Possibly Causing An Outbreak
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“A restaurant where I worked at made kilos of aioli every week and would keep it in piping bags. We went through a lot and it would never be older than a week by the time we used it, so no one ever labeled or marked the date it was made. One day, we had a special that included a scallop mousse. We would cook it to order from raw, and yep, you guessed it, we would keep the raw scallop mousse in piping bags as well.
The sous chef, and also my boss, who was not liked in our kitchen, served raw scallop mousse instead of aioli to several customers that day. When asked why it looked so different than usual, he replied: ‘It’s just over-whipped.’
Ha! Not even a slap on the wrist for the guy. He could have potentially made a lot of people sick, but no, it’s all good apparently.”
And They Took His Tip!
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“I worked at Subway for six months.
My assistant manager, following a long list of minor infractions, decided she wasn’t going to show up one night, without calling in. The biggest problem being that this particular night was Halloween and she didn’t bother getting anyone else to cover for her. I was there, alone. My boss (the manager) apologized profusely and went on and on but ended up not punishing the assistant manager at all (they were longtime friends.)
I put in my two weeks notice about a month after that.
For what it’s worth, I killed the Halloween rush by myself. I’m honestly not sure how long the line got, but I remember lots of people commenting on things like, ‘they can’t get anyone to help you?’ (I worked in a bowling alley and no one else had been trained for Subway). I got everyone through the line in under half an hour. Something like 25 customers in half an hour. Some kind soul left me a $20 tip that my boss ended up confiscating because I was dumb enough to tell her.”
Here, Have A Microwaved Steak
“I worked for a year at a steakhouse and one of the cooks who closed with me did not like customers very much. One night we were 10 minutes away from closing and we get told a table was just seated. We were annoyed but it wasn’t something we were not used to. The order comes through – it’s two steaks and two salads, I make the salads, he makes the steaks.
The server comes back about 5 minutes after dropping the food off and says the man thought his steak was overcooked and wanted a new one. We had already started closing but the grill was still on. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal but the other cook goes ballistic. He starts screaming in Spanish and throws tongs and other stuff around. He takes one of the raw steaks and just throws it on a plate and pops it in the nearest microwave and puts it on for 8 minutes and sends it out. The server argued a bit but just got told to shut up and take it out.
The kitchen manager saw and didn’t say anything, he never got in trouble at all, still works there.”
This Poorly Behaved Child Ruins The Night
“In 2001 I was a waitress at a restaurant. Since it was placed conveniently close to the airport and it wasn’t exactly cheap, it’s clientele was mainly business people flying in or out of the country.
One evening, we had a really posh looking couple and their spawn of the devil demon child.
The kid was at least 8 and behaved appallingly all evening. Loud shrieking, deliberately dropping food on the floor, picking his nose and closely inspecting what he found before smearing it on the seat of the chair, and also insulting everyone in sight.
When my co-worker saw him sitting on the edge of the chair, with Pepsi-infused brown drool hanging out of his mouth, trying to aim for the center of the pattern in the oriental carpets, she lost her marbles. I saw it from across the room and I first felt that I should try and stop her, but then felt that the little demon had it coming.
She was an unstoppable force, a one-woman army ready to battle this demon cluster. She started with the parents. The mother first caught her attention. She was a 45-ish woman with an obviously expensive outfit and zero interest in raising a kid capable of human interaction. I don’t remember it all but it was along the lines of:
‘This little snot is yours! DEAL WITH HIM ACCORDINGLY YOU SPINELESS SNAKE!’
The woman was immediately stunned to silence after this verbal attack on her holier-than-thou-self; she just sat there while my friend moved on to her next victim, the child himself, now talking really fast to get her point across before the boss showed up to stop her.
‘And YOU! You think this is the acceptable behavior of a child in a public environment?! YOU ARE ALL DISGUSTING! Who do you think you are?’
