Lineup Topic

00:00Hello Music City, welcome to a different side of Nashville Restaurant Radio. Today I'm going to be doing a quick like five minute, I don't know how long this is going to be, but just something going into Valentine's Day weekend. If you are somebody who goes out eats at a restaurant, or if you're somebody who works in a restaurant, hopefully this will be something that will help you for the weekend. One of the things that restaurants do on a regular basis is they host something called lineup. So lineup, pre-meal, pre-shift, something along those lines is before the shift, the manager, the chef, they bring the entire staff together and they're either doing meal, family meal, or they tell them about these are the specials for the night, these are the things that we're 86'ed or out of, hey we don't have this wine, we couldn't get it in, substitute this, substitute that, it's really much, hey let's get everybody on the same page before the shift. So these can get kind of, you know, the managers get up there and they can kind of talk at you sometimes and I tend to watch, I like to watch during lineups, I don't talk a whole lot during lineups, but the other day I felt compelled and I really wanted to do a lineup that was impactful, something that was different.

01:20I feel like when you do lineups they need to be memorable. Like I want everybody in attendance to go, wow I took something from that and it was really good and I'm going to go have a better shift because of it. And so I did one the other day and I kind of planned this out just a little bit because we're going into a holiday weekend. This is the best weekend that you can get on a Monday, Valentine's Day, it's just the greatest, right, because people go out on Friday, I went out last night, had dinner at Lou with my wife and it was fantastic by the way. Lou in East Nashville, big shout out to Chef Malia. It was amazing. But a lot of people go out on Valentine's weekend, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night and Monday. It's a four banger. Now this year I'm about to play a video about blame. I'm going to blame the NFL because the NFL fucked us. This is not cool. Taking one of these days from the hospitality industry on a four day huge weekend for everybody is just a killer.

02:24And then again, you know what, how you look at it, it might be just an amazing break in the middle of a crazy weekend, who knows. But this particular lineup, I wanted to talk to the team because I hear a lot of people blaming people, everybody in everyday life, that guy did this, this, this and there's blame. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play you a video. It's actually, it's going to be audio here from Brene Brown and Brene Brown is an author. She's amazing and she does this. It's B-R-E-N-E B-R-O-W-N if you're wondering how to spell it. Go to YouTube and you can search Brene Brown. She has this video on blame and this video on blame is really cool and listen to it. It's three minutes long. Here it goes. How many of you are blamers? How many of you, when something goes wrong, the first thing you want to know is whose fault it is? Hi, my name is Brene. I am a blamer. Let me just tell you this quick story. So this is a couple of years ago when I first realized the magnitude to which I blame.

03:27I'm in my house. I have on white slacks and a pink sweater set and I'm drinking a cup of coffee in my kitchen. It's a full cup of coffee. I drop it on the tile floor. It goes into a million pieces, splashes up all over me. And the first, I mean, a millisecond after it hit the floor right out of my mouth is this. Damn you, Steve. Who is my husband? Because let me tell you how fast this works for me. So Steve plays water polo with a group of friends and the night before he went to go play water polo and I said, hey, make sure you come back at 10 because you can never fall asleep into your home. And he got back at 1030. And so I went to bed a little bit later than I thought. Ergo, my second cup of coffee that I probably would not be having had he come home when we discussed. Therefore, and so the rest of the story is I'm cleaning up the kitchen. Steve calls, caller ID.

04:28I'm like, hey, it's like, hey, what's going on, babe? What's going on? So I'll tell you exactly what's going on. I'm cleaning up the coffee that spilled all like dial tone because he knows how many of you go to that place. When something bad happens, the first thing you want to know is whose fault is it? I'd rather it be my fault than no one's fault because why? Why? Because it gives us some semblance of control. But here, if you enjoy blaming, this is where you should stick your fingers in your ear and do the nothing because I'm getting ready to ruin it for you. Because here's what we know from the research. Blame is simply the discharging of discomfort and pain. It has an inverse relationship with accountability. Accountability, by definition, is a vulnerable process. It means me calling you and saying, hey, my feelings were really hurt about this and talking.

