I graduated from college in February 1971, Mr. JKE had his motel manager, Durrell Dallas, ask me if I wanted to be a manager’s apprentice. The restaurant manager had just resigned or had been fired. Of course I said yes. I wanted to be a manager. So, I went from being an auditor to a management trainee.

JK, the owner, was my mentor from 1970 to 1974. He owned the motel where I worked. JK was in the process of adding five motels to the three he owned. He started out as a gas station owner. He was upfront about what he expected and would let you know when you failed.

Durrell said we would start at the restaurant, I noticed most of my training was standing behind the viking oven and shooting the bull. Then after a couple of weeks I found out why.

Durrell left the company to take up the position of General Manager of the Timme Plaza Hotel in Wilmington, North Carolina. Durrell was in JK’s family, he married Jk’s good wife. I guess he had enough of JK. Durrell was always nervous, especially when he was around JK.

The day Durrell left for his new job, Mr. JK and his wife, Gladys, asked me to sit down with them to discuss their plan with me. They asked me if I thought I could manage the restaurant. Mrs. E would be the General Manager and I would manage the restaurant. Of course I said I could.

This was the beginning of my struggle in management. He knew absolutely nothing about management or the restaurant business. I would find out on the way. He did not know how to find out the path would last more than forty years. It was as if I had been thrown off the diving board into the deepest part of the pool without knowing how to swim. I was too dumb to say no. I know my answer changed my life.

“Don’t worry, Jim, we’ll help you,” Jerry Townsend told me the day after I was named manager. Jerry was a waitress who worked at the hotel for years.
She was right. I soon learned to ask for help and listen to experienced employees.

As a new manager, thinking you know can lead to problems. At the Ramada Inn South restaurant, the cooks posted a list on a cork board of the items they needed to prepare the meal. One of the first days of being his manager, the list had an item listed as “chicken”. He knew where we got chicken. I called the provider. I told the delivery clerk to send me some chicken. He said what size. Damn, I didn’t know they came in sizes. I didn’t want to sound silly and replied confidently, “Oh, send me some good-sized ones.”

The next day I walked into the kitchen and Flossie, the lunch cook, asked me if I had ordered chicken. I said she had. She said, “Where are they?” I replied, “in the cooler.” She said that she had searched there and that she couldn’t find them. I said come with me. I opened the cooler and opened the lid of the box and there was chicken. She looked down at the box and said, “My God, Mr. Jim, you know chickens.”

I asked him what he meant and he said he needed fryers. She informed me that they should weigh 2-2 ¾ lbs. She drove to Peco Foods, the supplier, and bought the fryers from her.

Another source of knowledge was the vendor who came to the restaurant. I told each of them, “I don’t know anything about the restaurant business. But if I find out I’ve been screwed, I’ll never do business with you again.” This made my ignorance and acknowledgment of his experience the basis of our relationship.

Meat vendor Ziegler taught me about steaks. The Sexton salesman taught me about canned food. The Empire Seafood vendor about fish and shellfish. Edison Dickel’s salesman taught me about frozen foods. I was told that price is not always the determination of the best buy.

What I thought were great deals came at a cost to our restaurant’s reputation. For example, I bought some bacon-wrapped beef steaks from Swift for a good price. Grover Jeter, the Ziegler salesman, showed me why I bought them so cheap. He removed the bacon and unwrapped the steaks. He explained that the steaks were not center cut. They were from the end of the steak and wrapped in bacon to look like center cuts. Then Grover said, “This is not the kind of food you want to serve at this restaurant.” He was correct.

I took many other steps, created an eleven-day rotating lunch menu, organized storage areas, made sure I met health department requirements, listened to employees, and asked hundreds of questions. These actions led to the restaurant’s best financial performance to date. In addition, we increase our sales and the satisfaction of our customers.

I learned that human management is the most important action I took to achieve what we wanted. I learned that humans have feelings, processes don’t. Management is about directing the human interactions that create success.