The Mashgiach/Restauranteur Relationship - Keeping it Kosher Clips

When you're going to restaurants to find out  if this restaurant can get OU hashgacha, when   you're dealing with it, the owners are under a  lot of pressure. They are running a restaurant   that's helping the community. How much  compassion do you have? How much of the   side of the restaurant owner do you take into  account, and how much are you thinking like,   "These are the protocols.  This is what we need to do?" Every person is a person. You have to deal with  them. You have to listen to them, but you have to   be true to what's going on. I mean, I have a very  personal relationship with a lot of the people. I   think a few months ago, one of the people I  deal with, he called me to discuss a certain   project that he was looking into. And I think the  biggest compliment he gave me in the course of the   conversation, he says, "I know anything I tell you  doesn't go further." Right? So, people trust you.   You build a level of trust that they can tell me  a lot of things, but I don't go tell it to anybody   else, besides the fact that in every contract  we have a confidentiality clause that we're   not going to tell everything but sometimes people  misunderstand this confidentiality clause. Right?   It means that I'm not going to go tell someone  that this is the oil that so and so uses in   his French fries. But when someone calls and asks  whose meat this restaurant is using, and you know   this person only wants to use a certain brand of  meat, right, "I'm sorry, I can't tell you," that's   not the answer. You have to balance that, but you  build trust with people. I had one place that came   to us for another from another hashgacha, and  we had a number of battles because he was used   to doing things his own way, and after about 10  months he said to me, "Rabbi, I have to tell you,   I don't always agree with you, but I appreciate  you because you get back to me." That's what we   try to do. I try very hard to answer people and  get back to people, but I've had a lot of support   from the senior management, and I speak to the  poskim all the time, whether it's Rabbi Gersten or   it's Rabbi Schachter, Rav Belskly, ZT"L, was very  supportive and very helpful through the years of   establishing how we are able to move forward and  work with the people and not against the people. It must take a lot of strength. It must take a  lot of gevura. You probably have to say no to   a lot of people. You have to come down on  people. Is that a natural trait of yours? So, one of my colleagues quoted a line, it says,  "You can be machmir without being a chamur,   you can be a meikel without being a kal." You  have to do it with a smile. I tell people you   accomplish a lot more with sugar than you do  with salt. You don't have to hammer a person.   You have to explain it to him and listen to him,  and sometimes you have to let the person vent.   I was a rabbi in a shul for about 15  years. Soon after I became a rabbi,   there was a man well into his 80s who started  davening in the shul. His wife passed away, and he   was coming to say kaddish. And he came, and as it  was getting to the winter, it was getting colder,   he didn't come for a few days. And Thursday  night before Shabbos, I picked up the phone,   I called him, and I said, "how are you, sir?" So  he went for the next 10 minutes complaining about   all his life and the difficulty, and he misses  his wife, and I'm not even sure I said, "uh huh,   uh huh," at any point of that conversation, but  after about 10 minutes he says, "Thank you for   listening, Rabbi. Good Shabbos." So sometimes  being able to listen and knowing that the   person's under pressure, and he's frustrated,  and it's not you, it's whatever's going on,   it's hard. I know the person in my position before  me used to have a sefer in his office called,   "Orech Apayim," that he had in front of him, that  when certain proprietors were pushing his buttons,   he would just hold the sefer just  to remind him to hold his tongue.