Conflict Resolution

Sunday morning: Our last few guests are getting ready to leave. Bekah is off, and Charissa and I are the only ones serving. I am scrambling to get sack lunches ready for them to take to the airport. Rob, who has been silently brooding all morning, comes by and tells me that he's starting to get angry because dishwashers don't put things away in the right place. Now, I don't do the dishes and I don't put things away. Then he starts blustering about how I don't understand because I don't live here and this is his home. Rob has been giving me guff about bringing in special orders lately, too--"You're too nice, they know you won't tell them no." Yeah Rob, I'll work on being meaner to the guests. Add that to my to-do list. Meanwhile, I'm trying to make sandwiches, which means I'm trying to learn how to use the meat slicer, find out where the other girls put the cheese, and cram into a tiny corner because Rob complained that we were taking up too much counter space. A few minutes later, Rob comes back and says, "I'm really having a hard time watching you make these sandwiches. You need to have the ingredients in separate containers and you need to slice all your meat first and you're doing this wrong and that wrong..." I was already frustrated because I knew it was taking me too long, but I was doing it just like I would at home and I didn't know a better way. Rob starts moving ingredients around and says, "If you're going to take up the counter space, then take it." That was the last straw. I burst into tears and ran into the walk-in. Charissa found me there and told me to go take a break. I walked around for a while to compose myself. I was also mad at myself for getting mad--I had decided not to take Rob personally and that I wouldn't let him influence the way I fee. Then I came back to serve lunch.

Ben came up to me in the dining room and gave me a hug. He told me I was doing a great job and reminded me that I was living out of a transformed heart, and said that any time it was getting to be too much to just come to his office and he would be my "dad." That was hugely encouraging to me. Most bosses I've had would have prayed not to have to get involved and hoped for it to blow over.

So, after that, I went back into the kitchen. I told Rob I was sorry for reacting so strongly, and in the future, if he wanted us to do something a certain way, maybe he could tell us before we started, because we're not trained in kitchen procedures. Rob totally surprised me. He apologized too and said he thought we'd been trained in the procedure, and he would love to give us a demo sometime. He said that he didn't want to make us cry and that it made him feel worse than we did. We decided that in the future, instead of getting angry and crying, we're going to give hugs.

So, I feel like I learned a lot from that. I'm nonconfrontational by nature, and it would have been easier to try to act like nothing happened. But now I feel like we understand each other a lot better and can deal with future conflicts better. I'm sure things will come up again, but now we can handle it a lot better.