Our La Pala on Hviezdoslavovo námestie belongs to smaller facilities within Medusa but Miška Obadalová, General Manager, was working in Centrálna Klubovňa in the past as well. Miška has a creative soul – she is a graduated goldsmith. She used to help her parents in a café during school and fell in love with the culinary business. In addition to that, she started studying at the hotel academy externally along her first school. She was feeling that her future was in the service sector.
“I was a good goldsmith but it was not what I wanted to do. I missed communicating with people. As a goldsmith you are closed alone in your workshop. I missed direct contact with customers. I need to be on a go and surrounded by people – my team, guests.”
Miška needs to move also in her private life, not just at work. She says she can´t sit still. She goes to the gym, kayaking, boxing. “I need to have some kind of activity four times a week. It is worth to wake up earlier for training, I have far more energy throughout the day then,” she explains.
We ask her whether she has ever been tempted by cooking. She says she only learns from her colleagues, cooks, she has always felt the most comfortable in service. But she enjoys eating – her mum´s sirloin is the winner. Of course
Mum is pleased to cook for Miška and sometimes takes care of her little dog – chihuahua Joey. “It is not a kind of dog you can go running with. He likes staring nowhere. We sometimes fight for a place on our Tuli bag – image you are sitting there, quickly go to grab your water and in a meantime he climb over there and after coming back he pretends to have been there forever. He is the boss,” she laughs.
We are interrupted by one waitress at that point: “Sorry for interrupting you, but Miška – could you please come to the kitchen? There is a fire.”
“What fire?”
“A fire. There,” she points towards the kitchen.
“Excuse me for moment, please,” Miška apologizes and quickly turns and goes to solve the situation.
She is back in two minutes laughing as if nothing had happened. Apparently it was just a small thing and colleagues from the technical department are already repairing the cause. And in a while, Medusa´s maintenance guys start moving quickly around.
The enthusiastic manager fluently goes back to our conversation. We discuss the atmosphere in the enterprise. She says that she could not work in the office – she praises good relations in the team. Like the chef, she says she feels like in a family with her colleagues. “I know when people have their birthday, who had lunch at their grandma and whose dog was vaccinated…I really like that,” she describes.
We ask what she considers the hardest part of her job. “What is the most beautiful thing about my job is the hardest one at the same time – managing people. If our cook does not come to work, the restaurant cannot operate. A guest must not encounter that a team member is sick and stays at home. To deal with it and solve is always a challenge.”
She describes how to handle lack of people. She says that thanks to the size of Medusa Group she may address someone of another operation and agree on covering. “We are swapping colleagues with Mercado – winter is a strong season for them, summer for us. We help each other quite much this way.
She says she tries to be a friendly leader. She can be tough when needed but does not want to boss around. She wants to be a part of the team is not afraid of any work – she helps when needed. It is confirmed by the fact that when we arrived to La Pala, she was serving plates with foods.
When she recalls her beginnings in Medusa, she mentions Centrálna Klubovňa. It was a managerial university for her – great facility, lots of staff and huge amount of guests. She says she wouldn’t change it for anything in the world: “If, for example in Centrál a fire or a bomb is announced, all shopping people gathers in Klubovňa – like it should protect them from an explosion. Very little surprise me these days due to such experience.”
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