New Job Part B
So now we're three days into delivery going live. Things are going pretty well. I've got one driver that really has a pretty good grip on the job. I'll call him Driver A. Both are decent at delivery but one that is still afraid of the computer, and super shaky answering the phone, while Driver A is already getting a pretty good grasp of it. We finally got him on the phone today to take one order with two people helping him with it. Thankfully, it was someone that I already knew from delivering to them often in another location, and they are very likely to be a regular customer here too. That's good in that they were really patient with him.
I think Driver A is going to do great, and I already think of him as my lead driver. Driver B, I'm not sure how long he's going to last. He's super willing to work, but his restaurant experience is very limited, and he doesn't understand that when he has a question, he can't just jump in and ask the question the instant it occurs to him. He's too chatty, and interrupts a lot when I'm trying to give instructions. I rebuked him a little bit for it today by asking him to wait until I was finished speaking before asking questions.
I started Driver C today, and she's a pretty smart lady with the potential to be a good driver. She comes with some experience from a restaurant I have 7 years with myself, but it's from some time back, before they were computerized. I think she's a little bit of a know it all, in that while she was supposed to be training with one of the servers, instead of following her around like a puppy as I wanted her to so that she could get a refresher on all aspects of service while she was learning the POS, she only wanted to catch up with her whenever she saw that server was about to enter an order. I don't know if that was because she didn't want to follow the server around, or if the server didn't want her following her around. That same server seemed much more attentive when she was teaching me, but that may have been because I am a manager. I put her in a car with Driver A for a couple of trips and then she didn't want to do that any more. She kind of waved of doing any more training. "POS, Driving... I got that. It's nothing." I'm guessing that she assumed that I would just stick her in her car and let her start delivering, but instead, I sent her on home. Tomorrow, she'll start driving and we'll see how well she picked up order entry.
Overall, yesterday and today went much smoother, but business was way different than it was Monday. On D-Day, we got cremated the first two hours and then business pretty much fell away to nothing after that. Both Tuesday and Wednesday, it was pretty dead all morning, then we got a couple of orders a while after noon, and then we started getting pretty busy again, where I needed both drivers on the road with me taking most of the orders. We're having problems getting servers who answer the phone to let us know that there is a delivery order holding. I had a server take an order on paper and tell a customer we'd call her back with her total, and then not bring us the ticket for something like ten minutes. Then we were in the middle of another order, so we couldn't enter it for another five minutes. So while we're entering the order the customer calls back to give the information, is put on hold (while I'm in the middle of another order) but not correctly, so I'm running frantically from phone to phone in the whole (big) restaurant trying to find the phone she is holding on, so I can go pick her up at the delivery terminal of which we have exactly one terminal set up to take delivery orders. I did eventually get all her info and in the mean time, the cook already had her order going, so all was well. Later when it quieted down, I called that customer back to check and see if her order had been correct (and delicious) and she was very happy.
So, the upshot here is that while there are some bumps, we're learning a lot. I got a keyboard on our delivery POS, and that made things exponentially easier. Out in the dining room, we don't need keyboards. You don't have to get a customer's name address, phone number and all that in the dining room. With a new service, we have to get that on almost every single customer. Trying to do that on touch screen only is very time consuming. Lol. Things are smoothing out.
I think I'll have to rethink my schedule for next week though. My drivers are all being really flexible though. The first two have made it clear that they are open to last minute changes mid week for the first couple of weeks until we understand better how our hourly business is going to run. Right now, I'm 100% sure that my labor is COMPLETELY OUT OF HAND. LOL. Once I have a couple weeks trend, I'll know when I really need to schedule my drivers. Right now it's just a guessing game based on my experiences in other restaurants.
PS, I realise that I have not changed my theme. I let my paid account lapse, so I can't change it the way I normally would. Once my last paycheck from my previous job hits the bank tonight I think I'll reup my account so I can change it to fall. I've been using Facebook less and less as it's just a mess. The app doesn't work properly on my phone, and it's been more or less useless to me on the computer for a couple of years, so I only facebook from my phone. I also have stopped reading the multitude of posts from people "so and so shared this". If it's important to me, they can tag me. Pretty much anyone who never actually posts anything they thought of themselves are just off my feed.
