People

I've come to realize that in lieu of having 50 or so posts in this stupid thing I've probably accrued enough pages to write a book. I'm not sure exactly, I don't use Microsoft Word anymore because it causes post-traumatic flashbacks of panic-writing history papers at the crack of dawn. Not to mention I stole that bitch, and am afraid Bill Gates is cinching in the net around me. But if I had to guess this blog full of long-winded profanities, and nonsensical culinary rantings is getting pretty hefty in the metaphysical sense.

So continuing on nonsensical rantings I'm going to put that last paragraph aside and just say...

Thank you. Thanks for reading. I know there are about 40-50 of you dedicated to reading each post and I really appreciate it. This began on a whim at 4 AM one sleepless night, and continues to be written largely in the twilight hours when my brain is at its peak operating speed and coherency. I didn't really think anyone would care, I think one of the douchiest statements a human being can make is "Well I have this blog..." but you've made it fun. And you've certainly helped maintain my sanity because most of these posts are the product of existential frustration, released via intellectual masturbation and consequently, grammatically messy money shots.

Ahem...

I've mentioned the importance of employees before. The golden rule to restaurants, if such a thing exists, being that before you fill it with high thread-count linens and Limoges porcelain you must fill it with good employees.

And once you get those good employees, you hold on tight.

The employer-employee relationship is like any animal relationship. You give me something, I give you something, we come to an understanding about what and how much, and hopefully we both gain from it. Guy buys dinner, he's at least expecting a handy, depending on which number date we're talking . Girl cooks dinner, maybe expects ... what do they call it? Cunning linguist? I forget exactly, but that never made sense to me...

For anything to work in the long run it's got to be mutually symbiotic. Work is a fact of life and I think a great gift you can give someone is an intellectually stimulating environment to work in, while being surrounded by like-minded and talented individuals.

I'm not going to be an employer anytime soon. But seeing as my mother has been an employer for the past 30-odd years, she's seen some shit. She's seen hundreds of employees come and go, and learned a great deal about people and how they treat work. And working alongside her, I am beginning to learn a little bit more about management. I don't think I can make any effective judgments, but perhaps some observations.

Firstly, let me establish that what has limited my mother the most is the employees she hires. She is an immensely talented woman, with a strong work ethic and charisma, but she is self-admittedly frustrated with her inability to expand beyond one restaurant. This is a shared fault between her and her worker bees. At her peak, she was running three restaurants, but after my father passed away, the infrastructure proved too unstable to be held up by one person.

To create a restaurant empire, which by no means is something I ever want to accomplish, you need to be very, very picky about the people you hire, and how you develop them. I know my mother wishes she didn't have to be at the helm seven days a week, but at this point it is unavoidable. Her customers depend on her to have a good restaurant experience, and my mother in turn depends on them for a livelihood. She wishes she were more like some of her peers, who are hands-off restaurant hegemons running multiple establishments, and putting away gold like Scrooge McDuck. But I think it is the kind of hiring decisions she made years ago, that make that unlikely.

To make just one restaurant run well, and to do so consistently while growing in to the future, requires talent, dedication, good work ethic and integrity from every employee ranging from dishwasher to floor manager. But to get such desirable employees and to hold on to them is difficult. Is it going to be the pay, the environment or the prestige that draws them in? Or all the above?

Whatever causes the initial interest is irrelevant. You're going to get a certain kind of person who is motivated by different things. The key is for you as an employer to be selective about who you choose. They have to fit your model, your philosophy for hospitality and business. And you can never compromise on that vision.

I was watching Tony Hsieh give a speech about his innovative company, Zappos.com, and he went to great lengths to describe the unique work culture. During the interview and training process he offers $2000 to anyone who wants to quit right there and then, and he makes this process long and scrutinizing to gather as much information as possible about a potential employee. The idea of offering a "quitting" incentive is to really separate the people just looking for work, from the people who really want to be here. Once he has those people, he takes a long, hard look at them and hires based on an unwavering set of standards. The idea there is that if you make just one minor compromise on hiring an employee, then you're going to set off a chain reaction of future compromises, until one day you have a company that is unrecognizable to your original vision and philosophy.

If you hire someone, you ideally want them to hang around. I think Emeril (gasp I know, I can't believe I'm quoting the Fozzie Bear of the food world) once called it the deadly "revolving door." If you take in talent, talent is going to want to grow because it has ambition and drive. You had better give that talent a place to grow to because if not, they are coming through, getting trained at a great investment from you, and then going right out the door.

So being that you want someone to hang around near indefinitely, you probably want them to match your vision for business to a T. If you make just one compromise, like "Oh, she's really sweet to customers, but can be rude to her coworkers" or "Well, he works hard, but his personal life is a mess, and keeps interfering with his ability to perform" then you're going to run in to some problems down the line. I'm not saying it's easy to spot these things in a relatively short hiring process. Nor am I saying it is impossible to train a person to excellence, and bring them round to eliminate their own personal demons. But that's what firing people is for, and generally it's very difficult to teach an old dog new tricks if they don't want to learn them.