At this point, the kid tried to throw his snotty napkin in her face. Big mistake. She grabbed his wrist and held it down to the table, then grabbed the sauce, originally meant for the smoked salmon, and poured it over his head. She left to the sound of cheering from the other guests.
Amazingly enough, she did not get fired. It turns out our employer never really enjoyed kids as guests in the first place, and after this, we very rarely had to deal with any again.”
Dopey Girl Is Lost At Work
“When I was still in college, I worked as a shift manager at Sonic (which basically translates into babysitter for teenage screwups). You get a lot of archetypical people in the service industry; the basehead who works hard because crack is expensive and her basehead fiancé is unemployed, the not-all-there valley girl who’ll work through the spring but no-show the first day of summer, the cook who speaks perfect English but just refuses to for some reason and so you bust out the high school Spanish whenever he’s on shift, the party bros who will come in high or hungover but work it off like a champ, the whiners, the junkies, the ‘way too old to still be working here’ people, etc. The list goes on and on, but you’ll find them in almost any restaurant I’ve ever been to or worked for. You’ll find them throughout your life and learn to avoid them.
I was covering for a manager at a Sonic across town when I met one of the biggest disasters I’ve ever seen. She was this tiny young thing who, by law, had to have been at least 16 but I’ll be darned if she was a day older. 75 pounds, blond hair down to her waist, with neon contact lenses and pasty skin so translucent she reminded me of a shapeshifter wearing a teenage girl bodysuit.
Anyway, I’m covering the night shift which means I’m on from 3 pm to 10 pm until the closer takes over. Crew members are due on at 5. Anorexic Luna Lovegood stumbles in at 7:00, having not contacted a soul, and kinda just stands there blinking at me, hair halfway out of a ponytail, wearing jeans and a hastily pulled over work shirt. I let her blink for a minute while I try to work out who she is, why she’s just standing there, and whether she’s going to offer to help, seeing as I’m clearly short-staffed. After a good minute of her watching me work, I cave.'”Hi, I’m Barb, the manager over across town. I’m covering for tonight. Are you?’
She nods, but like she’s in slow motion. ‘You realize how late you are?’ I ask, fishing for some sort of explanation, apology, any normal reaction.
Stone silence. Not a freaking word. She stops blinking, even. I repeat myself, adding, ‘It’s not acceptable to just be two hours late, especially without calling ahead.’
She finally nods at that statement, but still doesn’t say anything. I’m a little ticked now… like being late is one thing but to be just unapologetically standing there while I’m standing at the drive-thru doing her job for her was pretty galling. I ask her, point blank, what happened to make her so late.
‘Oh… I’m just… really irresponsible.’
Her answer floored me. It was my turn to just stand there blinking. I made a note to write her up and told her to go finish changing into her uniform and get to work. I was still working through my shock that somebody would just say that to… well, anybody. She comes back from changing ten minutes later, clocks on and starts taking orders and stuff.
Having finally gotten a chance to breathe, now that the store was properly staffed, I get a chance to watch her work the till. The girl can’t do math, that’s clear enough, she has to manually type everything into the machine to make change, which takes forever as it is, but then she also has to count out the change as she takes it from the register, coin by coin by coin.
Not 45 minutes later, she comes up and asks if she can take a break. Again, I just stare at her, seeing as she’s only going to be working for a maximum of 3 hours, I can’t fathom what she could need a break for, but it was a lull period, so I said she could take 10. She still looked pretty confused so maybe she wanted to steady herself some more, or maybe she hadn’t eaten all day, she looked pretty dead on her feet.
No sooner had the word OK crossed my lips, she’s out the back door to the dumpster/smoker’s pit. Not that I’d never known underage smokers, but I was more than a bit irate she’d ask for a smoke break under those circumstances. I shake it off, though, and wait for the post-ballgame dessert rush that usually hit from 9-10.
Homegirl left for her ten minutes around 7:45, and didn’t return until almost 10:00. After twenty minutes, I sent the cook out back to call her in and found out she wasn’t anywhere to be seen. She just took off out back and (not having a car) walked somewhere to, presumably, meet somebody.
