Restorative Restaurant Reaps Reward
When people misbehave or fail in some way our default is often to expel or evict them, however a huge part of the Restorative idea is that when people get into trouble we do our best to keep them inside family and community because when we throw them out they often do worse things.
Julie Downsy who works in the McDonald’s Restaurant in North Harbour understands very well the need for people to belong, particularly our young people. The Portsmouth Mediation Service (PMS) manager Steve recently met up with Julie to hear how her restorative approach in engaging positively with young customers has helped to create a more peaceful and relaxed restaurant
Julie says that “we did have real problems with some challenging behaviour, there was vaping upstairs, food and drinks spilt and left over the floor and some quite rude and loud language, this had a negative impact on other customers, particularly families.”
Julie who had a long career in nursing, instinctively knew that confronting some of these young people with their anti-social behaviour was not going to improve the situation, so she became very intentional about her approach.
“I reflected on the situation and began to wonder what challenges and pressures some of these young people were under, the first thing I did was to treat them properly as customers. I would make a point to welcome them and ask how they were. I also encouraged them to do a feedback survey where they could obtain a voucher for a good deal meal, sometimes I would give them a small Mcflurry ice cream as a reward, all of this helped to build connections and relationship and now they all know my name”
The bad behaviour has now completely stopped, and the McDonald’s management have recognised this transformation by promoting Julie to lobby manager. “we all need boundaries” she says “I can now just look at someone with their feet on the seat and they will instantly put them down often with a cheeky grin”
Julie’s heart for her young customers is palpable “ I think about how we might be able to do something for them at Christmas, maybe an event the day before they break up from college”
After talking with Julie, Steve said “the PMS Restorative Vision is captured well in Julie’s story, restorative practice and approaches in the workplace can bring about so many benefits and it usually improves the bottom line profitability, we are always looking to help support oragnsiations and teams to implement and embed a new positive restorative culture”