Over the last few years that I’ve managed the recruitment process for my restaurants, I’ve made the following observations:
-on average, only one in three new recruits last beyond the first four months
-less than one in eight manage to last beyond the first year
-it is not the always the best or the brightest who survive
What explains this; let us see what a new recruit has loaded against him/her:
-no offs on weekends, holidays or festivals; no unplanned time off- period (which essentially translates to zero social life
-broken shifts- coming to work twice a day to cater for the lunch and dinner crowd, with a break in between
-working hours that end late into the night, waking up late to compensate - changes in the sleep cycle (chronic sleep deprivation) & meal timings and the health issues that this entails
-handling drunk, irate, egotistical and know-it-all customers and the stress that this entails
-high work pressure environment causes seniors to be aloof, unhelpful and at times downright rude to the newbies.
- finally and perhaps most importantly, a compensation package that does no justice to the abovementioned trials by fire
In light of the above is it any surprise to find that often the best and the brightest don’t or won't last. The survivors are the handful who can manage the kafkaesque metamorphosis that this line of work demands.
