road manager

kitchen manager

service manager

meat cutter

line cook

Texas Roadhouse

So I am a hard worker and I don't usually complain. However, I hated this job. It's hard to say exactly why I hated this job. The staff is wonderful. There's always someone there who will have your back especially when a table is acting crazy. Thy understand and are the funniest people to be around. Honestly, I love everyone in there. Management is great! They've been there for a long time and they are  always understanding about your mistakes. Although you do have to stay long after usually because you have a bunch of side-work to do, it's okay because your co-workers will make it fun. The hardest part was the people and how the Texas Roadhouse system works. Basically you have to say these unnecessary points/questions you are required to ask ("fall off the bone ribs" , "fresh-baked bread", "legendary margaritas", etc.). Don't get me wrong, there are some points that should be met (greet your table in under 45 seconds, refill without them asking, smiling). But the problem lies when we become extremely busy and we can't hit all these points. And you cannot convince me that it's fair to be judged by a secret shopper (yeah because those are totally necessary) when you're carrying large trays, having ally rally, keeping up with your side-work, keeping up with table's commands, etc. It makes you want to say forget it and just walk out. The system leaves no room for mishaps or things that might be beyond your control (which happens a lot). And "good service" is subjective. Good service is sometimes not asking questions like "do you want that loaded?" or upselling. I've been annoyed that my guest are annoyed by the questions I have to ask or things I have to do. And it stinks because if you forget the points and serve the way you know your guest would like to be serve, you run into the problem where that might have been a secret shopper and you have failed. I haven't been shopped and I don't think I'd get a bad score but everyone is different. Texas Roadhouse loves to pride themselves on how good we treat our "guest" but in fact we treat everyone uniformly. I would be fine with this if the staff got treated more importantly than they do (it's not like we are working for them or anything). But we have that "guest" is always right attitude, which makes them think they can say and command what they like and we just have to take it. Second reason of why is hate that job is because of the people! Waitressing brings out the absolute worst in people, including yourself. Guest tend to think at the end of my meal I pay this person to do a good job so I can act and treat them blah blah and if they can deal with it blah blah. The problem with this is I WOULD RATHER HAVE A PLEASANT TABLE THAN YOUR MONEY! Not all servers think like this but most do. 10 dollars or 20 dollars will NEVER amount to generosity. I hate when people think the way that they act is okay because they're paying me. They do awful things. This one lady grabbed one of my coworkers by the arm and demanded something. Now don't get me wrong, every business has those crazies but this happens way to often. When someone ask me to get "their" server in a disgusting manor, I reply with "okay what's his/her name?" because I know who it is but it's just to clarify to the guest you are asking something of someone rudely and you don't even bother to remember their name. Or guest have the mentality of it's this person's job to do everything I command and I don't have to tip if I don't want to. The problem with this is that tips don't come automatically in Louisiana. And another problem is that 7 or 10 percent of what you made in credit tips will go back to the store. So if you made 140 something dollars at the end of the night in credit card tips, 30 something is going to tip-share. So when an unpleasant table does not tip, you put up with their attitude in a respectable manor for nothing. And you are going to get paid less than 3 dollars an hour because of your tips. Don't get me wrong I make way more than my friends who work in retail but the amount of effort I have to put into my job does not even compare. To me, you would really have to like making money in order to stay here for more than 2 years. I've been working there for 1 but I reached my limit. Being a server here changes how you see situations and people and usually not for the better (that's another novel). I was really nice before I started working here, I guess you can say, but now I have a temper and I'm really bitter towards people. Not all the time but I find myself thinking things about certain kinds of people I wouldn't like to think before.

First, let me say that I love this company. The culture of this place was wonderful and gave me great experience in "fast" cooking. The typical day started with me coming in, and preparing my station. Getting buckets, oil, stocking food, etc... The rush nearly begins instantly and it's a rush until it closes. On a typical work day, you'll find at my particular location, people are willing to help. Managers and other staff are there to help you out. There's an okay program that kind of teaches you the stuff there, however, I don't personally think it's enough. A typical day in my shoes, lasted from four at night, to approximately twelve to one in the morning. The place typically closes around eleven pm (on weekends). After it closes, you clean and stock your station and then get checked out by a manager. After you clean, you're done for the day unless you want to help other people.

I learned at this job, that "cooking" isn't really what it seems. I learned to adapt to an extremely fast pace as well as communicating in a kitchen. The co-workers I worked with are some of the kindest people that anyone could ask for. If you go to my location, they will stick up for you and help you out in tough times.

