of mercy. If I was in prison you couldn't subject me to this sort of torture, even at Guantanamo.
Buy each one of your managers a copy of Patrick Lencioni's "Death By Meeting" and save us all some time and headaches.
7 comments:
i was wondering if you could tell me the name of the song played in Red lobster. The song is by a woman. I'm not sure of the lyrics so if you could tell me the lyrics if you don't know the name. The song goes something like. I'm dying(pause) i'm dyring(pause)(maybe drowing or something) please dont' go(pause) I love you (pause) I love you.... If you have any information i would love it.
Ugh... I hated those early morning meetings we had when I worked at Best Buy.
I no longer work at Red Lobster (2 months of FREEDOM!) but I'll answer your question the best I can. First, I don't know your specific song. But about the music, it is different in different markets. What was played in my suburban Minneapolis store was different than the music in the Southern California store near Disney, which is different from the store in Dallas. Somebody might be able to tell you if they know the particular song, but without the location it makes it more difficult. Even then, it'll be a shot in the dark, but someone might be from that area and know it. I knew every song that came on in our store, which song was next, and could immediately tell when they changed the rotation by adding/subtracting/changing songs. 5 days a week, 30+ hours a week, 50+ weeks a year for the last few years got me pretty well attuned to the Lobster music rotation!
I need to remember to check this blog more often. Now that I'm not in the industry I've become negligent in my readings! - chubby chaser - CRACKED ME UP!
I totally agree. I spend a lot of time in meetings where one of the bullets on the agenda is literally figuring out where to go for dinner afterwards...is this necessary?
hahaha. at least at your Darden sister, Olive Garden, has meetings that are very employee-interactive (albeit obscenely early in the morning like yours).
Oh yes I just love those meetings... get off work at midnight... and be back bright and early... to hear the same thing they could of told you during your shift. But that would be to easy and wouldn't waste our time and their money.
Oh yeah and they wonder why server knowledge went down... wow.. I wonder if it could be because they just hired a bunch of brain dead people,,probably because they looked real cute.. to bad they don't have brains
the song is called 'down on my knees' by ayo'
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