Jeff Burkhart: Employees can make or break a business

We walked up to the front door, past a young couple kissing passionately off to one side. The vigorous public display of affection is a time-honored tradition utilized mostly by those who have nowhere more private to go for whatever reason.

We stood at the front podium for several minutes before we decided that it must be self-seating. Who hasn’t stood somewhere patiently only to have a server passing by say, “Just sit anywhere,” 10 minutes later?

I got up after another few minutes to grab a menu from the unmanned host stand by the front door. Eventually someone came by our table and dropped off two waters.

“Excuse me,” I started.

He shook his head and pointed toward the service station, indicating either that he couldn’t communicate or didn’t want to.

Two servers then approached our table at the same time from two different directions.

“This is my table,” said the shorter of the two.

“You’re cut; Sue said so,” replied the other.

And then the two of them proceeded to argue about the matter right over our table.

“This is such crap,” said one of them.

“I hate this place,” said the other, before both stormed off, leaving us sitting there holding our menus.

I knew where we were then. We had entered the feral zone: a zone of incompetence combined with neglect and sprinkled through with apathy. Sure, this restaurant had tables, silverware and glassware — all the essentials. And there were cooks, bussers, runners, servers and bartenders. The issue isn’t the stuff; it’s the staff, or more specifically, the quality of the staff. Feral restaurants reek of apathy, and there’s always an unsettling feeling about them, that it’s only a matter of time before the wheels are going to come off.

Eventually a third person took our order. And then another person delivered it.

“Can I get a knife?” I had to ask one of those other people who came to my table.

I had asked the food runner who had dropped off my steak, but he just turned around and left, never to return.

The sixth person I’ve dealt with shook his head and pointed at the server’s station. So, I got up and went to get my own cutlery, secure in the belief that those few people over there would scatter when they saw me approach.

And that’s exactly what they did.

“Who’s your server?” asked the one who hadn’t seen me approach.

“I don’t really know,” I said.

“Where are you sitting?”

I pointed.

A look crossed their face, a look that can only be described as knowing.

“I’ll find them,” they said.

Feral restaurants almost always have three basic similarities: a complete lack of any visible type of management, open hostility on the floor between employees or even toward customers and general disorganization.

There used to be a restaurant near my house that never bussed any lunch tables until the rush was over, which doesn’t really seem so bad until you show up on the latter part of the lunch rush and have to walk past two bussers standing around and 15 tables piled high with luncheon debris. It’s hard to enjoy your lunch while looking at dozens of dirty plates and napkins the entire time. Any restaurant professional could have told them that was a bad idea.

But that’s often the problem. There isn’t a restaurant professional there. Sure, there are people who are getting paid — which is the definition of professional — but that’s where it stops. For a restaurant to function properly, people have to want it to function properly. And most importantly, be willing to make it function properly. And that means they have to care.

But you can’t make them care or teach them to care. Anthony Bourdain once said: “Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don’t have.” And feral restaurants are full of the latter types. There’s no teamwork. The prevailing mantra is “It’s not my job.” And that is the crux of the problem because in the restaurant business the customer experience is everyone’s job.

“You done?” asked someone else, pointing at my plate.

We were — in every sense.

When we got to the front door, we noticed that the young lady who we had passed on the way in was standing at the podium.

“Have a good night!” she said through smudged lipstick.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• A good barback, busser, stocker or back waiter is worth their weight in gold. Bad ones are worth their weight in something else.

• If you’ve been to a restaurant or bar more than three times, and you have no idea who’s in charge, it’s quite likely feral. If it always has a different group of employees, it definitely is.

• “Every Man for Himself and God Against All” is the fitting title of film director Werner Herzog’s memoir.

• Lipsticks smudge; lip stains don’t. Just being a problem solver.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com