Week 3: You guessed it, more pizza, and opening shifts!

Since the last time I wrote on this blog, OER still hasn't shown up (read my previous blog to read my rant on who OER is and why they are scary). However, knowing the deadline for OER is this coming Sunday, our store is now just getting ready in anticipation, knowing that we are bound to be hit within the next few days. This has meant a few things in the store, from deep cleaning every nook and cranny of the store, to making all food to perfection. But with hot summer weather and playoff basketball games, the store has gotten busy, so it doesn't help that our store has lost a few drivers over the past couple of weeks.

Because of this, I found myself managing the store on my own mid-rush on a Sunday evening, since our opening manager had left at 5pm and our closing manager wouldn't be in until 8pm. And with a store of only one other experienced worker and only 3 relatively new hires, the store got busy very fast. However, things got worse when some customers started calling in with complaints. Being the only manager in the store, I was always the first one called over to deal with any dissatisfied customers, which meant me being pulled off of the makeline with 10+ orders on the to be made, not a good thing in a store full of new employees. To make matters worse, dealing with unhappy customers takes time and often requires remaking food. For example, a woman called in and complained about her pan pizzas (a thicker pizza that is baked in a pan) being raw. Following our three-step WOW concern policy in which we apologize, give them what they want, and give them something extra, I offered to remake the pizzas myself and give them a free dessert and drink to compensate for any inconveniences. And because I didn't want their pizzas to be "raw" again, I made sure that the pizzas wouldn't get overtopped (making them thicker and harder to cook fully) and pushed them back in the oven to ensure they were well done and fully cooked. When I got back onto the makeline, the order at the top of our screen had been up for more than 15 minutes (when we are keeping up, we try to keep this number under 6 minutes at which point it turns red), there were over 20 pizzas that needed to be made and the rush was nowhere close to being over. Not even 30 minutes later, our store got another phone call with the same woman claiming that her pan pizzas were still raw. Of course, I had made sure that they weren't and so I had the driver explain that there was no way that was possible and that we would not remake the food for them. It was quite a frustrating evening as we got a few more complaints from customers, but I was able to learn quite a lot from this experience with the customer. Not only does good customer service matter, but time is valuable in such a high pace work environment that losing minutes during a rush can mean the difference between a successful dinner rush and an overwhelming and frustrating one.

My schedule from last week (Monday-Sunday schedule). I ended up helping out for 6 hours on Saturday because of an OER scare but was only scheduled to work 25.5 hours last week.

When our closing manager arrived that night, we were able to clear the screen of orders within just a couple of hours. However, we kept getting orders all the way until we closed, in which I was able to leave, having worked 11 hours, from noon - 11pm, stretching a 25.5 hour week into a 42.72 hour week (2.72 overtime hours)

A look at my hours after working 11 hours on a day where I was scheduled for 7, putting me at 42.72 for the week and sending me into overtime hours

Looking forward, I plan on running some opening shifts to help cover a departing opening manager so I am currently undergoing training. The main priority in opening the store is getting there on time (somewhere between 9-10am) in order to complete all the opening tasks. Today was just my second day of opening, but these tasks include setting up the temperature log in the back office (new protocol ever since COVID-19), turning on and setting up the makeline, checking the dates on all food tubs, filling up the cabinets of the makeline, taking doughs out of the walk-in, taking sauces out of the walk-in, setting up the cut-table, turning on the ovens, and then PREP. It is important to get the makeline and ovens up and running by 11am so that orders can be made without having to wait for the ovens to heat up. Prep consists of many things but can be categorized into meats, drainables, bread and brownies, big tubs, cheeses, and veggies. However, after OER, our store is planning on overhauling our current system and we will have to learn a new opening prep procedure (as well as new a new format to the cut-table). With the bread and brownies, they just need to be prepped, dated, and then stored. Everything else like meats, veggies, and most big tubs (pepperoni tubs, cheese tubs, pasta, chicken wings, and lava cakes) are just opened and dumped into tubs, dated, then stored. However, some big tubs require more prep, such as the specialty chicken, which must be cut before dumped into a tub, and mixed cheese, which requires mixing large quantities of pizza cheese and mild cheddar. The last of the prep consists of drainables, toppings stored in liquid (olives, pineapples, tomatoes, roasted red peppers, jalapenos, and banana peppers). These need to be drained before they can be put into tubs, dated, and stored for use. From there, more employees will typically start to show up and help with the store prep, which consists of stretching doughs for pan pizzas, making bites and twists (for parmesan bread bites, parmesan bread twists, garlic bread twists, and cinnamon bread twists), making cheesy breads, and slapping (stretching) doughs for use. Around this time, it is about 2-3pm and the store starts getting prepared for the rush to hit. And that's opening in a nutshell and I plan to keep doing this for the next couple of days ahead as I am scheduled to open on my own next Saturday and Sunday. I know some people might be hoping that they'd be seeing more food here so I'll try to get more photos and hopefully some videos of the pizza-making process for next week's post.