Yellow peeps…
2024 went by so fast, in a blink of eye 2025 ha arrived. There are a lot of promises and resolutions that I failed to achieve; such as writing regularly and completing my on goin novel. I feel like I am experiencing severe writing block. I still don’t know why… Feeling I am luck of productivity, well, that’s obvious considering the number of things I have completed.
2024 was another down time for me, being unproductive influenced my mental health too. By the end of the year, I accepted a job in the city, because I thought it would be good to have a change of routines after all. I accepted an operational manager role, a role I never had a real experience, but the feeling to want to grow and trying a different role made me accept the offer. So, I had a three month probation to run a restaurant with a minimum manpower. The amazing part was that a day before I joined the company, one staff decided to resign. Orignally I would have 6 team members, it became 5 and then 4 on my first week. I thought to myself, “I see troubles coming my way”. On my second week, I got one staff returned to work, I kind of happy knowing she returned to work with us.
Since it was my first experience in operation role, I had so much to learn on the first month. Running a restaurant or a company, no matter how small they are, is challenging. I still didn’t see the real issue after I was on my second week, until things got out of hands. I began to express my opinion on how we ran the restaurant. I did not mind having the owners to get involve in certain areas, but they needed to trust me/my team. They hired me to save an almost dying restaurant (which was one of my favourite places to go for traditional & local cuisine); at least they should given me a chance to fix the issues, instead they simply could not trust anybody but themselves. I told myself, “I give myself 2 months, within this time I will do what I can to run the restaurant; however, if things remain like this or worse, I would leave”. Despite the never-ending involvement of the owners, I stayed.
As days went by, things did not change. The owners’ involvement in the restaurant operation went deeper. No matter what I did or we did, no matter how hard we tried; they’re just never happy. With limited manpower, we managed to boost our sales by 10% by the end of my first month. It was still below our target; however, we have positive outlook for the upcoming months. The first month was okay, I did not express my opinion that much as I was still learning the rope around the operation and the restaurant itself. On the second month, things were slower due to the unpredictable weather; severe moonson dropped the number of guests coming in. The number was made up on good days after that but it still gave me anxiety. If I did not hit the target or worse, if the revenue way below the previous month… I would be in trouble. The table turned on the second week, we received many special orders, many of them were for birthday and company end of year gatherings. So, the low number of visit was covered by these special orders. Higher orders meant we were much busier, we had to work overtime most of the time to cover the lack of manpower. I spent at least 10 hours at the restaurant because I had to help my team members during rush hours like lunch and dinner time. With the owner (the bos man (‘_’)!!!) came every day asking for ‘attention’ without any care in the world, slowed down our service. My team had to cater his needs, often during the rush hours he would come and asked for certain menu to be served immediately. And… Wait for it,… If we failed to serve our guests, he would throw tantrum by spitting venom. It hurt me but I ignored it. I told my team to be more accepting and reminded them that he’s the owner, he could do whatever he wanted to.
I was proud of my team members. The majority of them were fresh graduates; they’re lack of experiences in professional world but they’re willing to learn. It encouraged me to be more patience as I had to learn on how to guide them without being oppressive. They’re nice people, one of them was the same age as my eldest nephew which led me to care for him more. Then, surprised surprised… On my second month I learnt there were so much drama within this restaurant and its owners. The situation was a mess with complex issues. That time I realised this restaurant was beyond saving as long as the owners did not fix their shit. Everything was fucked up. If they did not trust anyone, they should never hired anybody running the restaurant. No matter how capable the person running the restaurant they would face issues that break them piece by piece. I felt like dealing with kids, throwing nasty tantrum whenever things did not go their way. I given up on the last day of 2024 after a heated argument with the boss man and the boss lady decided to side with him despite, refusing to see the two sides. I wrote my resignation letter on new year’s eve right after I got home. I did still come the next day, that’s when I trully learnt I was dealing with children tantrum. Why things went south? That’s because for the first time in two months I gave my one cent after the boss man gave off-handed comment on how stupid we were that my team did not even know how to get everything in order. Innitially, I did not comment the first time I saw his text on our group chat. I thought I needed to calm down if I did not want to make everything worse than it already was. So, I took my sweet time completing all special orders with my team, I had my lunch, I sipped my well-made latte I got from my favourite cafe. I sat down. I slowly read the messages and then I hit reply. I gave my one cent for every complaint he had on us; I even genuinely asked him to show how to work efficiently if what we did were so wrong and disorganised. I genuinely asked him to lend a hand instead of spitting venom when he saw we were overwhelmed with those special orders and also we had to serve dine-in guests.
The boss lady eventually kicked my team members off the group chat and refused to talk to me. She did not even reply to my greetings. That put me off, I should never put myself under this kind of situation. I refused to bow my head down to save this job. I love having a stable income, but the reason I was there in the first place was never for money. I was there for the experience, I was there because I could learn something; the knowledge was more than just money. I personally paid for every food/drink I had, I even paid for every new menu we developed simply because the owners would not give my team to try it for free. They’re the frontlinenrs, I needed them to know what foods and beverages we had on the menu; thus, I needed them to try. Once they tried, they would know the taste, the texture and even the food/beverage quality for their knowledge. In case there are customers asking, they would be able to describe it. Furthermore, I was paid way below my previous salary. That was an epic way to end the 2024 and start the new year. I will always grateful for the knowledge I have gained through that short period of time. I also learnt that being nasty is a privilege we do not need to take.
And then,… As I closed the 2024 with many holes. I am not going to promise anything in 2025. I do have goals to achieve but I refuse to make any promise, I will do when I know I can fulfil it. For now, I will return to caring for my neglected plants. There are several plants I could not save but there are more promising ones that I need to take care of. The amazing take from 2024 is that I enjoyed many fresh vegetables that I picked from my garden. I could experience my childhood days again as I picked fresh produce from my garden. Also, having hydroponic buckets are truly incredible. Even during wet season in Bali (Australian summer), I still have rows of beautiful vegetables; no rotting, all clean and crunchy.
One week ago I had to dismantle some buckets to start anew. I would share more gardening stuff as we go. And I would like to share my first experience making home-made Kombucha. I hate to pay $3-$4 per bottle of kombucha every single time. With $4, I could make my own and it tastes amazing. Fizzy drinks for much cheaper and healthier when I make it with higher quality of ingredients.
So peeps, wish me luck. I have a lot in my head and I need to get it out off and if possible, make some cash out of it.
xx
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