I am a reformed manager of one of the national chain restaurants who shall remain nameless. I say reformed because I got out of the biz. Anyway, our company policy was that we could only hire age 18 and over. Part of that reason was because we served alcohol. The other part was because of what is being discussed here. It is just too difficult to manage. Like Pepper said, it is difficult enough to manage the restaurant and give our customers the best service possible. Throw some intense clock management on top of that and it gets even worse. We did have many many "kids" under 18 apply for jobs with us, and our standard answer was come back when you are 18. No matter what their experiences were, we just couldn't do it. And in a lot of cases we lost out on what could have been very productive employees.
With all that said, I now work M-F, "normal" hours, and 8 years later I still miss the business. I may make a stab at opening my own someday, but that I am still unsure of. Good luck to Pepper, Samiam and the other restaurant owners and managers. It is hard work but I know it is very very rewarding!
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