How to Manage Great Employees With Bad Attitudes in Restaurant Management

It’s one of the most frustrating dilemmas in all of restaurant management – what do you do with an employee who has such a great work ethic but has such a bad attitude? How do you manage an employee who has great quality work but complains all the time? How do you deal with the crew member who is reliable but poisons the whole culture? This is such a tricky situation that it will require some thought for each individual situation, but in this post, I plan to tell you how I have been able to work through these situations to retain both a great employee and a positive work environment.

First, let’s just talk about some givens here. One, you cannot sacrifice culture for quality. The reason for this is that once you start letting the culture go, the quality of work will plummet along with it. It is not possible to have a greatly run store with a terrible culture. Even if you are able to do it, the quality will suffer and you will not be maximizing the potential of your restaurant even remotely.

This is not to say that you must sacrifice quality for culture, but that they must evenly been developed and balanced, not one over the other. Therefore, understand that often times, the best solution is to let go of the employee altogether. You will take a hit in quality and you may have to scramble to cover shifts, but you will have extracted a poison out of your store that had been causing you headaches. Don’t worry about the diminishing of quality that comes from losing such a great employee, because the culture shift that comes from getting rid of poison often helps make room for new great employees.

It’s easier to develop a new person or adequate employee into an exceptional employee than it is to promote a good attitude in a negative person. The reason for this is due to the scope of what you can control and promote. I believe in personal development as much as the next manager, if not more. However, you can only control the employee’s work and not their work ethic. You can help guide them in their work and even help them enjoy their work and teach them to work harder, but the heart is not something you have control over, nor should you. It’s up to each individual to have a good attitude. When you start getting into the business of trying to change people’s hearts and minds, you have overstepped your obligation even as a human being. If you’ve ever done any soul searching, you know that personal growth and development starts and ends with you. No boss could’ve ever helped you develop a good attitude, only directed one. Dave Ramsey suggests hiring motivated and positive people and let them work out that work ethic for you. This is the restaurant business – we tend to get what we can get. Luckily, that grants us more opportunity for growth.

It’s not impossible to develop a good attitude in a person, but they first have to see the consequences of a bad one. This brings us to the solution of the problem. How do you deal with the individual who poisons your culture?

First, lets get a scope as to how bad the problem really is. Are they just annoying a few people or are they actually creating drama and frustration across the whole group? Remember that sometimes a strict and demanding shift leader can actually be good for a crew and that complaints against them, even from the whole crew, are just that – complaining against someone with high standards.

However, if you have gauged the issue and seen that the issue is truly that bad, it’s time to have a tough conversation. I’ve spoken about tough conversations in another post that you can read here Tough conversations are never fun to have, and this particular situation makes it even more tricky to maneuver. When you sit down the employee to bring up the concern, be sure to do it with the upmost tact and compassion – this conversation will no doubt attack their ego and they will become angry and defensive. It’s important in these situations to maintain a boundary of what you are trying to get across, so be sure to bring with you examples of times when attitude was not up to standard. Explain to them why it’s a behavior that is unwanted and not helpful to the store.

When you have this conversation, it’s important to try to lower their defenses by not coming across as accusatory. Even though you may be doing just that, try to word the conversation in a way that seems like you are trying to help them. A tip I learned about management from Amazon was to never assume malice. Ask them if something is wrong in their personal life that is causing frustration and offer to help try to ease that problem. They may admit that their frustration comes from resentment about the job for not being able to spend enough time with their family. You may have never even heard about that from them, as many employees tend to not vocalize their frustrations. Offer a solution in scheduling to try to help ease their frustration. However, always make it a negotiation – set the expectation that if you help them with their schedule that you expect a better attitude towards work and a more positive outlook. It must be give and take because if you only help them without expectation in return, they will assume this was a gift and they will often never change their attitude at all. You may just accidentally validate their behavior, teaching them that if they complain, they get what they want. That is definitely not the goal.

It's just one example, and I implore you to run through scenarios in your own head in your own situation to determine what you would do in each one. These sort of situations have no one set way to solving, however, if you start with the understanding that poisoning of culture is the worst poison you can have in a restaurant (other than actual poison), you will see the gravity of the situation. Start with the goal to remove the poison of culture, whether that means to change the attitude of the employee or remove the employee altogether. As spoken before, it’s almost always the case that the employee has to be removed, but don’t give up. You can use the opportunity to show your human side and let the employee have an opportunity to grow as a person and develop in great attitude. Who knows? You may even have saved a star employee.