A Interview with a Manager

Tim Hortons is one of the most popular coffee shops in Canada. It was founded by Tim Horton in 1946 in Hamilton, Ontario. In the beginning, Tim Hortons was successful by offering good quality coffee and donuts in reasonable prices. Today, Tim Hortons has developed into a more full service restaurant offering a large variety of breakfast and lunch choices, along with its famous coffee and donuts. Tim Hortons has developed to a well-organized franchise company. All Tim Hortons coffeehouses follow the same policies and rules, their inside design looks similar everywhere in order to be consistent. No matter which Tim Hortons you walk into in Canada, you can expect the high quality and a large verity of selections. It can be recognized easily by its specific decorations. I am looking for how a company is well organized and how a manager operates in daily routine to reach achieve the goal of a firm.

This manager has been working as a manager since last October at the Food Services on campus. He operates seven different locations of Food Services on campus, including these three Tim Horton coffee shops. There are about 200 employees under his supervision. His past experience working as a manager for 19 years was the driving force to make him very professional and successful in his career. His jobs require quite physical works; however he handles it very well and very organized. During my interview with him, I noticed that he is an experience and well organized manager; I had a good time talking with him.

As a Food Services manager, he oversees the entire operations on campus and handles a wide range of responsibilities, from inventory purchasing to administrative and human resource duties. On a daily basis, the majorities of his responsibilities include scheduling employee shifts; ordering inventory from suppliers; go through each location to make sure they are running properly, and solve any problems that may come up. In his own words, he is working "focus on fire", "which means when problems come up, he responses quickly trying to resolve the problems to keep the coffee shops running", he further explains.

When I asked him the skills and qualifications one should possess to be a successful manager, the first thing he emphasized is the communication skill. A Food Services manager must be good communicators as they deal with both internal and external customers; employees; and suppliers. They must be able to motivate employees to work as a team and to ensure that the food and service meet certain standards made by university. An effective way to communicate to employees is to directly talk to them and make clear instructions and expectations for their actions. When employees make mistakes, it is not only their fault, managers is responsible as well. Therefore, managers need to deliver clear instructions to employees and give them second chances and check their action to make sure they are