Melissa Lind of Charley Noble on walking the line between control and chaos in a busy service

I think one of the things that is a struggle for, you know, managers coming up through their peer groups is starting off as a, you know, colleague.

And then, you know, sometimes in quite quick succession, you become their supervisor, then you become their manager, and then you are expected to be their coach or their, you know, their leader.

And the dynamic changes so much.

And, you know, there's people you have a personal relationship with as well.

And some people... are really respectful of that dynamic change and you know some other people get a little bit it's it's it was really hard but I just kept holding on to what was inspiring me about working there and my partner at the time was a chef in another place and we just had this like energy with each other that it was like let's just like keep trying and keep doing this thing and you know if you're surrounded by inspiring people who are in the same stage as you So, yeah, I just did my best.

I think the thing there is I worked, you know, we were doing seven-day weeks sometimes, was working so hard, learning all these things, like writing a roster for the first time and, you know, figuring out, like, the rosters were a huge thing for me from an anxiety perspective.

Cause it was like, I'm dictating somebody's entire life.

And especially from being a traveler, you know, that the job that you get dictates how much money you make, how much time you can spend exploring.

And, you know, we had all these travelers on this roster and they're coming to me like, well, anyways, there was a lot of things that was a very, very steep learning curve.

And I just dove headfirst into it without the intention of staying there whatsoever.

I was like, I'm going to get as much as I can out of this opportunity because we're still traveling.

This is just a stopover.

Like we came back for, I think it was even just for a friend's wedding and decided to stay for a year.

And we were heading back to the UK with some new visas.

And then we ended up staying for two years.

And then we got the visas for the UK and tried to leave.

And then COVID set in.

So that whole two years of being the restaurant manager, I threw my heart and soul into it.

And without ever expecting to be where I am now.

Yeah.

yeah steep learning curves like dealing with customer complaints you know being responsible for that for this like you know someone's like well you're the restaurant manager you should know and I'm like

give me a second how much how much freedom did you have in your role um or I guess what was your relationship like with the owners and what is it like today

Funny, I think in the first two years of being restaurant manager, I might have had 10 conversations with the owner.

No, more than that.

And then leaving and coming back as the general manager, complete dynamic shift.