A supervisor described this almost word for word: his assistant manager is excellent with customers, genuinely liked, and keeps letting the closing checklist slide. The team has started copying him and skipping steps too.
If you've got a version of that, you don't have a checklist problem. You have a crew that has learned which parts of the job are optional, and they learned it by watching somebody get away with it.
Because the person is good. That's the whole reason.
If they were bad at the job you'd have dealt with it. But they're strong where it's visible — customers love them, they show up, they carry the shift — so raising a back-of-house checklist feels petty. Ungrateful, even. So you let it go, and then you let it go again, and by the third month you'd have to explain why you're bringing up something you clearly haven't minded for a quarter.
The standard is the floor, not the ceiling.
Being excellent at the visible part of the job doesn't buy an exemption from the rest of it. That isn't harshness — it's the only version of fair that survives contact with a crew who can see what's happening.
Here's what almost everyone does. They bring it up in the huddle. "Team, we need to be better about closing procedures." General, blameless, nobody singled out.
It fails every time, for three reasons.
A blanket reminder is a way of having a hard conversation without having it. It feels like leadership and it costs you more than doing nothing.
Start with the person, off the floor, and be specific about both halves — the thing itself and the fact that it's spreading.
You're the best person I've got with customers and I'm not being cute when I say that. And the closing checklist hasn't been finished on your shifts eight of the last ten. Here's why I'm raising it now: two other people have stopped doing it too, and they didn't decide that on their own. They're following you. I need the checklist done, and I need it done by you specifically, because they're watching what you do more than they're listening to what I say.
That last part is the whole conversation. You're not accusing them of poor performance — you're telling them their influence is real and currently pointed the wrong way. For somebody who's good at their job and knows it, that lands differently than a correction does. Most people in that position are quietly proud of the influence and hadn't thought about which direction it was going.
Once the source is handled, you can re-state the standard to the group — but do it as a standard going forward, not as a complaint about the past, and never in a way that invites people to work out who it was about.
Closing checklist gets completed and initialled every shift, starting tonight. If something on it doesn't make sense or takes too long, tell me and I'll look at it. But until it changes, it gets done.
Note the middle sentence. Half of all quietly abandoned procedures are abandoned because they're genuinely stupid, and nobody felt able to say so. Opening that door costs you nothing and occasionally saves you from defending a step that shouldn't exist.
Some tells, in roughly the order they show up:
Once new people are learning the shortcut as the way, you're not correcting a person any more. You're re-establishing a standard, and that takes longer than the conversation you should have had in month one.
Free to start. Built by a Navy veteran and eighteen-year frontline operator.
It isn't HR and it isn't a lawyer. It doesn't know your company's policies, your union contract, or your state's employment law, and it will never tell you to discipline or demote anybody. If the skipped step is a safety or compliance requirement, treat it as that first and follow your company's process — that is not a coaching conversation. Every decision stays yours.
Go to them privately and name both halves: the step, and the fact that people are following them. Frame it as influence rather than performance — they're good, people watch them, and right now that's working against the standard. Then reset the standard with the crew as a going-forward rule, not a complaint about the past.
No. Blanket reminders criticise the people doing it right, let the responsible person off the hook, and show the crew you won't address things directly. Handle the source privately first, then state the standard to the group without making it a guessing game about who it was about.
Say that out loud first, because it's true and they know it. Then be specific about the gap. Being excellent at one part of the job doesn't exempt anybody from the rest, and a good performer can hear that when it's said plainly and without you pretending to be superior.
That's worth finding out, and asking costs you nothing. Plenty of abandoned procedures were abandoned because they don't make sense and nobody felt able to say so. Hold the standard until it changes, but be honest that you'll look at it — then actually look at it.
The clearest marker is new hires. Once somebody who joined after the drift is doing it too, the shortcut is being taught rather than tolerated, and you're re-establishing a standard rather than correcting a person. That takes considerably longer.
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