The managers helped out sometimes. They will help you out in some pinches, but not at all times. At times, I felt as if I struggled because the grills weren't large enough to cover quota on tickets. I also think that staff should be trained more. I felt as if I was rushed right when I was in the door. I don't think anyone needs to be rushed when they're trying to learn something new as learning takes time for some people. They are okay to some employees, but not receiving breaks was kind of irritating at times. The schedule was also not great in my experience because I am currently enrolled in college and it conflicted with my studies. When I have mentioned and put in on their internet scheduler, I was basically denied. They generally hire great staff who are expected to bleed for this place. This wasn't the case in my situation. I thought I would just be working weekends as that would generally be the case. In general, they will sometimes follow what you can and cannot work. In my case, I had to leave because I was being scheduled on my school days and I was not out of school on certain days. An example being, I had been scheduled for a shift at 4 pm on a Wednesday, and I also had college this day from 11:10 AM to 5:30 PM. Their policy is if you're scheduled a day they see fit, you have to work it or find someone to replace it. They used an application for our store to help with our schedules and drop days as needed. Typically, days would never be taken if you request them off. I asked personally if they could adjust it and they did some weeks. Overall, management is okay, needs improvement.

The hardest part of the job was the pace & not enough time to learn. We were given menus and given tasks on our own personal computers to complete. I don't want to go into detail as it may violate a policy on my end, but I don't think that's the way to go in learning. The pace for completing tickets is horrendous. The system that our end had was a print out ticket system. When you get about 15-16 ticket print outs per 15 minutes, it was difficult to read as they kept coming in. Sometimes, I felt overwhelmed because you're expected to continue this pace for about 6 hours continuously. 

The most enjoyable part of this job was actually cooking some food. When a pace was steady, it was fun. There's multiple spots in the kitchen you can work and if you're bored of your spot, you're free to do the training for other spots in the kitchen and learn more. The co-workers I worked with are the best too! Typically, they worked hard and didn't stop either. As stated above, they go above and beyond to help each other out.

Overall, I give this a three out of five. The place is great, it needs a better system in place, management needs slight improvement, a better way to schedule employees, and great co-workers. I think the case would be different if this were a different store.

The people I worked with in "the pit" were really nice and helpful! I thought that just because I was the of the opposite gender I would get treated differently or looked down upon, but that wasn't the case at all. 

A typical dinner shift would be pretty busy. You're either loading & rinsing dishes and pushing them through the machine, pulling them out of the machine, or running them to the kitchen, collecting dirty dishes, and keeping glassware and bowls stocked at the same time. In-between all of that, you're taking out garbage as well. At the end of the night, you wait for all of the dirty dishes to come to the dish-table (this takes about an hour or less with 3 people), you take trash out once more at the end of the night, return all dishware to its place, and cleanup the dish-pit at the end of the night. Dishwashers are usually the last to leave!

There were multiple things I didn't like about this job. Health benefits didn't start until month 8 or 9 of employment. Second, management will take advantage of your kindness and will became overly dependent (I had 3 other titles) on you. Third, low-pay for a lot of work. Fourth, scheduling issues were always occurring. Fifth, training on the expediting position was little-to-none--I wasn't even taught how to close the expo station! There was little time to prepare and I was thrown to the sharks. Sixth, fake-promises [of new positions] management. Seventh, not being given enough time to complete a task, specifically, portioning lists. They'd really expect ONE person to finish a huge portioning list (EX: 4 tubs of honey cinnamon butter (HCBs), 3 tubs of family-sized portions of HCBs, 2 tubs of bacon, 4 large tubs of fully loaded, 3 tubs of butter, 2 tubs of sour cream, 3 tubs of cheese, etc.; and I haven't even mentioned dressings yet.), especially on our busiest days, and be done in 2 hours or less... with one person?

I learned in the end that no matter how hard I worked, I was easily replaceable. On my last day of being at Texas Roadhouse, the GM finally hired another dishwasher... with the same features as me! 'They' 100% knew what they were doing with this (I was the only one of my gender). And on my last day, there was yet *another* scheduling malfunction to where me and the newly hired dishwasher left before close, leaving 1 person closing the dish-pit. Luckily, I brought this up to one of the kitchen managers who brought it to the GM. The new-hire had actually been scheduled to close, but was going to leave before their shift even ended! It scares me to think that if I hadn't said anything, they would've just let the new-hire go without even double checking the schedule first. Yikes.


