I did a brief stint at a coffee bar that had coffee and alcohol. “coffee bar” get it? They had food too, but the craft coffee and cocktails was something they really wanted to rub the customers’ noses in. I didn’t really fit in there, and the main guy who was hired as ‘head barista’ wore that title like a boy scout badge. They were looking for people who were actually passionate about being a Barista, and god bless them but that’s not me. When I quit, my probation officer forced me to get my last paycheck, which I’m glad she did because I would have totally not done that out of dislike for those people. I worked there long enough to master my coffee game, and I could confidently barista anywhere. There was a job I once applied for to do the barista thing and the lady didn’t even let me finish the shift. She was like “uh-uh, we need a Barista. Not you. Bye.”
Up next I managed a fast food restaurant. The restaurant is famous for fish and it’s not Long John Silver’s.
it’s not.
It’s the other one.
The place is regional, so if you’re not in the southeast US you probably haven’t heard of this restaurant.
And that’s okay.
They have a couple restaurants in Colorado and one in New Mexico. Doesn’t matter.
I took this job on recommendation from a former coworker. I took this job because it paid salary, it closed at 10pm and there was no way I’d be there past 1130pm ever. In the restaurant industry, that’s a godsend. Plus two days off. So they send me to this store in Mississippi for training where I was treated like absolute dogshit. One of the trainers threw a bag of broccoli at my head and it hit. Another trainer kept getting angrier and angrier with everything I said and did and I was waiting for him swing on me.
When I was getting trained on the cash register, the GM stood an inch from my ear and kept shouting. I told her she was stressing me out. Another trainer let two people go early, but not me because “of my fucking mouth” I never got apologies for this treatment, and frankly, I told my friend who recommended me that this shit was starting to feel a little racist.
After he went and talked to them, the area manager came in and talked with all of us, and I got pissed off enough to start shoving these fucking people out of my way, I won their respect and they were nicer to me. Unfortunately, that was a ruse. The store they chose for me to manage was their weakest and worst performing store. On paper, this makes sense. You’ve got a hot young new manager coming into turn this store around!
No.
Not at all.
Our employees were a skeleton crew made up of a guy that nobody (but me) liked, a woman who was wearing adult diapers and moved at the pace of a slug, two high school kids, three other “managers” who were not managing anything, and me.
The guy that nobody liked died. I’m not kidding he got fired, then he died. Diapers lady was still there when I left and so were the managers. They really liked to put me on drive thru due to my eloquent manner of speech. The girl they had working drive thru only worked part time, was still in high school, and was as rude as you could imagine.
Working drive thru was pretty wild. Somebody gave me weed that they packed in the face mask because they didn’t have a bag. People would tip me on occasion, and on my last night at work somebody actually passed me a joint from their car window. I was not drinking at work when I worked here. I did drink during the training shift because the abuse was just too much, but after they transferred me, I was holding it down pretty well.
Once I was getting a hold of the store and its employees, the one old lady manager (with a very sick sense of humor) she did something evil. She re-hired somebody that she had fired like ten years before. This guy comes in and immediately starts shit with me. I have never achieved that level of anger in my life. I was throwing shit at him, screaming, all of it. He brought it right out of me. The next day he started at it again, and I told the old manager lady, it’s him or me. I’m walking out the door right fuckin now I can’t do this. She sided with me, but she didn’t really help me out. My last day on this job, after hitting that joint from the drive thru, I walk back in the kitchen and see a giant smoke cloud. It was just me and the two high school kids, and those kids told me earlier “They were going to go smoke weed out back.” I told them, “don’t tell me that shit and take the trash out.” “Out back” was inside the fucking kitchen. So there I was, having exhaled the aforementioned joint handed to me at the drive-thru, only to walk back and hit this other blunt that these two kids were smoking. I hit it and I told them to get rid of this shit, this isn’t cool.
Total failure as a manager right here.
One of the other managers forgot her purse and came back and smelled the weed and that spooked one of the high school kids. She left, and that high school kid disappeared. The store is still open, I am still working the drive thru and putting orders out while I’m looking for this kid. I find him and he’s got a cut on his face. He’s fucked. He thinks he’s in that Lil Nas X music video with the devil and the angel and all that. I called his grandmother to pick him up. Conveniently, the other kid tells me, “Um, mister, he’s my ride.”
With an hour to close: I let them both go, I cleaned up, I took the last orders, took inventory, did my closing duties and left a big note saying “As of this date this time I resign.”
I picked my last paycheck in person, which was again, awkward.
Next kitchen I found myself in was a bar called Slider Inn (from earlier). I was working for a moving company part time and this bar seemed to pay more and was less work. Someone higher up the food chain in restaurant ownership had seen me playing drums and thought I was cool. The GM was this 7 foot tall woman who weighed like 380 lbs. She had the body of an offensive tackle.
The RM was this woman who looked a lot like the woman who owned the vegan ice cream store, only a little bit more white trash. I applied to be bartender there but they used me more as a server.
Once again, I am in a restaurant where I am being treated poorly. The bartender guy there did not like me at all. I’m not sure if it’s because he was threatened, or was just a tool. Most of the girls there were pretty neutral towards me until I started getting more phone numbers than they did. Not on purpose, on a given shift I’d have at least three or four people leave their phone numbers on the receipts.
