The Cowboy and the Staff militia; Company culture should mean something to the recruiter when placing a candidate

The story I'm about to tell you is true. The names have been changed to protect them from embarrassment and me getting nasty emails.

It was a beautiful sunny day at the ranch. I was about to get my first full day off in almost 2 months. I have been working with my very inexperienced sous chef for the past 2 months to be able to handle my day’s off on his own. We both felt confident that the day would be smooth. He was set up for success. Not much can ruin my day of fly fishing…at least, I thought so.

While on the river, I received a call from my sous chef, frantic, that I needed to get to the kitchen as soon as possible! He said, "chef an angry mob of staff are upset and are trying to rob the bar and the kitchen" I laughed because he was a funny guy and messed with me a lot, so I figured this was him messing with me. Then I heard him yelling at someone to get out of the kitchen. I ran back to the car, still wearing my waders, angry and confused. I pulled into the parking lot, and just like he said, about 8-10 staff were trying to get into the kitchen back door. Two of the staff were armed with AK-47s…no lie! They were upset that the checks bounced for the third pay period in a row and wanted payback. I get to the back door and tell the staff to please leave. They refused, so my sous chef and I locked hands across the doorway while they tried to push their way through; at one point, my sous chef and I looked at each other and smiled, like this is wild!! Some yelled, "let's grab prime rib," while others yelled, "lets go to the bar and grab whiskey and beer!" One of the maintenance workers got in his jeep and was doing doughnuts in the parking lot. I managed to calm everyone down and vowed to go to the GM's house to ensure everyone got paid. I made sure the staff meal was a great one that night!

Culture starts at the top, and our company ensures we don't send candidates into bad situations. We do our research on companies we do business with. We care about the candidate experience and want to ensure you know we are a team through the process.