The Importance of Teamwork

"There is no I in TEAM."

This silly little quote has been written on our staff bulletin board for so long, I barely notice it any more. However, tonight the real meaning of those words became unbelievably clear.

Tonight started like any other Tuesday night. A small waste of my time. A little money being made, but not enough to pay the mortgage. We were not very busy at all. So the manager started cutting some of the waitresses.

He cut 1 & 2. And no one came in. The waitress in station 3 was training a new girl and they had a ton of paperwork to finish, so he let them go. And no one came in. So he cut station 4. Station 9 is usually cut after 4, and that station had no tables and was next to be sat. I knew the waitress in that station wanted to leave, so I asked that he cut her, too. Now there were only 3 of us left.

And people started coming in. We got a party of 7, a party of 10, two parties of 5, and three parties of 4, all in about 30 minutes. We held it together, and managed to get everyone fed and happy with no problems at all. (Although, I did think the manager might have a small stroke before the night was over.)

Once people started to leave, we looked around the restaurant to realize that we were 10 minutes away from closing time and we had a MESS to clean up. Usually, we clean our own tables, do our own sidework, and finish all of our own table maintenance. However, tonight was a different story. I cleaned tables while another girl did sidework for both of us. The third girl want around and did all of the table maintenance. Because we were working together, none of us were really stressed about the fact that we had way too much to do this late at night. And we actually got it all done quicker than we ever imagined.

Now if we could only get the others to help out during the entire shift. What a great atmosphere and easier work environment we could create!