I’m livid at this point, doing two people’s work, covered in ice cream and having to secure somebody else’s cash drawer so nothing goes missing. No sooner was the mess over with, girlfriend slips in the front door like deja vu, standing there blinking at me as I ask her where she’s been, did she think this was acceptable, the works.
Not a word. She didn’t offer a single word of explanation of where she went, what she’d been doing, nothing. She just stood there and made as if to get back to work, which I sure as heck wasn’t having. I told her, ‘That won’t be necessary. You’re done working, I’ve already got you off the time clock. If you come to work, you work. Otherwise, you go home. Also, when I tell the GM about this, you may not be needed here ever again.’
She didn’t even blink. She just nodded and sat down in the back until her ride showed up ten minutes later. I had to call her name 6-7 times to get her attention when her (I assume) boyfriend asked for her. She was just out of it, between the uncanny eyes and her bones angling every which way from her skin, she looked like she was from another planet.
I reported her to the GM, with the explicit recommendation that we fire her unless we got an explanation. He didn’t agree. She was actually employed another 3 weeks before somebody found her zonked out in the bathroom mid-shift with fresh track marks in her arm. I sincerely hope she got help.
I strongly suspect she did not.”
All Hopped Up, Yet He Doesn’t Get Fired
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“I work at a sandwich restaurant chain. One night my manager, we’ll call him Jim, decides to take some of his prescribed Xanax. This isn’t the first time he’s used it at work, but most times he just gets a little goofy.
Not this time.
This time Jim appears out of the back of house stumbling around and falling over, a lot. He’s slurring all his words and seems to be completely oblivious to how messed up he is.
Jim proceeds to grab a loaf of bread, cut it open and throws a couple slices of bacon on it. He then goes on the back and sloppily eats his ‘sandwich’ and a bag of chips. When he’s finished, he comes out to the front, stuffs the half-empty bag of chips down an employee’s shirt before going in the back again and passing out at the desk. Keep in mind he’s stumbling and falling down the entire time, prior to passing out.
I’m a delivery driver, and I used to be a manager, so when I get back in the store from my run and see Jim passed out I call my general manager, who then calls the area manager and they both come into the store around midnight. They see Jim passed out and wake him up and drive him home, leaving me to run the shift until they get back. They stay until we close at 4 am despite both of them having to work early in the morning for their own shifts.
The next day, Jim comes in an hour late, and still kind of messed up. He gets talked to, but nothing else happens. This happened a month ago, and he’s done this type of thing at least three times since. He still has his job, and nothing has happened to him.”
Only When It Inconveniences The Boss
“Was working dishes at a place where one of the prep cooks was really freaking bad and had the crappiest attitude ever. Dude was ticked off with another cook and while they were passing by each other, they accidentally bumped shoulders. He turned around and grabbed the dude by the throat and started choking him. People had to pull them apart and he didn’t even get fired for it. Yet a month later he got fired because he came in 3 hours late because they made his hours earlier than normal and the boss had to cover for him during that time.
I was so amazed at how much crap people got away with and the only workers to get fired were people who made the boss have to do anything he didn’t want to.”
Working Is THE WORST
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“We have a girl who calls out for almost every single one of her shifts. When she doesn’t call out she begs everyone to take her shifts. Out of every 10 shifts she is given she only ever actually shows up for one or two. Whenever she does show up, she almost always asks to leave early anyway for any of the many excuses she has up her sleeve.
She has received seven serious write-ups for her attendance/reliability. Most people are sacked after three serious write-ups. Somehow she keeps sneaking on by. Every time she gets another one I think ‘Okay this will be the one’ but she still somehow works here. She was actually fired once in the past for these very same patterns but for some reason they let her come back only for her to pull the same stunt all over again.
Anyway, right in the middle of our busy season this most recent summer she asked for three weeks off. She was told that they would give her one week but anything more than that would be considered her resignation. So she took the three weeks off anyway, and during that time all of her scheduled shifts were left uncovered. That’s at least 15+ no call no shows and we were always left understaffed and overworked because of it.