I think Driver A is going to do great, and I already think of him as my lead driver. Driver B, I'm not sure how long he's going to last. He's super willing to work, but his restaurant experience is very limited, and he doesn't understand that when he has a question, he can't just jump in and ask the question the instant it occurs to him. He's too chatty, and interrupts a lot when I'm trying to give instructions. I rebuked him a little bit for it today by asking him to wait until I was finished speaking before asking questions.
I started Driver C today, and she's a pretty smart lady with the potential to be a good driver. She comes with some experience from a restaurant I have 7 years with myself, but it's from some time back, before they were computerized. I think she's a little bit of a know it all, in that while she was supposed to be training with one of the servers, instead of following her around like a puppy as I wanted her to so that she could get a refresher on all aspects of service while she was learning the POS, she only wanted to catch up with her whenever she saw that server was about to enter an order. I don't know if that was because she didn't want to follow the server around, or if the server didn't want her following her around. That same server seemed much more attentive when she was teaching me, but that may have been because I am a manager. I put her in a car with Driver A for a couple of trips and then she didn't want to do that any more. She kind of waved of doing any more training. "POS, Driving... I got that. It's nothing." I'm guessing that she assumed that I would just stick her in her car and let her start delivering, but instead, I sent her on home. Tomorrow, she'll start driving and we'll see how well she picked up order entry.
Overall, yesterday and today went much smoother, but business was way different than it was Monday. On D-Day, we got cremated the first two hours and then business pretty much fell away to nothing after that. Both Tuesday and Wednesday, it was pretty dead all morning, then we got a couple of orders a while after noon, and then we started getting pretty busy again, where I needed both drivers on the road with me taking most of the orders. We're having problems getting servers who answer the phone to let us know that there is a delivery order holding. I had a server take an order on paper and tell a customer we'd call her back with her total, and then not bring us the ticket for something like ten minutes. Then we were in the middle of another order, so we couldn't enter it for another five minutes. So while we're entering the order the customer calls back to give the information, is put on hold (while I'm in the middle of another order) but not correctly, so I'm running frantically from phone to phone in the whole (big) restaurant trying to find the phone she is holding on, so I can go pick her up at the delivery terminal of which we have exactly one terminal set up to take delivery orders. I did eventually get all her info and in the mean time, the cook already had her order going, so all was well. Later when it quieted down, I called that customer back to check and see if her order had been correct (and delicious) and she was very happy.
So, the upshot here is that while there are some bumps, we're learning a lot. I got a keyboard on our delivery POS, and that made things exponentially easier. Out in the dining room, we don't need keyboards. You don't have to get a customer's name address, phone number and all that in the dining room. With a new service, we have to get that on almost every single customer. Trying to do that on touch screen only is very time consuming. Lol. Things are smoothing out.
I think I'll have to rethink my schedule for next week though. My drivers are all being really flexible though. The first two have made it clear that they are open to last minute changes mid week for the first couple of weeks until we understand better how our hourly business is going to run. Right now, I'm 100% sure that my labor is COMPLETELY OUT OF HAND. LOL. Once I have a couple weeks trend, I'll know when I really need to schedule my drivers. Right now it's just a guessing game based on my experiences in other restaurants.
PS, I realise that I have not changed my theme. I let my paid account lapse, so I can't change it the way I normally would. Once my last paycheck from my previous job hits the bank tonight I think I'll reup my account so I can change it to fall. I've been using Facebook less and less as it's just a mess. The app doesn't work properly on my phone, and it's been more or less useless to me on the computer for a couple of years, so I only facebook from my phone. I also have stopped reading the multitude of posts from people "so and so shared this". If it's important to me, they can tag me. Pretty much anyone who never actually posts anything they thought of themselves are just off my feed.