There was no “typical” shift, the length of the shift would vary from short to past closing hours depending on business volume and being given an unrealistic amount of stocking, prepping, and side-tasks to be completed by closing time regardless if the shift day was very busy and there was no downtime. BOH employees would often be cooperative with TO-GO orders but there were a handful of times when there was no cooperation usually based on who was managing during the shift. During the weekends which had the most customer volume, there was regular conflict among management and employees in an unprofessional manner. Usually short-staffed due to fluctuating turnovers or management not acknowledging the stress of not having enough staff. The positive part of my shift was interacting with customers and helping out servers and hosts. 

Learned how to work under intense pressure and be efficient in a fast pace environment and how to handle negative customer experiences professionally and patiently. 

Management had some qualities but many flaws. Some managers remained professional while others exhibited immature and degrading behavior towards employees such as spreading gossip, discussing negatively about ones work performance, and even judging ones appearance. There was many times unacceptable situations would be ignored or let go of based on relationship with the employee and manager. Criticism was more common rather than encouragement, hostility, and personal conflict unrelated to work. 

Workplace culture consisted of the same negative behaviors mentioned above. The hostesses would create drama regularly, single out other employees, and intentionally would give them extra tasks or poor attitudes due to disliking. Servers would engage in conflict among one another, discuss poorly of guests that were sat in their section, and also create drama. In my time working there a server was let go of due to refusing to serve a table due to their race and claimed they were “always obnoxious and rude” and some servers would discuss similar conversations without the managers knowledge. Very negative, uncomfortable, and cliquey. 

Hardest part of the job itself was nothing related to work tasks but consistently feeling the need to meet an expectation due to fear of criticism by management or other employees. 

Most enjoyable part of the job was the customers who were understanding, pleasant, and engaged in conversation. 

I would highly recommend not seeking employment here if a positive or encouraging social environment is important to you. The local company does a wonderful job at promoting their career options and legendary guest experience but it takes working there to discover it’s false advertisement.

Once you get the steps of service down its easy. I could work here in my sleep. I like most of the people here that I work with, and its pretty easy to get along with everyone in general either way. Everyone helps out when they can running food or helping when a server is behind and asks for help. We have a pretty good kitchen, not a whole lot of mistakes to fix on that end. Recently, we lost a couple senior managers and moved up some from the serving position who are in their early 20s. Management is as management is most places. They put the schedule out for the week either one or two days before the week starts. Every once in a while they will have you scrambling hours before the new week (restarts tuesday night). For the most part, if you know what's going on, you can simply clock in work and clock out with little to no interaction from management if you don't need them. The clientele is usually hit or miss depending on the day. I've gotten really good tips before and really bad ones. I'm averaging 1200 in sales per night and making about 15-20% in tips minus tipshare (3% split to bar, SAs, host, and kitchen). This is a really good job for anyone without serving experience. Their training will give you structure that you need when starting off and then from there you can make it your own. There are opportunities to move up, especially right now. Super flexible schedule, we are mostly composed of students (high school and college) in the front of house. I can't speak for back of house. I'm not sure how it is for all locations but at this one we are always welcome to ask for sides to munch on if we are hungry or welcome to the bread. They do what they can to take care of us and make a happy work environment. Cons: In CA you are required to break ahead of your 6 hour mark. Sometimes they break you in the middle of rush when you stand to make the most money and then at the end of the night you are nowhere near working 6 hours so it was pointless to break anyways. With the schedule, either we have too many people employed and only get a max of 3 shifts a week or we don't have enough people employed and are working 5-6 days a week including doubles. We are currently understaffed and it is like that and we now have 4 table sections. 4 table sections make it hard to take care of your guests properly, let alone be a team player and help run other tables food. Sometimes management preaches about us all being a family, which is nice and I truly like most of my coworkers, but I am not going to work harder for no financial change, not sorry.