Yet after her little vacation, she resumed working with no repercussions. Nothing was ever said about it. We’ve had to let people go for far, far less. I don’t understand it. I like her as a person and when she is here she is a great worker but that’s the problem, she’s never actually here.”
He Dared The Boss To Fire Him
“I worked at a pizza place. It was a busy night and a couple to-go orders took too long, and the owner came in and went nuts on the guy rolling dough about the ticket times. The situation escalated quickly and the guy started cursing back and forth with the owner.
Dough guy screams something like, ‘Freaking fire me if you think I’m doing such a terrible job, old man!’
Owner: ‘Are you joking with me?’
Dough Guy: ‘No, freaking fire me, do it! I freaking hate this job, hate my life, and I hate this FREAKING restaurant! Fire me!’
The owner never fired him and he apologized later to the dough guy.”
Closing Shift Is The Worst
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“When I was working at a restaurant, there was a guy who unplugged a fridge while sweeping behind it and didn’t notice. Since this was the fridge we kept all our nice raw meat and fish in, it cost our really small pub a few thousand dollars in lost product. Shockingly the dude just got written up because nobody else could close 5 days a week and he eventually got fired over something minor.”
A Threat Is Ignored By Management
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“I have about a million of these from working for a company where they didn’t believe in firing people and giving them multiple chances to do better before they would even consider it.
My favorite would be when I was managing and I wouldn’t let an employee take a large party (it was a chain casual restaurant). She was a terrible server and was an angry person who shouldn’t have been hired but my GM felt sorry for her and the restaurant got a kick-back because she was a felon.
She approached me and asked why they hadn’t been seated in her section and I told her her strength wasn’t with large parties and I didn’t want to put her in a situation where she was overwhelmed. She lost her mind and went through the kitchen letting everyone know she would be waiting out back to kick my butt when I got off work. I was six months pregnant. I don’t know if she meant it or not, so I had my husband come pick me up in the front of the building. My GM promised to take care of the situation but guess what, she was back, as usual, the next day. I was told to suck it up and pretend it didn’t happen and treat her as such. Even though she threatened not only me but my unborn child.
I’ve seen cooks punch each other in the face over garlic bread. Nothing ever happened. So glad I don’t work for that company anymore.”
Quite The Love Triangle
“A server I work with broke up with a cook she was dating because he cheated on her with the manager, who had cheated on her fiancé with the cook. One night they were throwing insults around and cut each other so deeply that the server ended up beating the ever-loving snot out of the manager inside their own tiny, car-sized office. Both were suspended for a week but not fired.
When the server came back to work, I took a ladle and a metal bowl and imitated a boxing bell ding ding. When they worked together I strutted around holding up a sign saying ‘ROUND 2’
I didn’t get fired either.”
They Can’t Even Fire A Con Artist
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“This jerk of a co-worker quit because he was too good for our restaurant. He came back 6 months later and begged for his job back and management stupidly hired him.
A week later, it turned out he was going around to all the employees, including me, asking them to let him take out the (incredibly) heavy garbage bags on his own. He was sick of management’s nonsense and the only reason he came back was to injure himself and then get workers comp and potentially sue them. Three separate people told management, when he was confronted about it he stammered about it being a joke and management shrugged it off and said, ‘well, he says he was just joking.’ Blew my mind!”
17 Years Of Experience But Still Incompetent
“A co-worker dumped an urn full of hot urn cleaner down my side.
We work at Starbucks. There were 3 sinks between the back, where she decided to haul it, and where she started. She could have used any of the three and the store policy is dump old coffee in the nearest sink. She’s been told what to do before.
I was out of work for 4 days (1 paid day because that is what I was scheduled). I came back, still with blisters that hadn’t healed/popped until the middle of my shift, and my incompetent co-worker was still there, just because she has worked for the company for 17 years.”