Sometimes this led to some funny interactions.
I don’t think it ever led to a true hookup or even a date for that matter. It was more fun to see my coworkers’ reactions.
I was drinking on the job here. It was okay though, there were several times where tables would buy me shots and the fucking managers were in on it. We could also drink after our shift. That precedent established, one day I come into work and I slammed this tequila bottle that I brought in. I left the cup above the time clock with full intentions to sip on it through my shift. Immediately got pulled aside and written up or something over it.
It did not (and still does not) make sense to me, when it was okay and when it was not okay to drink. Was it a ‘no outside drinks’ issue? I believe those policies should be absolute.
I watched one bartender get fired because when he walked through the kitchen he said “Good game” and he slapped me and this girl on the ass. I honestly don’t remember him slapping my ass just hers. The thing is, this guy was gay as a three dollar bill. That girl told the GM and he got fired for sexual harassment.
Personally, of the two of us, I feel like I had the sexual harassment claim not her.
Also I view this as typical kitchen behavior, and I think she overreacted. Just my opinion, those aren’t the times we live in anymore.
My last night at this job was kind of funny because I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and drink something, and there wasn’t really a designated smoking area. I hid in the dumpster cage, and the twelve foot fence closed shut on me and I could not open it from the side I was on. I had to climb the fence and drop to the ground on the other side to get out. I showed up for work the next morning and the GM was like “yeah you’re too wild man.” I had turned the coffee maker on before she fired me but didn’t have a chance to put the filter in- so coffee was exploding everywhere as I walked away.
The next kitchen I worked in was on the other side of the state. I was a server. For the first time, I was treated pretty well by my fellow coworkers. We had only one asshole manager who I liked to call ‘Big Gay Tex’ everybody else was cool.
I got this job because one day I was coming into town from a famous mountain range. I needed a place to charge my phone and this was the only place for miles I could do that. My server brought me a couple extra drinks than I ordered, and then brought me a job application. Then the hiring manager comes out and does an interview right there. I was wearing short shorts and I hadn’t shaved in days, but sure why not? Big Gay Tex came out asking for something to write on, I hand him my check and he takes it and writes on it. I said, “You take it you paid for it.”
Ten minutes go by and there was nothing said by anyone.
I figured I’d see them Monday anyway and skirted on out of there. I showed up for my first shift and was greeted with, “Hey! There’s the guy who didn’t pay for his food!”
During my stay at that restaurant, I got in trouble for asking a table to order me shots. One table. So many tables would tip me in shots or wine or beer in lieu of or paired with cash. One out of fifty ain’t bad.
Didn’t get fired.
I lost someone’s debit card one night, that was embarrassing. I’m sure if you ask my coworkers they’d all have different stories about me. Maybe the day I snuck over to the liquor store mid-shift, or maybe the day I spilled a whole pot of coffee on my hand and still worked my shift with some serious burnage on my hand.
For me? I really mark this job as, I ended up making really good friends with the fry cook. The fry cook could really play drums, and it also turned out we’re from like around the same part of Florida, and we both liked the same music. So naturally, he joined my band and we played some gigs and I took him on as a roommate for a while. We’re still friends. He’s currently a 26 year old stepdad in South Carolina for some girl he met off of MeetMe.
But the reason I quit I quit this job is, I fucked another coworker. She was new to that location but apparently had been working for that company for years, and I could just tell. It was like by the way she acted around me I was like yeah you want it. Well I learned from the past I can’t fuck coworkers. After I realized her and I were becoming a regular thing, I quit that job.
The last kitchen job I worked was making hotel breakfast at a 3 star extended stay. I worked there for about six months. The GM got fired for stealing, the assistant GM got fired and then got a DUI right after, the turnaround in that place was horrendous. By the time I quit I was one of three people who had been there the longest. I highly don’t recommend eating three star hotel breakfasts. Most of it is all microwaved frozen stuff. Consumers have to really trust the kitchen staff to be hygienic because the health inspections are quite generous. My shift was 4am to 10am, but because of “labor costs being too high” management kept asking me to clock in later. I was never late to a shift, however I did miss one shift because the schedule wasn’t posted. Towards the end, corporate sent a man who was covered in head to toe in warts to try and turn the hotel around. He had his own plans and ideas on how to run the place and was not interested in anything I had to say. The discussion that led to me giving my two weeks notice went as follows:
Me: “Well generally we don’t put the entire box of food in the fridge. We’d put it in bags and put it in containers.”
Warts: “There’s pertinent date information on the box. Back in Louisiana we’d have fresh seafood and we’d need the dates.”
Me: “We’d write the received date and the thaw date on the bag”
We live in a landlocked state. I don’t see this hotel starting to serve shrimp ‘n grits but, I let him have that one. My last day I took a bunch of food from the fridge home with me. I was taking a class that was ending and was throwing a breakfast party, and I didn’t want to come empty handed.
They say I was stealing food.
I haven’t worked in kitchens since, and God willing, I won’t have to.
Need Job Will Travel 
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