Chapter 21 — Self-Check Quiz
Twenty-six questions. Answer key in the collapsed block at the bottom — write your answers down
before you open it, including the arithmetic.
Multiple choice
1. This chapter defines restaurant culture as:
- A. the values an operation publishes and trains to
- B. the set of behaviors a manager consistently tolerates
- C. the shared personality of the staff a restaurant tends to attract
- D. the guest's perception of how a restaurant feels
2. The four-document culture audit uses all of the following EXCEPT:
- A. the last eight schedules
- B. the discipline file
- C. the employee handbook
- D. the comp and void report
3. According to §21.1, your culture is set by:
- A. the standard you write down
- B. the behavior of your longest-tenured employee
- C. the worst behavior you let your best employee get away with
- D. the training you deliver in the first thirty days
4. The brigade de cuisine is generally credited to:
- A. Fernand Point
- B. Georges Auguste Escoffier
- C. Marie-Antoine Carême
- D. Paul Bocuse
5. This chapter argues that "yes, chef" is primarily:
- A. a deference ritual that reinforces hierarchy
- B. a confirmation protocol that proves a message landed
- C. an obsolete convention that modern kitchens should retire
- D. a training device for new commis
6. Bellwether's pre-shift is costed at 12 people × 10 minutes × \$17.00 fully loaded, across 7
services a week, 52 weeks. The annual cost is:
- A. \$8,840
- B. \$12,376
- C. \$15,912
- D. \$23,868
7. At roughly 36,140 covers and a 27.8% blended cost of goods, the lift in average check required
for that pre-shift to break even is closest to:
- A. \$0.21
- B. \$0.34
- C. \$0.47
- D. \$1.15
8. Under the FLSA framework described in §21.3, a mandatory pre-shift meeting is:
- A. unpaid, because no guests are being served
- B. paid only if it exceeds fifteen minutes
- C. generally compensable hours worked, and counts toward overtime
- D. paid at a training rate set by the employer
9. The World Health Organization's ICD-11 classifies burn-out as:
- A. a medical condition requiring clinical diagnosis
- B. an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition
- C. a subtype of clinical depression
- D. a workplace hazard subject to OSHA reporting
10. Which schedule disease costs the operator nothing at all to fix?
- A. the clopen
- B. the late post
- C. the silent overage
- D. the split week
11. Bellwether's sous is scheduled 55 hours a week and works 62.5. On an illustrative \$48,000
salary across 50 weeks, the effective hourly rate at 62.5 hours is closest to:
- A. \$16.18
- B. \$15.36
- C. \$17.45
- D. \$23.20
12. The "hero premium" describes:
- A. a bonus paid to staff who cover callouts
- B. the extra wage a restaurant must pay to attract experienced cooks
- C. the deferred cost created when reliability is rewarded with more work at the same wage
- D. the premium a guest pays at peak hours under demand-based pricing
13. §21.5 argues that most recurring restaurant conflict is fundamentally:
- A. a personality mismatch
- B. an undefined decision right
- C. a compensation dispute
- D. a training gap
14. Which of these is the MOST expensive form of the manager who won't decide?
- A. "work it out between yourselves"
- B. deciding privately for whoever complained most recently
- C. deciding and not telling the other side
- D. deciding, then unbuilding it when the loser complains
15. A signature on a written warning indicates:
- A. the employee agrees with the contents
- B. the employee received the document
- C. the employee waives the right to respond
- D. the warning is final
16. Bellwether's retention bundle costs \$19,716 and is projected to avoid \$19,400 of turnover
cost. The chapter's conclusion is:
- A. the bundle is a poor investment and should be reduced
- B. the bundle roughly breaks even on turnover alone, and the case rests on second-order returns
- C. the bundle returns approximately four dollars for every dollar spent
- D. the bundle cannot be evaluated financially
17. Which of the following does the chapter classify as NOT a retention lever?
- A. posting the schedule fourteen days out
- B. a tested three-step wage ladder
- C. an employee-of-the-month award
- D. two consecutive days off
18. On the delegation ladder, a task is not actually delegated until:
- A. level 2 — they do it, you watch
- B. level 3 — they do it, you check the output weekly
- C. level 4 — they do it, you check the number monthly
- D. level 5 — they own it entirely
Short answer
19. Bellwether's turnover in year one is 27 separations on a 31-person roster. State the turnover
rate, and state what it falls to if the retention bundle takes separations to 17.
20. Name the three elements of the brigade this chapter keeps, and give the operational reason for
each.
21. Family meal at Bellwether: 14 person-meals × 7 services × 52 weeks at \$1.00 incremental each.
State the annual cost and express it as a percentage of \$1,116,000 of food sales.
22. A cook drops a tray of chicken at 5:15 and says nothing, portioning the remaining chicken
thinner to cover it. Name three distinct costs this produces, only one of which is the chicken.
23. Write the three questions that make a stay interview work, and state the rule that must follow
within seven days.
24. Why does an exit interview become reliable in batches of eight or more when it is unreliable
one at a time?
25. Chapter 14's Friday night closed at \$116.70 of net hard cost on \$6,828 of sales. Name the
three costs from that night that appear on no report, and say which one this chapter argues is the
most expensive.
26. Bellwether's plan pays a partner \$55,000 (illustrative) for 68 hours a week across 50
weeks. Compute the effective hourly rate, and state what it should tell the partners about the bench.
Answer key
**1. B.** Culture is the set of behaviors a manager consistently tolerates. The definition is chosen
because it is observable, it is owned, and it can be audited.
