Going to an Interview

Tell me about a time you went beyond and above the call of duty: I was working at the Central Park Deli and Grille in Oldsmar, Florida as a cashier. The deli was located close to a relatively large business center just outside of Tampa. The deli would normally get slammed packed from about 11:30 until 1pm every weekday. As a cashier I mainly had just one job and that was to take orders through phone calls and face to face orders. At a certain point we got backed up on the orders and were in over our heels, as long as the cooks could keep up we would be able to get the food out fast enough. But this time around our delivery driver was struggling to get the food to the customers in an efficient manner. I had noticed that the calls were slowing as the business lunch day was slowly ending, so I decided to let my co-worker who worked beside me at the cash register continue alone. I grabbed as much delivery orders as I could and took off to deliver the food in a timely manner. We were back on track and finished the day smoothly without any complaints.

Tell me about a mistake you made and how you handled it: when I was working at Central Park Deli and Grille, it was one of my first shifts I ever did. A customer came up and I took the order no problem until the payment. The customer proceeded to swipe his card and signed his check but I had accidently ran the order as a free one so the customer did not get charged a dime. When I realized I had made this mistake I decided I didn’t want to make a bad impression on the customer and went back through and paid out of my own pocket.

What do you do if you disagree with someone at work?: for me the way people look at you is everything. So I refuse to argue with a fellow co-worker in front of customers and or other employees. I also tend to go with what the co-worker wants to do because if one of us is not on the same page it could potentially hurt the business in addition there should be no negative emotions between workers. If I do get time I will go sit down with the manager and describe what is going on and what the next step should be. After talking to the manager he/she will come up with a solution that will fit us best resulting in no conflicts between each party.

Give an example of an occasion when you used logic to solve a problem: When I was working at the Central Park Deli and Grille we had to get there about a half an hour before the doors open to start all the prep for the day. We had a food delivery that wasn’t supposed to come until a little later in the day. The driver insisted that the food must be paid for on the spot and the manager was not there to write a check. I thought about grabbing the money out of the register but then we wouldn’t have had any change for customers, so I decided to use my own money to make sure this issue wouldn’t affect the day.

Have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t have enough work to do: Yes, working at Central Park Deli and Grille we had a huge lunch crowd and then shortly after the amount of customers would drop. Every now and again there would happen to be those times where almost no one would come in after lunch. In the meantime I would go ahead and start taking out the trash, cleaning the bathrooms etc… to go ahead and get ahead of schedule. Not that I wanted to close early it was just something to do, plus when it was time to close the workload wouldn’t be so much.

It is hard to act as a manager and review this information because it is a little bias looking at your own work. But if I was a manger I would be happy with what I read because for instance with the food truck wanting a payment sometime a manger isn't present to make a payment and it would be nice to have someone to be able to step up and get it done. As a manager I would also be pleased with the worker stepping up and taking deliveries when they needed help, there are a few different kind of workers in the world, some would see the problem and fix it and there is a few that would step back and no take action.