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Welcome to Gratuity Included. It's not as good as a twenty percent tip on a five hundred dollar check, but it is a bonus companion podcast to the PreShift Letter. Every Saturday, we break down the week's PreShift Instagram and email content. Not a rehash or a reading, but an expansion on the concepts, stories, and anything else that may not have made it onto the page. As often as we can, we welcome guests and other contributors, people who can add insight through their own experiences or because they were there for the same stories told in the PreShift. Hopefully, you've had a chance to read this week's PreShift Instagram and email. If not, you can find those on Substack, the PreShift Letter, and on Instagram at PreShiftLetter, or go to our website, thepreshiftletter.com for links and contact information. Thank you to everyone who listened last week. This week's audio quality should be remarkably better. I'm flying solo this week, so no guest. Today will be short, sweet, and hopefully not too self-indulgent. Last week, kind of an intro into who we are, what we're about, and what the goals are. This week, we start the actual heavy lifting. And like I said, it all starts with the self. We've all been there. You can do everything right for a guest, and then their food takes forty-five minutes because the kitchen is backed up. Kitchen, you can make the greatest plate you've ever produced, and then the server drops it on the way to the table. What do you feel in those moments? What is your reflex? Anger? Despair? Fear? How much of that reflexive reaction is now in the driver's seat? Some of us take a while to build into it. Some get there a little quicker. Regardless, we have a breaking point where the reaction is truly reflex. Or is it? My reflex is anger. I don't like this about myself, but the easiest thing for me to do when things are going sideways is to get angry at it. But the thing that I dislike even more than it being the easiest thing is that I can honestly say every time I have lost my shit, I have known I was gonna lose my shit before it happened. So if I know it's coming, is it really reflexive? Difficult guests, angry owners, call-outs, mechanical failures, an item that's eighty-six but communication broke down somewhere, and now there are five tables we have to disappoint. We know this business. Stress is part of the job description, and that kind of stuff happens all the time. It's not a surprise. So is there something more to the reaction? There's a common thread that we can see in people who are habitually angry, stressed, reactive. That is the sensation that my life is not my own, that things are out of control, and that life is happening to me. But knowledge is power. If we know it's not necessarily the situation, then we don't need to change what is directly in front of us. Problem is, none of us get there on just one issue. It's the compounding problems that make it feel personal, that make us reconsider our abilities and our life choices. But the reality is, the universe is not conspiring against you. We all have our breaking point. You hit yours. So what? This is where a good team and good management are invaluable. There's a particular dive bar across the street from a restaurant I used to manage that I have dropped at least a month's worth of my salary in over the years, buying drinks for staff who stepped up and bailed me out of various messes. Getting back to my life is not my own. If I have enough space to know I'm going to blow up, then I have choice. And having choice, decision-making ability does not square with my life is not my own. So what's really going on? We have a frustrating situation or six that is pushing us to our limit. But rather than see it and acknowledge the reaction that's building, we allow it to happen. Worse, we indulge in the reaction, and we watch ourselves lose control. As a manager, as a team leader, this sort of indulgence is not acceptable. And you need to be clear-eyed about where you're at in this process. You don't need to have monk-like self-control all at once because the ability to check yourself in the heat of service in real time takes a lot of work. Those triggers aren't going away, and they certainly aren't going to wait for you to be ready for them. Admittedly, it took me a very long time, years, to stop just watching it happen and move to doing something about it. But having been there, I promise you, the choice is real. If you can observe, you can choose to do things differently. So start watching yourself. In the situations of the most intense pressure, name the emotion you feel. Then ask, "Is this emotion how I would describe myself to somebody I just met?" Gratuity Included is hosted by Just Joe. To sign up for the weekly letter, go to Substack, The Pre-Shift Letter. You can also find us on Instagram at Pre-Shift Letter or on our website, thepreshiftletter.com, where you can also find contact information if you have any questions, comments, or maybe just wanna chat. Next week, I'm gonna try really hard to get a guest because this was a lot harder than you might think, and I hate listening to myself for this long. So thanks for listening. Now get the hell outta here