Fixing a broken shift requires more than motivation. It requires intention from the first conversation with a new hire to the way the schedule is built.

Every restaurant has one. The shift that lives on the schedule like a warning. The one where call-outs spike, energy dips, and the team that shows up already looks tired before the doors open.

For most of my career, that shift was Sunday morning.

It became the shift people earned their way off of. Tenure meant you didn’t have to work it. Seniority meant your name stopped appearing on that line. And over time, Sunday morning turned into something nobody said out loud but everyone understood: a punishment for being new.

The result was predictable. The least experienced team ran one of the most demanding shifts. Leadership presence was weaker because managers had negotiated their way off it too. Larger parties came in after church, and the crew handling them had the least chemistry, the least reps together, and the least support.

We told ourselves that’s just how Sundays are.

But it wasn’t inevitable. It was a design failure. And once I saw it that way, I started fixing it.

How a Shift Becomes Toxic

Bad shifts don’t start bad. They decay over time through small decisions that seem reasonable in the moment.

It starts with the schedule. Sunday is usually written last. By the time you get to it, labor is tight, overtime is a concern, and you’re working with whoever’s left. The best people already have their hours locked in. So Sunday gets the scraps.

Then it becomes cultural. Tenured employees expect Sundays off. New hires learn quickly that working Sundays is the price of being new. And because the pattern repeats week after week, no one questions it. The shift becomes a rite of passage instead of a real operation.

Leadership reinforces it without meaning to. If managers avoid the shift, the team notices. If the strongest leaders only show up Monday through Friday, Sunday becomes an orphan. The message is clear even if it’s never spoken: this shift matters less.

And once that message sets in, performance follows. Ticket times slip. Guest complaints rise. The team that works it stops trying to win and starts trying to survive. The shift earns its reputation, and the reputation makes it worse.

What It Takes to Turn It Around

Fixing a broken shift requires more than motivation. It requires intention from the first conversation with a new hire to the way the schedule is built.

Start at hiring. If Sunday availability is essential, say so before the job is offered. Make it part of the criteria, not a surprise after onboarding. When expectations are clear from day one, resentment has less room to grow.

Staff slightly above projection. Sunday often brings large parties, post-church crowds, and unpredictable volume. A thin team can’t absorb that. Building in a buffer, even one extra person, gives the shift room to execute instead of just react.

Rotate days off. If Sundays off are a status symbol, break the pattern. Rotate who gets them. Tenure can still have perks, but it shouldn’t mean permanent exemption from the hardest shifts. Shared responsibility builds shared ownership.

Rotate leadership. Managers should work Sundays too, and not just the newest ones. When the entire leadership team rotates through, it sends a message: this shift matters, and we’re not above it.

Build connection before the shift. Some of the best Sunday teams I ever saw started with coffee together before the doors opened. Or a team meal. Something small that built chemistry before the pressure hit. When people feel like a crew instead of a collection of strangers, they cover for each other differently.

The Scheduling Fix Nobody Talks About

Here’s a tactical change that reshaped how I built schedules: write Sunday first.

Most managers write the schedule starting with Monday and ending with Saturday or Sunday. By the time they reach the end of the week, labor is stretched, availability is limited, and the final days get whoever’s left.

Flip it. Start with Sunday. Build that shift with intention. Protect it with your best available mix of experience and energy. Then work backward through the week.

It sounds simple because it is. But most operators have never tried it. They write the schedule the way they were taught, and Sunday keeps getting the short end.

When you schedule Sunday through Saturday instead of Monday through Sunday, the shift that used to be an afterthought becomes a priority. And priorities get resourced differently.

The Leadership Failure Underneath

The deeper issue is not scheduling. It’s the assumption that difficult shifts are supposed to stay difficult.

When we treat Sunday morning like a problem to endure instead of a shift to develop, we’re not leading. We’re just coping. And coping doesn’t build teams. It burns them out.

Every shift should be runnable. Every shift should have leadership presence, experienced support, and a team that believes they can win. If that’s not true for your Sunday morning, or your Monday close, or whatever shift carries the stigma in your building, the failure isn’t the team. It’s the system.

The shift nobody wants to work is a mirror. It reflects how much intention you’re putting into the parts of your operation that don’t reward you immediately. It shows whether your standards apply only when it’s convenient or whether they hold across the whole week.

Fixing it isn’t about motivation speeches or holding people accountable for energy they don’t have. It’s about resourcing the shift like it matters. Because it does.

Coaching Question for the Week

What’s the shift in your restaurant that everyone avoids? And what would it take to make it one people actually wanted to work?

Jason E. Brooks is a hospitality coach, author, and consultant with more than 30 years of industry experience. He has worked with six of the top 100 restaurant brands in the United States, including multiple top-10 and top-50 chains, helping leaders and operators boost profitability and build high-performing teams through coaching-driven systems. He writes the Coaching Connection column for FSR magazine and is the author of Every Leader Needs Followers, Every Team Needs Coaching, Coaching Operating Standards, and The 48 Laws of Coaching.

Jason E. Brooks.
Author of “Every Leader Needs Followers” and founder of HospiVation, Jason E. Brooks shares his industry insights on operations, leadership, and more in his FSR column, The Coaching Connection.

Editor’s note: This article is part of The Coaching Connection, a column series from restaurant expert Jason E. Brooks. Check out the others below:

Expert Takes, Feature, Labor & Employees, Operations