I worked for Texas Roahouse in Topeka, KS, for almost a year as a server. It was an extremely fast paced environment where perfection was expected at nearly all times. Once you understood the menu and had been working there for awhile, the job itself became easier and you would make a decent amount of money. Working in the evening, it was very common to come home with a $100 plus dollars a night working between 4-6 hours at a time. Most of the coworkers were fantastic, although the managers were not so great. Besides one of the mangers, most of them were involved in different 'cliques' within the other employees. There was basically an 'in-group' and an 'out-group.' If you were a part of the in-group, your shift was a lot easier. You'd get the better/easier closing tasks and if you made a mistake during your shift they would have no problem helping you fix it. You could also get away with MANY rule breaks. If you were unfortunate to be part of the out-group, like me, they were extremely hard on you as an employee. If you made a mistake or needed management assistance, once you finally found a manager, they would take a very long time assisting you. Whether this was on purpose or not, it would effect the quality of service you were able to provide to your guests. I never truly knew why I was not part of the in-group, but I believe it was because I was quiet and did not go out drinking with them on my days off.
 Then, things would get 10x worse when the owner would work on the kitchen line. (This would happen every Thursday-Sunday). Somedays you would get lucky and she would be in a good mood and the shift would go by quickly and efficiently. Most of the time though, she was not in a good mood. She has a tendancy to yell at her employees and berate them infront of other employees. The reasons she gets angry varies. Sometimes it's because a server forgot to ring something in. Other times it is because someone put "too much steak sauce in the little plastic cups." There were times she yelled at me so intensly that I had to hide in the bathroom for 30+ minutes to collect myself before going back out to finish my shift. One time, I went to greet a table after beeing yelled at by her for putting more than one honey cinnamon butter in a basket of bread, and I broke down sobbing in front of them. I worked there almost a year and recieved many fantastic tips and compliments from the guests, but never once in the 10 months that I worked there did she or any of the managers compliment me. 

A typical day at work for me would be to go in around 3:30 or 4. I would immediately go to the section that I have been assigned and begin to take tables. (meaning my section was now open for hosts to sit people in). This is when my communication and multitasking skills come in. I have 3 to 4 tables at a time, with at least 2 people at each. There are times I have waited on 24 people by myself with no trouble at all. There are times when I do have difficulty with guests and cannot satisfy them. However, not to point any fingers, but it usually isn't my fault I cant satisfy them. Prior bad experiences or food coming out late or wrong are usually the root to all the problems I deal with guests. I have learned over the years of serving, to keep calm and be patient and that you cannot satisfy anyone. I take what people do and say that are not my management, with a grain of salt. My coworkers are awesome. I have never had a family like I do at the roadhouse. We all pour in and help one another in times of need, (death, holidays, fund raisers, school clothes). The roadhouse family does great things for our community and one another and we always have each others' backs'.  
The management at the roadhouse is currently under reconstruction so everything is changing. We have a new market partner (much like a general manager), a new kitchen manager and a new service manager. I do enjoy my managers, however they are not all on the same page, but are working on it. Every place of employment has those managers that play favorites or do the complete opposite of what they say, and I am afraid the roadhouse does have managers that fall into said category. However, there are a couple of managers there that do everything in their power to make sure the store is ran properly. 
The hardest part of my job would have to be not being recognized for the hard work that we employees do. We aren't recognized for what we do for the company and it's really frustrating. I have been a trainer for a year now, and being a trainer means you're the next to move up in a managing position or a bartending position. There have more than one person that hasn't been or isn't a trainer that filled those positions before myself or any other trainer. I just don't find things like this fair. Yes, maybe they had something more to bring to the table, however, if that was the case, they should have been made trainers. 
The most enjoyable part of my day would be seeing all of our regulars come in. They laugh with us, talk with us and make us feel like we are a part of their family as much as they are ours.

Since there are 3 stores located in Phoenix AZ, to be specific this review is exclusive to Store #545 (Happy Valley Phoenix)
Typical day at roadhouse? Very high volume restaurant. It’s very popular so it’s good for business. This location is in a more upscale area of Phoenix so the Clientele is still pretty mixed, you can definitely get the bills paid here.
Having multiple managing partners in this one location in a relatively short amount of time, I learned with a good and bad manager can really make or break you there’s no in between. Our original store operator got sick and a new one took over and working here gets worse and worse each and everyday. I mean going on vacation with your staff hot and suffering with broken A/C for weeks while you’re living it up on a yacht… can’t find a better managing partner than that. 

The  overall management with the exception of a couple of this location is terrible and corporate refuses to hold them accountable because they assign district managers that really just don’t care to handle disputes. I mean these managers brag about having very serious corporate complaints like they’re just metals. 
The workplace culture is good but if you work at a store like this it doesn’t align with what the CEO wanted. 
Hardest part of the job a lot. We play a lot of games that always result in the loser doing additional work and closing duties. It sucks because it already can take a very long time just to clock out as it is, and having the service managers make us play these games is miserable. We don’t have a last call in food ordering so be prepared to stay late and serve large parties that walk in 3 minutes before closing because they just couldn’t come in the other several hours we were opened. 
The most enjoyable is the coworkers. If it wasn’t for them I don’t know how I would’ve lasted this long. Of course there’s bread. Good for your taste buds but not for your waste line.

