
If You Can Manage a Waffle House, You Can Manage Anything - jkuria
https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-can-manage-a-waffle-house-you-can-manage-anything-11572667205?mod=rsswn
======
Stunting
I was a waiter on the night shift in a Baton Rouge Waffle House.

Adored my time there, learned a lot and made enough money to pursue my dream
career.

Among them: \- You can be an asshole but as long as you follow protocol things
will run smoothly. Had lots of arguments with cooks about whatever was
happening, but if you stand in the right spot and call the orders correctly,
and mark the plate the right way, your food came out when it was suppose to,
the way it was suppose to.

\- When it comes to increasing tips, Charm beats good service. At 2 am, all
the drunk people enjoy chaos and jokes more than getting their orders correct.

\- the person who decides when your food is served holds 100% of the power. If
you’re going to be belligerent, you’re gonna wait to eat. If you’re gonna
irritate the cooks, you’re gonna lose tips cause your food comes up last.

\- security is only there for the appearance of safety. If a group of
drunkards starts a brawl, the one hired hand isn’t going to stop them. Call
the cops, clear out as many breakables and weapons as you can, and get the
onlookers to stand back is the most you can do.

\- Getting yelled isn’t as bad as you think it is. You can still operate in
chaos if you follow your routine

\- number one way to increase tips is volume, and the number one way to
increase volume to your section is to wipe the table whenever they’re coming
through the door.

~~~
tootie
Explain wiping the table? Are you fooling people into thinking the place is
busier than it is?

~~~
chance_state
I assume the effect is that a group of diners walks in, thinks "ah let's get
the clean table!", and wanders over to your section.

~~~
joezydeco
I would think it probably also subconsciously signals that someone is ready to
serve that table quickly and getting you your food faster, as opposed to an
equally clean table across the room with no staff near it.

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scarface74
The article states that a manager at Waffle House starts out at “only” $45K.
Most Waffle Houses are in the south. You can do ok making 45K a year.

Yes there were cases of racism at Waffle House and I think they addressed them
pretty well on a corporate level. I’m Black and live in a _very_ White part of
town. I walk into some Waffle House’s playing country music in the juke box,
with pickup trucks plastered with MAGA stickers and have always been treated
well. I have found none of the stereo types to be true.

~~~
wccrawford
$45k is nice, but for a manager doing a job so hard that this article says
they can "manage anything", it seems like they're woefully underpaid. With
their skills, they should be able to command a lot more pay somewhere else.

If all of this is true, I'd expect to see more WH managers move to higher
paying jobs and WH have a harder time finding qualified managers, meaning
they'd be forced to pay more.

Apparently the article claims they could get $117k, which is a _lot_
different. Even with some hefty exaggeration, that would mean they are indeed
woefully underpaid.

~~~
ethbro
Waffle House managers, in my experience, are heavily sourced internally. (Or
at least used to be)

This ensures you have a pipeline of new managers when someone moves on, as
well as benefiting from far more experience than hiring externally.

Furthermore, while there may be higher paying jobs in a nearby city, there
certainly aren't in the same area.

There are Waffle Houses at the intersection of two state highways. Which is to
say, places where they're the _only_ business there.

~~~
wronglebowski
Coming from someone who spent years in hospitality this is 100% the right
answer. I’ve since moved onto technology gigs but it’s very common to prove
yourself in a much lower tiered position and move on.

Start at McDonald’s, move to Panera and receive a nice Quality of life bump,
then move onto something even more stable and rewarding like Trader Joe’s or
Costco.

The other side of this is those that are very capable but very deficient in
other areas, they started working at Waffle House since they don’t fit into
normal society as one would think of it and happen to land there. Since the
barrier to break into these jobs is nonexistent they do find a “home” and lack
the ability to ever grow or move on, for better or worse.

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nikhizzle
One quick way my wife and I use to judge any kind of restaurant or hotel is by
watching the manager. We’ve consistently noticed in places where the manager
is doing their job in addition to the day to day work, the place has great
service and provides quality. We find often at the places we like best, high
end or hole in the wall, the manager or owner is serving people, or cooking or
generally getting things done.

The converse is also true. At places we get bad service, or bad food the
manager is normally in one place bossing the troops.

~~~
wil421
In my experience Waffle houses don’t always have a managed. Sometimes late at
night they only have a cook and one waiter.

A good manager should be able to fill in on any position, expo, cook, hostess,
or helping waitstaff. The problem is they could get stuck at peak hours
helping in the back and not seen very much.

~~~
scarface74
There is no hidden “back” at the Waffle House. You would see the manager
cooking or washing dishes right in front of you.

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seanhunter
An interesting fact is that disaster relief agencies use how quickly waffle
house is back up and running as an indicator for how badly hit a region has
been by some natural disaster (hurricane, flood etc) because their disaster
preparedness is so good.

Some details here
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1168860400319946752.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1168860400319946752.html)
and elsewhere.

They clearly take planning seriously.

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7thaccount
I love eating at Waffle House and an always humbled by how hard the employees
seem to work under what appears to be absolute chaos, but my order always
comes quick and the cooking occurs right in front of you, so you can see
everything is clean. It's crazy how there is a person who reads off the ticket
and multiple cooks who immediately respond (all-star, bacon, drop hash brown
covered, scrambled, waffle)

~~~
ethbro
Hint: Look for the single, colored "order calling" tile on the other side of
the counter, and how the upcoming order plates are set

There's a wicked smart method to the chaos.

~~~
joezydeco
The marking system is ingenious as well:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickgray/378694469](https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickgray/378694469)

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lordleft
It is a dream of mine to go to a Waffle House, ever since that Anthony
Bourdain episode -- the food looked delicious.

~~~
garfij
Can confirm that if you do, follow his script. Get the patty melt and a pecan
waffle and you'll be happy.

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wil421
Waffle House used to offer all Georgia Tech graduates a manager position. Not
sure if they still do but they certainly did from the 70s until the 2000s.

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CaliforniaKarl
In-n-Out is another chain I know of that is privately owned, and I wonder how
many similarities there off. Off-hand, I imagine not as much. I bet the chain
is small enough that their ‘support networks’ are much denser. But in the
other hand, whenever I’ve been able to identify a ‘manager-type’ at In-n-Out,
they always seem to be as involved as everyone else.

~~~
greedo
Store manager pay at In N Out is pretty high as well.

~~~
mullen
In N Out is based out of California, so the Manager pay is pretty good, even
for Southern California.

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ARandomerDude
> Since she graduated from Harvard LAST YEAR... [emphasis added]

Pardon my skepticism, but a person with less than one year in the professional
workforce can't be the standard of measure undergirding the claim "if you can
manage a Waffle House, you can manage anything."

Was there more substance in the paywalled section that I missed?

~~~
closetohome
Nope. It dropped her entirely after the first couple paragraphs and just
talked about Waffle House.

And three jobs in a year does seem a little high, even for tech.

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gadders
What is the current workaround to read for WSJ articles please? The Web button
above isn't working.

~~~
hyperbovine
Pay them...?

~~~
gadders
What is this madness :-)

But point taken...

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droithomme
I request a paywall workaround. Both previous known workarounds - Private mode
and clicking through from Google - no longer work.

~~~
garfij
Searching for the URL on facebook and clicking through from there should still
work (if you have facebook)

