Caroline Stophel:  

Life My Job I am a service/sales manager for a corporate restaurant chain. Workplace While bartending and waiting tables my last year of college, I had a hard time deciding what to do after graduation. I had a double major in History and Psychology and while the possibilities seemed endless, I was very non-commital. The restaurant I worked at had been trying to persuade me into entering management for at least 3 months. One month after graduation I finally decided that management would be a great start to building my experience on a resume while I continued to debate what I wanted to be when I grew up. I worked as an hourly manager there for a year and through the network of restaurant managers I met I moved a year later and became a manager for a sports bar. After 3 years of dealing with drunkards and tired of calling the police on more than a weekly basis, I left that job and moved again in search of better opportunities. At the ripe old age of 29, I still hadn't decided what to be when I grew up so I took another management job with a corporate restaurant chain in early 2000. A year later I was the #2 manager on an opening team for a new store in MS, where I moved yet again and still live currently. I transferred to another store (the oldest in the company at the time) and stayed there until they closed in 2003. I did a brief stint in Little Rock before being contracted out to a franchise store that was struggling and needed a "brand standard" manager to teach them the ropes. Within 2 months, I was the last manager standing and for the next 9 months I was the GM, KM, end-all-be-all manager. I made 2 hourly employees managers for me and worked 70-80 hr/wk, 6-7 days/wk to turn that store around. We went from scoring a 53 on a unit revi...Expand for more