Miserable Manager

December 21, 2016

in Kitchen & Chef & Boss Stories

While there are tons of stories on here about customers or workers, I haven’t read one about a manager yet, so let me tell you about mine…

I worked at a restaurant like IHOP which means you can wind up working with a lot of unimpressive people; my manager was by far the worst. During two of our busiest days they (his assistant manager as well) would schedule only one server from around 1pm to 4pm. The manager was supposed to watch front on those two days… but he never did it. He always sat his ass back in the dish pit so he could chat with the cooks. This means I was greeting, seating, taking to-go orders, cashing people out, selling our baked goods, and still doing my job on a busy day. Every single server was upset if they found they had to work with him on one of those days because they knew what it meant.

Think I’m done? Nope. This same manager has hired back people who should never have been allowed to come back due to past experiences with the same store, and kept people employed who should have been fired years ago. For example: He hired back a cook who had walked out twice on nights we were busy and also was known for no-call, no-show. When the same cook started doing the same thing after coming back for a third time, my manager acted shocked by the behavior. We also have two cooks who get sloppy drunk at work, and one of them likes to yell and throw a toddler-like fit when he gets busy; on a bad day four tickets will make him freak the fuck out. The customers can clearly hear him most of the time; he uses SUPER offensive language. My manager is 100% aware of all of this behavior and does literally nothing about it, and though these two examples are the worst, they are not the last of them.

My last story was my last experience with the manager. I got a much better job uptown and decided it would be the right thing to do to give them my two week’s notice. I left a note after the assistant manager asked me to, stating that I would be done working on December 3rd. My week went as planned. The next week I check the schedule when it goes up and my name isn’t even on it. Everybody including the assistant manager tells me that it’s got to be a mistake because they need me, and to call him the next day when he is there. Messing up the schedule is something he did quite often so I really thought it could have been a mistake, so I called him. Here is how that conversation went:

“Hey this is *******, I was wondering what happened with this week? I wasn’t supposed to be finished until Saturday.”

His response? “Well I needed room for your replacement since you decided to quit.” The way he says this was so snarky, I didn’t know he could be like that. I found out later in the week that he didn’t hire another server until the day after what would have been my last, and the other servers all had to cover my shifts.

When I reminded him that he was understaffed on the floor his response was: “I think I would know better than YOU.”

This sent me over the edge and I did something I have never done with a boss before, insult him. “Says the most over paid dishwasher in (name of my city),” before hanging up. I worked there for seven months, I would work any shift they gave me, sometimes working 16 hours without a break due to people calling in or quitting, I shifted without the pay to help them out, came in on days off, and when I did quit I gave them notice. That was how he repaid me. This was by far my worst experience with a food service worker.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Been there September 25, 2018 at 4:24 am

Having been on restaurant management for 15 years, you worked at a poorly run establishment. Sorry to hear it happens. Poor leadership begets poor environment. That said micromanaging restaurant managers begets a whole nugget of other unpleasantness. Know how to lead.

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