Staffing the restaurant to my satisfaction took some time, it was a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff. Hiring people who had worked elsewhere was not ideal as it was difficult to train them to do things my way. Those who had never worked before needed training and I was usually too busy to teach them. It took a few years before I had a team in place that clicked, and I suffered many trials and tribulations until that day arrived.
I remember one young fellow I had hired to clear away garbage, sweep the yard and run errands in the harbor. One day Monty came in from the dining room and said, “Judy, I don’t think that new guy going to last”. Taking me by the arm, he led me to the kitchen window and pointed. The young man was bent over sweeping leaves onto a piece of cardboard, and protruding from his back pockets were two cooked chicken legs!
I decided to give the worker a chance, perhaps he wasn’t used to the temptation of so much cooked food in one place, maybe he was afraid I wasn’t going to feed him any lunch. I had a talk with him about the chicken legs, and he promised never to take anything again without asking.
A few weeks later I sent him off to the grocery store with a small list. In those early days there were no itemized printouts of what you had purchased and how much it had cost. You simply sent a blank cheque and the amount would be scribbled at the bottom of your list or on a scrap of paper. I had grown suspicious, the amounts I was spending seemed too large for what I was ordering so I called the store owner and asked her to make a note of my purchases. I soon discovered that the list I had given my employee had grown to include deodorant, tooth-paste, mackerels in tomato sauce, shaving cream plus a few other items not associated with the Pizzeria.
The worker returned to the restaurant carrying only the items I had sent for. We found the other purchases shoved under Uncle Cyril’s house above the Pizzeria. I fired the employee immediately, and was amazed when his father arrived on my door-step an hour later. I figured he had come to beg me to give his son another chance and I steeled myself to be firm. No, he had come to collect his deodorant and tooth-paste, and the mackerels he was expecting to eat for lunch!