05:30It's not blaming. Blaming is simply a way that we discharge anger. People who blame a lot seldom have the tenacity and grit to actually hold people accountable because we expend all of our energy raging for 15 seconds and figuring out whose fault something is. And blaming is very corrosive in relationships and it's one of the reasons we miss our opportunities for empathy. Because when something happens and we're hearing a story, we're not really listening. We're in the place where I was making the connections as quickly as we can about whose fault something was. So Brené Brown talking about blame. Is there anybody out there right now who feels seen who's like, oh, shit, that's me. Because I raise my hand. I tend to do that sometimes, too. And I've watched this video 100 times. And one of the things that I got out of this going into a weekend like this is that you're going to be tested every single night because the people that go out on Valentine's Day aren't your Tuesday night.

06:37I go out to eat a nice dinner diners. They're the people this this is amateur night, so to speak. So this this message is for those of you who work in a restaurant, as well as those of you who are dining in a restaurant, that just calm down like it's OK. And identifying not whose fault something is, but owning when things don't go right. And there's a book that we live by over here. It's called QBQ, the question behind the question. It's by John G. Miller. And he's been on our show twice. He's an amazing guy. But what he does is he takes these IQs. And what IQ stands for is an incorrect question. And what we hear all the time in restaurants are IQs. How come they didn't seat me? Why did they double seat me? Why did why did they get the businessmen? Why don't I why didn't they run my food? How come they never run my food? How come my food didn't come out? How come you didn't sell my salads?

07:37How come this these are questions that you ask yourself or even that you say out loud that immediately when you say how come they didn't run my food, you feel like a victim, like something has happened to me and I can ruin it. Just it sets you off in the wrong direction. That's why the person that walks into a restaurant and they get that bad greet. It sends them off in the wrong direction. The rest of the night spirals out of control. Right. So what we want to do is we want to use the question behind the question and insert yourself, ask a how or a why and insert yourself into the question. These are not questions you ask out loud. These are questions you ask to yourself. So as we go into a weekend where you're going to have a ton of people that don't normally go out and they're going to order the wrong thing or they're going to want to split meals or they're going to want to get water with 50 lemons. Right. The question that I want for people that really love service, people that want to serve other people, the question is what can I do to make their experience amazing? Because that's what we're here to do.

08:38We're not here to complain. We're not here to say they did this or they didn't do that. Our question is what can I do to make their experience amazing? No matter what it is or who it is. And when you do that, when your mind thinks that way, when you start thinking what can I do to back to some of those IQs, what can I do to ensure my salads get ran? What can I do to ensure that I get sat again? What can I do to ensure that the host likes me? Come to work on time. You can be nice. You can be a good human. What can I do to create amazing service tonight? What can I do to be a better team player? What can I do to make every single guest a repeat guest? These are questions that you can ask yourself that are going to drive you in the right place on a weekend where shit's going to get crazy. You know it's going to get crazy. And if you go into a weekend like this with the mentality of it's going to happen to me, guess what? It is. It is going to happen to you.

09:39But if you go into this weekend with a I'm going to make two people that don't necessarily get a chance to go out and they're trying to make a great impression on each other and they're in love and I'm going to make that experience that much better for them, that's it. That's what we're here. That's what we're here to do. And so I did this lineup the other day and I had somebody come and say that was a really good man. I really appreciated that. And I'm going to change my attitude. I woke up this morning. My car didn't start. I just kind of had a bad attitude. And you know what? What can I do to ensure that the rest of my day is awesome? And it's right there. It's in you have that power within you right now. So little 10 minute podcast today where I'm telling you guys this is going to be a fun, busy weekend. I'm super excited. Both of our restaurants. I'm at Green Hills Grill in Mirable all weekend long and I cannot wait to just help support and see people having an amazing, amazing time.

10:43And I hope that you out there, if you're going out to eat, that you remember that these servers, a lot of places are still short staffed. A lot of places, servers still want to mask. Don't be on your phone. Listen when the servers are stable. Listen to them. Be polite. Be kind. Kindness is key for everybody in this world. And if you're expecting people to be kind to you, it's nice to start off. Be the one that starts off with kindness. And have a great weekend. Love birds. And if you're a restaurant worker and you can't get out this weekend, have fun Super Bowl Sunday and we will be back next week. Lots of episodes coming. Gosh, I've got seven interviews scheduled over the next two weeks. So we're going to have lots of new shows. I'm very, very excited for what's coming up. Guys, have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. Please be safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.