Perfect Pizzeria of Southville, Illinois, is a franchise of a large chain which is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Although the business is prospering, it has employee and managerial problems.
Each operation has one manager, an assistant manager, and from two to five night managers. The managers of each pizzeria work under an area supervisor. There are no systematic criteria for being a manager or becoming a manager-trainee. The franchise has no formalized training period for the manager. No college education is required. The managers for whom the case observer worked during a four-year period were relatively young (ages 24-27) and only one had completed college. They came from the ranks of night managers or assistant managers, or both. The night managers were chosen for their ability to perform the duties of the regular employees. The assistant managers worked a two-hour shift during the luncheon period five days a week to gain knowledge about bookkeeping and management. Those becoming managers remained at that level unless they expressed interest in investing in the business.
The employees were mostly college students, with a few high school students performing the less challenging jobs. Since Perfect Pizzeria was located in an area with few job opportunities, it had a relatively easy task of filling its employee quotas. All the employees, with the exception of the manager and the assistant manager, were employed part-time. Consequently, they worked for relatively low wages.
The Perfect Pizzeria system is devised so that food and beverage costs and profits are set up according to a standard percentage. If the percentage of food unsold or damaged is very low, the manager gets a bonus. If the percentage is high, the manager does not receive a bonus.
There are many ways in which the percentage can fluctuate. Since the manager cannot be in the store all the time, some employees make up for their paychecks by helping themselves to the food. When a friend comes in to order a pizza, extra ingredients are frequently put on the pizza. Occasional nibbles by 18 to 20 employees throughout the day also raises the percentage figure. An occasional bucket of sauce may be spilled or a pizza accidentally burned. Sometimes the wrong size of pizza may be made.
In the event of an employee mistake or a burned pizza by the oven operator, the mistake is to be reported to the manager. The expense of subsequent mistakes is supposed to come from the employee, but because of peer pressure, the night managers usually don't record the mistake. Instead, the store takes the loss and the error goes unnoticed until the end of the month when the manager finds out that the cost percentage is high, and that there will be no bonus.