My mother considers employees in a few different lights; their capability, their work ethic and their motivation. First are the skills, can they handle the volume we do? Do they have good fundamentals? Can you describe a dish, carry a tray, serve a plate and pour a glass of wine? Can you cook a fucking fried rice or not?

Second is the integrity. Will customers notice that your apron is wrinkled? 99% will not, but the fact that you have not taken note and care of this detail speaks volumes about your character. If you're the kind of person who cares about your own presentation, which I don't care what you say is very important to restaurant work, then you're most likely going to be the kind of person who's going to notice a lipstick-stained wine glass, or a chipped tea cup, or that a customer isn't loving their dish. It just means you fucking care, and you're willing to work hard to do something right. Not because you want to suck up to the boss, or get a good tip, but because doing something wrong is heresy to your personal religion of labor.

And finally, why are you here? Is this just a sinecure to you? Do you like this work, or are you simply at the end of a very long rope of poor decisions?

Most of the employees we have gotten have been through an agency. A liaison in Flushing who helps connect restaurant employees and employers. They have a very ancient and tradition-bound system like that in Europe, especially Paris, and I believe Jacques Pepin simply called it "La Societe." He was dumbstruck that America didn't have something similar.

Anyhow, when you're getting employees through someone else's (read: nonexistent) screening system, you're going to get a lot of questionable people showing up at your restaurant. Most of these hopefuls show up for one day of work, and are sent home by my mother at the end of the night with some cash and a "thanks but no thanks." Sometimes people stick around. Dishwashers and cooks see the most turnover. The floor staff, managers and waiters, have been the same for years.

My mom keeps a mental All-Star team of employees she's had in the past that she really cared about, and really valued. They had talent, charm and skill but they also had ambition, and almost all of them have gone on to do their own thing.

There was Georgette, a Malaysian woman who spoke many dialects of Chinese and near-perfect English. She not only could handle all the mundane duties of taking phone calls, booking parties and reservations, and gauging customer satisfaction, she could manage. For an Asian woman to command a restaurant full of lightly misogynist, Confucian ideologues and to crack the whip is no small task. She essentially ran one of the three restaurants during the Minor Golden Age of Huang, with my mother and father running the other two respectively.

There was Freddie, the old, wizened waiter. He was from an era where Chinese waiters were expected to wear tuxedos to work. Every morning, a crisp and starched uniform with a hand-tied bow tie, and silver hair parted at a razor's edge. He was what you would imagine a kung fu master would look like if he decided to try his hand at restaurants; disciplined, kind, sagacious, and fiercely loyal. He was unfortunately diagnosed with Alzheimer's years later, and in a mishap of memory showed up to Lily Pond in full garb, years after we had closed the restaurant. My mother greatly appreciated this gesture of loyalty, reasoning be damned, and in true Huang fashion sent his family a truckload of food.

And then there was mysterious, unnamed Sichuan chef who she worked with when she was in her late twenties. I never got his name, but to this day she remembers his cooking. She calls what we do now "peasant food," even our elaborate banquets are nothing she says, compared to this chef. Chinese cuisine of such elegance and exquisite preparation that thirty years after the fact, she still remembers his Goldfish Soup with Watercress (not actually goldfish, more like fishballs and dumplings shaped into goldfish). She also notes his meticulous management and orderliness. If you asked him on the spot, in the middle of dinner rush how many cases of red bell peppers were left, he'd rattle it right back to you with militaristic precision.

So she knows talent when she sees it, it's just very hard to hold on to. It's up to you as an employer to make that happen. Now she is generally unsatisfied with her staff as a whole. Her kitchen is run by a chef she has worked with for nearly two decades. She admits he is a fantastic cook, with a sharp palate and ability to create, but messy management habits. Food waste is very costly, and his negative influences trickle down through the whole kitchen.

And her floor staff comprises of multi-year veterans, and certain managers that are less than stellar. They all have their good's and their bad's, and sometimes they shine, and sometimes they falter. But they are disappointingly human, in her eyes. They are like that warm body you start texting on a Saturday night after you've had a few drinks. Ladies, don't pretend like you don't know. They aren't exactly going to rock your world, but you can depend on them to be there and at least give it some effort. At the very least you'll get a big spoon out of it (Who doesn't like little spoon, honestly?).

But sometimes you have to accept people's faults. When you're running a ship out in Long Island, you have to come to grips with the fact that you're not going to draw the best talent. Hell, even LeBron left Cleveland. Maybe you should learn to work with people's weaknesses, accommodate for them, and play their strengths. Try your best, keep your head down, count your blessings.

Or maybe if you're a control freak, stricken with neuroses and an abusive relationship with perfection, you start fresh and you do it the only way you know how; the right way.

EP6