Page 107 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Standards

and if you didn’t have the customer base or right location to ring
up enough sales to perform above the breakeven point, it was
tough to balance the bills and maintain standards. It was a chal-
lenge for sure, but the best operators used ingenuity to get past
this hurdle, something I’ll talk about in Chapter 4.

Breaking Records
“We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone
else,” Ray Kroc said, and his words became my mantra from
day one. I worked my way up to grill person, the key position,
after many months and had a pretty good knack for speed and
dexterity, always striving to perform up to the standards
expected of me. Coworkers and I raced to see who was fastest
at flipping the burgers and putting patties on the grill. I could
usually hold my own. But the more important contests were
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sales. We strove to break any record . . . hourly, daily, or weekly.
There was a bonus if you worked during that time period. And
we broke records. Our store became one of the top sales restau-
rants in the area, and we got quite good at keeping the lines
down and increasing sales. It was also important in the status
of crew if you worked the “record” hour on your station. We
fought to be there when the big crowds gathered for a chance
to break the record on our shift. There was clearly some alpha
male stuff going on within our group. I became a fixture on Sat-
urdays, as that was our busiest day. One Saturday I took off
work for a family event and my coworkers called me at home
gloating that they had broken a new record hour and just
“wanted to let me know.” Of course, it had the intended effect
of making me jealous of them, and I was riled up to “take it
back” the following Saturday. It also made me decide to ditch
the idea of going to my upcoming high school graduation cere-
mony and just work instead. Heck, the school could mail my