Why Hospitality Staff Keep Quitting on You 

You’ve called it ‘not the right fit’ already twice this year, haven’t you? I hate to tell you that bad luck is actually a pattern. 

A Lie You Tell Yourself 

You terminated Jamie back in March. “Not the right fit,” you told yourself and the team. Alex started in April, and the first month went well, actually better than well. But by month three, Alex started missing the small stuff: forgetting to check back on tables, guessing at when to fire the last course, unsure whether a regular’s complaint needed a manager or just an apology. You let Alex go in June and you noticed, this time, that it was the same pattern as Jamie. So you said it out loud, to the team, to yourself, and you meant it: I just can’t find good people anymore.

It sounds reasonable, and it’s comfortable. It’s also, most of the time, wrong.

You keep blaming the wrong thing 

Every time someone underperforms, you likely label it the same way: wrong hire, bad attitude, not cut out for it.

And here’s my problem with ‘not the right fit’ as an explanation, it treats every underperforming staff member as an isolated case, when really, it’s rarely about that one person. 

Because if Jamie and Alex and the person before Jamie all failed at the same things, in the same way, within the same three months, I can promise you that’s not three bad hires. That’s a systemic issue. And you just keep firing people and rehiring new ones who will face the same issues as everyone before them.

It’s not who’s in the role, but the role

The question isn’t why I keep hiring the wrong people. It’s why the same problems keep showing up, in the same shape, no matter who’s standing in the role. Because if that’s what’s happening, the root of this is probably what you are – or aren’t – training people to do.

When your staff don’t know what “good” actually looks like, and whether they’re hitting it, the odds that their performance gets inconsistent are extremely high. And blaming the hire is the easy way out, because it closes the loop fast: terminate, replace, restart. Until the new person struggles in exactly the same spots the last one did, and you’re right back where you started, no closer to knowing why.

So, instead of closing the case quickly, it is crucial to reconsider how you support everyone on the team, which standards are non-negotiable, and how this is communicated and accessible for everyone. Lastly, you also need to build up each person’s skills directly, not just assume they’ll arrive with them.

I know that you might think your expectations are obvious. However, I promise you they are not.

If your training plan is ‘go shadow someone‘ 

Overall, stricter management won’t fix this… The only way forward is changing how you approach new hires. For quick results, I would start by picking the role you complain about most, and answering the following questions for yourself:

1. On a slammed Saturday shift, what does this role look like when it’s done well?
2. What’s the one thing that separates your best-ever person in this role from your worst? Name the actual behaviour and observations.
3. Where would a new hire go to find this information out today (or would they just have to guess)?

If your answer includes “shadow a person for a shift,” that’s worth taking seriously. It means your standards have never actually been written down or agreed on. They only ever passed along informally, shift by shift, hire by hire. This is a high-risk spot to leave unaddressed, and it’s also the best place to start.

The pattern doesn’t lie 

One last thing I want to be clear about: this isn’t every case. Some people genuinely bring less capability, motivation, or accountability than others, and that’s real. But when the same issue keeps showing up across different people, it’s not a coincidence anymore. It’s a pattern, and ignoring it is an expensive choice.