I'm a sarcastic bastard or as my parents would put it, a smart mouth. Dealing with their discipline taught me how to pick my battles. Working in restaurants helped me learn more of course.
In the bars if someone was slacking off did you reprimand them or fire them? Probably not. At one club I was the nice manager; and I was the one that would actually enforce rules on the employees. Since the other managers were being jerks about everything I would actively break some rules to build up morale. One thing I did occasionally was bum a cigarette off an employee (light it of course) and proceed to go to some dancers on stage that needed a nicotine fix (smoking on stage was a major no no). Normally I'm the one that says not to smoke or chew gum on stage (or use a phone) because it looks very unprofessional, but I would cup the cigarette in my hand (like I was French) and motion the ladies over to me like it was a big secret. They got a drag or two and were happy and morale went up because a manager was helping them out.
Another way I've learned to pick my battles was with kids and meals. Tonight I made them sausage and roasted broccoli. I didn't want to hear them complain about how they don't like whatever I made, even if they liked it last week or last month. For dessert we had homemade popsicles, made with juice from however many different fruits (fruits they say they don't like) and that was it. They were happy that they had popsicles for dessert and I'm happy they had fruit with their meal. A few battles avoided there.
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