??? In the Trenches: My Struggle Navigating Friendships as a Manager

Learning who my true friends were while learning to be their boss

I have previously shared my story of trying to prove myself as a brand new manager by doing it all myself, which is a phase that unfortunately overlapped with my “Friend Manager” phase as I transitioned to our family’s second restaurant. In the original location, I was friendly with the team members, but I wasn’t really friends with them.

My friends worked at the other restaurant, which is where I had worked on and off during college breaks. The crew there knew me as College Claire and Server Claire, not High School Claire. College Claire was more fun, went out for drinks after work and even took smoke breaks (whoops). Server Claire worked tirelessly alongside everyone else when the lines were out the door, kept her mouth shut when others complained, and generally just didn’t want to be seen as a narc.

When I came back as a manager, that theme continued. I desperately didn’t want the crew to see me as a Nepo Baby (a term we didn’t have then for someone who benefits from nepotism), and I wanted my friends to know I was still one of them. So, now I was not only the Do-Everything-Myself Manager, I was also the Friend Manager — a recipe for disaster and overwhelm.

When I was still a server, I had become close friends with another server named Molly. She was older, a former stripper with a young teenage kid, excellent with her customers, and generally fun to be around. When I became her manager, we continued to hang during off days, but I sensed a slight shift in the wind of our relationship. As I took over writing the schedule, she would ask constantly for special shifts or days off. I remember one busy Saturday, she came to me and asked if she could leave to go to Goodwill to give her son cash for a record player he wanted. She pleaded, citing how much I also loved her son and knew how much he loved music. We were on an hour-long wait. I thought... Ah, there it is. She expects special treatment because we’re friends. I said no.

Read the rest of the story here.

?? For tips on how to get out of the weeds when you're the Friend Manager, see my previous newsletter. You can also join me at outoftheweedscollective.com where you’ll find a Slack community for restaurant operators with a crowd-sourced library of templates and guides. Completely free for active operators.