**2. C.** The handbook. The audit deliberately uses only documents that record what actually
happened: schedules, discipline, separations, and comps.
**3. C.** The worst behavior you let your best employee get away with. Thirty people watched you not
respond, and they drew the correct conclusion about the rule.
**4. B.** Escoffier, who adapted a military-style chain of command for grand hotel kitchens around
the turn of the twentieth century.
**5. B.** A confirmation protocol — the same function as a readback in a cockpit. Kitchens that
abandon it reinvent it within a month. Its failure mode is that it becomes upward-only, which
disables the kitchen's error detection.
**6. B. \$12,376.** 12 people × 10 min = 2.0 person-hours; × \$17.00 = \$34.00 per service; × 7
services × 52 weeks = \$12,376.
**7. C. \$0.47.** \$12,376 ÷ 36,140 covers = \$0.34 per cover. Each incremental sales dollar
contributes \$0.722 after a 27.8% cost of goods, so \$0.34 ÷ 0.722 = **\$0.47.**
**8. C.** Generally compensable hours worked, counted toward overtime. Holding pre-shift "five minutes
before you clock in" is a routine and entirely self-inflicted wage-and-hour exposure. Chapter 20 owns
the framework; specifics vary by jurisdiction.
**9. B.** An occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition — three dimensions: exhaustion, cynical
distance from the job, reduced professional efficacy.
**10. B.** The late post. Posting further out costs the operator forecasting discipline (and, at
Bellwether, \$2,964 of un-trimmable hours); posting late costs the employee the ability to hold any
other commitment.
**11. B. \$15.36.** \$48,000 ÷ 50 = \$960/week; \$960 ÷ 62.5 = \$15.36. At the *scheduled* 55
hours it would be \$17.45 — the entire \$2.09 gap is unscheduled, unrecorded hours.
**12. C.** The deferred cost created when reliability is rewarded with more work at the same wage.
At Bellwether the bill is \$6,000 direct plus \$2,790 of cost drift = \$8,790.
**13. B.** An undefined decision right. It is a governance problem, and governance problems are fixed
on paper — Figure 21.8.
**14. D.** Deciding, then unbuilding it when the loser complains. It teaches the room that decisions
are provisional and that persistence is the correct response to any ruling, which converts authority
into a negotiating position.
**15. B.** Receipt, not agreement — and you should say so out loud when you hand over the pen. If the
employee refuses to sign, note the refusal and the date, and give them the copy anyway.
**16. B.** Roughly break-even on turnover alone (−\$316). The case rests on the second-order returns:
half a point of food cost is \$5,580, avoided overtime roughly \$1,400, and avoided cost drift \$2,790
per sous departure — plus ticket times and repeat visits, which Chapter 23 prices.
**17. C.** Employee of the month. It distributes scarce recognition to one person and withholds it
from thirty; the pre-shift's "the name" slot does the same job daily, for free, without creating a
competition.
**18. C.** Level 4. Everything short of it is supervision wearing delegation's clothes and costs the
same hours.
**19.** 27 ÷ 31 = **87%.** At 17 separations: 17 ÷ 31 = **55%** — below the industry's rough 75%.
**20.** *Station ownership* — it creates the smallest unit of accountability, so a slow ticket is
diagnosable. *A single voice at the pass* — it eliminates ambiguity at the moment ambiguity is most
expensive; consensus under load is a disaster. *A ladder of responsibility* — the classical brigade
was a career structure, and small restaurants deleted it when nine rungs compressed into four.
**21.** 14 × 7 × 52 = **5,096 person-meals** × \$1.00 = **\$5,096.** As a share of food sales:
\$5,096 ÷ \$1,116,000 = **0.46%** — less than half a point of food cost.
**22.** (a) The chicken itself. (b) The portion standard on every plate that night, which is an
unexplained food-cost variance you will spend two weeks chasing in the ideal-versus-actual analysis
(Chapter 11). (c) The guest who received a short plate — and the possibility they do not come back,
which Chapter 23 prices. A fourth, arguably the largest: the cook has now learned what to do next
time.
**23.** (1) "What is the worst part of your week here? Be specific." (2) "What would have to be true
for you to still be here in a year?" (3) "Whose job here do you want next, and what would you need to
be ready for it?" The rule: **you must come back within seven days with an answer to at least one
thing raised, even when the answer is no.**
**24.** Because each individual answer is unreliable in a *known direction* — the person has decided,
has nothing to gain from candor, and may want a reference, so stated reasons skew toward the benign
and the external ("school," "moving"). Those distortions are idiosyncratic; the underlying pattern is
not. Across eight or more, the schedule and path complaints surface as a recurring structure even
though no single form named them plainly.
**25.** The sous chef's fifteen-hour day; eleven tables past the service standard; a sauté cook alone
for four hours. This chapter argues the **fifteen-hour day** is the most expensive, because it is a
withdrawal from an account held by one person, and the bill arrives four to seven months later as a
\$6,000 separation plus \$2,790 of cost drift.
**26.** 68 × 50 = 3,400 hours; \$55,000 ÷ 3,400 = **\$16.18 an hour** — below the \$21.00 the same
plan pays a step-2 line cook. It should tell them that the only mechanism that ever converts 68 hours
into 50 is somebody else being able to do part of them, which means the bench is not a growth project
for year three. It is the thing that determines whether either partner can take a Tuesday off in
month fourteen.