My overall advice to the company is start holding your management accountable. Some of these people get these positions for power and make their staffs lives miserable, not to lead. If any other hourly employee would just casually keep getting complaints from guest you’d fire them without any hesitation, so keep the same energy for them. What’s sad is, this company would only take corrective measures if it were consequential. For an example, if the way management treated employees here went viral on social media and we’d stop having business because of it, only then would action be taken for the sake of damage control. It’s what you do when the average person doesn’t know that proves whether you care or not.

A typical day at work would consist of finding out your position for the day. They assign 5 different kinds of positions per day. The main one is hosting where you greet customers and guide them to their tables. The second one you learn is called updating which is where you put new plates on clean tables and go up to one of the two boards with a mechanical pen that changes the light colors on the boards and turn the light for that table green. All of these boards are synced up to each other so the hostesses in the front know what tables are ready to give to customers. Two other positions are called large-party and small-party. One person talks to the people with a party that consists of 4 or less people. The other person talks to the parties with 5 or more people. The large-party person has a headset where they can talk to the managers about planning those parties. The last position you learn is called to-go orders. You answer phone calls and take down the customers order. In the back where the kitchen is you put the food, rolls, and silverware into a bag and take it up front. This job requires you to know the menu and handle money unlike all the rest of the positions.
Whichever position you are assigned dictates the type of work you are doing that day. There is no set schedule during the week for who is put on what, but no matter what position you have you still have to do cleaning or restocking before you go home.
Here the main skills I learned were to handle money and customers.
Management here do their job nicely. Most become close friends with some of their employees which leads to picking favorites, which isn't the bast thing but all of do their job and make sure everything is running smoothly.
In my experience, doesn't mean it's going to be other peoples, the job assigning become an argument between people. The people I worked with most of the time didn't work well with some of the other people there. I ended up getting harassed in text messages from the people i worked with.The co-workers ended up being the only reason I left this place.
The hardest part of this job is dealing with small-parties because there are so many of them and you have to give them an estimated time and if it happens it goes past that time people get upset.
The most enjoyable part of this job was the variety of things that you could be doing. Everyday ends up being a new surprise, never knowing what you're going to get. In turn, its hard to get tired of the job.

As a Server Assistant here you make less than the Hostesses. You do a lot of grunt work and receive the lowest amount of pay, asides from the Silverware Rollers. On a typical work day you are carrying around bus tubs that can easily get over 60 pounds each time you take it back to the kitchen, terrible servers who don't pre-bus (clearing plates and baskets before the table gets up or before you get there) their tables, servers who just leave things on the counters at the dishwasher rather than just sorting it themselves. This becomes a problem when you, with your 70 pound bus-tub come in and don't know where to put it. If you get stuck on Muck, Servers throw stuff on the floor, say "Whoops" and walk away, they "accidentally" spill drinks on you when trying to put them in a rack above you.  You take out trash that can get so heavy it's hard for two people to lift. You clean up everything, whether it's peanuts that some hostess knocked over or throw up in the bathroom (oddly enough, the throw up was easier for me to deal with than the peanuts). Servers tend to blame your for stealing their tips without any proof . You sometimes have to wash dishes yourself because both dishwashers disappear for a long time. You can easily be stuck rolling silverware or running dishes when you're not even clocked in on said job. Your bus tubs just disappear so over the 5 months I worked, we went from 12 bus tubs down to 3 and management refuses to order any new ones. This also happens with the trash cans too. The job is so bad that you are constantly losing Busboys and are therefore understaffed so much that you never get a slow day. As a result of being understaffed, you also get scheduled more often than not, which does not work well for students. The managers seem to find you easily replaceable because they never listen to anything the Server Assistants say, and totally disregard the suggestions of the Head Server Assistant (The Head Server Assistant is like the voice for the Server Assistants, he's normally the best one and gets an extra 2 dollars an hour). The most enjoyable part of the job would have to be just cooperating with your fellow Server Assistants to make sure things work well. The worst and hardest part of the job would be uncooperative managers or the Servers that try to pawn their work off on you. If you do take this job, after about two to three months, you'll be offered a place in the kitchen. I highly suggest taking any other job they offer you.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Road manager 1 salary reported	$100,000 per year
Kitchen manager 9 salaries reported	$56,778 per year
Service manager 10 salaries reported	$63,500 per year
Meat cutter 4 salaries reported	$21.97 per hour
Line cook 36 salaries reported	$17.71 per hour

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