His Bouncer Experience Kicked In, Doing Him Zero Favors
“I used to manage a Wendy’s by a major highway exit where I live. We had a lot of crappy employees due to the location and because Terri the franchise owner was incredibly cheap. The Taco Bell across the street consistently poached any employee of ours who wasn’t terrible with an extra $1.50/hour.
One guy they didn’t take was this huge beefcake. He was a bouncer who did private security for a local events promoter and was just very well built. One day, I was expediting the drive-thru while he was making sandwiches. He got off track and started making several wrong orders over and over. The line was stuck and he was about twelve sandwiches behind by the time I managed to take his station so he could regroup and I could get it caught back up.
He didn’t take kindly to that, so he grabbed the lid from the Frosty machine and started hitting me on the head and back of my neck, shouting that nobody pushed him around. It was way too far. I called the police while I was trying to get back to the office and lock myself in because I honestly thought he was going to snap my neck. I fired him through the door while still on the phone, and he hightailed the heck out of there.
Five days later, the idiot assistant manager tried to hire him back. His reasoning? He claimed since I wasn’t really hurt and was scared of one of my employees, I was the one who should find another job.”
He Couldn’t Handle The Responsibility
“It was my last day working in the restaurant of a hotel chain. We had a new chef on, plus it was a short-staffed night shift and surprisingly busy. In fact, it was so busy we had to recruit visiting employees on the fly to help.
So a little bit about the new chef. He was friendly for the most part; a little cocky about his capabilities, but still nice. Long story short, he could not handle the amount of orders that were coming in. His rage was slowly building up like a pot of boiling water.
It all started to bubble over when he asked us busboys to help him man the grill/orders. We refused since we had our own jobs to do and no idea how to use an industrial size grill. He went into a flying rage, throwing pots and pans all over the kitchen! One poor dishwasher couldn’t speak English and he was in the middle of it all.
The chef then proceeded to get in one busboy’s face, nose to nose, pointing and screaming until someone else decided to help him with the orders. I was only 18 at the time and called my boss who was at home. It took two calls to convince my boss and security to come in and take care of this meltdown.
The cops were called and the chef was escorted away, all while restaurant staff were instructed to hide in the office behind locked doors. Yeah, great last day. And the cherry on top of the cake: they were forced to close their doors the very next day due to bankruptcy with no heads up to guests, event planners or staff.”
The Guy Seriously Needed To Take A Chill Pill
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“One of my first jobs out of high school was working at a grocery store. In the back employee area of the store, we had a compactor we’d toss our cardboard into to get, well, compacted.
One time, I had a ton of cardboard I was moving back there to toss into the machine and I got there about five seconds before another employee, so he had to wait for me to finish before throwing his stuff in there.
He raged, yelled, and asked me if I had a death wish for getting in front of him. His supervisor overheard it and pulled him aside and started yelling at him. All over some cardboard.”
She Was Being A Jerk But His Response Was Way Over The Line
“My first job in college was working food service on campus. My roommates and I did food prep in the back and really never had face to face interaction with customers. We worked with this one dude, Pat. Pat was a huge dude, 6’6” and probably 250 lbs. He was intimidating but super cool. He liked all of us but hated the manager, Mary. He said she always gave him the crappy jobs and nitpicked everything he did, which was true.
One day, she asked him to make PB&Js, lots and lots of them. He was almost finished and she got ticked that he put both the peanut butter and jelly on one slice of bread and then just put the tops on them. She said it made them messier and wasn’t the proper procedure. Sure, it didn’t match the picture with instructions on the wall, but it’s a PB&J, so who cares?
Mary asked him to throw them all away and start over. He got super ticked and so a few of the other employees started siding with him, just telling him to bag them up and move on. At that point, he was trying to bag them up and label them while she was at the other end of the table throwing them away as fast as she could. Pat started yelling, ‘Stop it, Mary,’ ‘Somebody better come get this woman,’ and ‘Goddangit, I said stop!’ She didn’t stop.
Pat grabbed the corner of the table and jerked it away from where she was. Mary looked up and asked him if he was trying to get fired. He took a few steps toward her, put his hand around her neck (he later claimed he put it on her shoulder), and yelled, ‘I’ll strangle you, witch!’ Two other guys grabbed him really quick and took him into the manager’s office. When we went out for our break, there was a cop talking to Pat and the manager. Pat ended up getting fired, but I don’t think Mary pressed any charges against him.”
The Applebee’s Was Full Of Ratchet Antics
“I worked as an Applebee’s hostess a few years ago. One of our managers was banging one of the servers, we’ll call her Holly. As a hostess, I got all the servers’ drama firsthand because they liked to come up to the stand and complain. So one day, ‘Venus,’ another waitress, came up to me and starts telling me all about how she did it with the same manager that was banging Holly in the parking lot after a closing shift.
About a week later, I came in to work and the bartender told me that Holly found out about Venus and the manager and was livid. I was wiping down a table in the bar area on one of the busiest Saturday’s I’d ever seen when suddenly I hear Holly scream from the kitchen, ‘WHATEVER WITCH, I HEARD YOU HAVE A SOUR VAJAYJAY ANYWAYS!’
The ENTIRE bar area (about 10 tables and 18 people at the bar itself) heard her. And of course we were all listening even more intently when Venus screamed back, ‘MAYBE IF YOU DIDN’T HAVE A SWAMPY BUTTHOLE HE WOULDN’T HAVE COME LOOKING TO DO ME.’
We heard a slap and then a clatter, which I later found out was Venus grabbing someone’s appetizer sampler off the line and chucking it at Holly in retaliation for being slapped in the face. We ended up comping a bunch of meals and having to stay for a meeting about inappropriate relations between waitstaff and management, but it was so worth it.”
She Put On A Clinic In How You Should Not Exit A Job
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“My old coworker Martha had a habit of being lazy and complaining. During lunch, she once said something to me along the lines of, ‘I wish they’d just fire me so I could collect unemployment.’ We worked at a cafe and though it was my first job, I thought the company policies and the general atmosphere was good. Martha, however, complained that it was the worst job she’d ever had.
One day she was off the clock at 2 pm and then had to go pick up her son from her mother’s. At maybe 1:57, the manager asked Martha to restock the line, which takes maybe five or ten minutes and we get paid for every minute we’re on the clock. Also, it’s not remotely unusual to stay five or ten minutes past your shift. Martha started arguing with the manager who rolled her eyes and basically said, ‘Do it or don’t do it,’ and walked back to the office. Martha kind of huffed and stomped along to the back of the house, and I figured she was restocking.
I began ringing up a customer when I heard something and realized it was raised voices. The customer doesn’t seem to notice, though, so I ignored it. A minute went by and I was idly chatting with the customer when I heard the raised voices again. The customer noticed that time, but I managed to wave it off. Over the next five minutes, the occasional raised voice became a constant screech in the background as Martha yelled her expletive-filled rant at the manager. I was too afraid to go to the back of the house and instead just tried to keep the customers distracted. At that point, Martha sounded like Gordon Ramsay after huffing helium.
Another five minutes went by and Martha was still shouting. It was 2:15 by then and I started thinking about how Martha could have already been out the door if she’d just stocked the line. Finally, blissfully, the shouting stopped. I held my breath for a moment before Martha came bursting through the employees only door, red-faced and gasping for breath. She looked around wildly before strolling up to me, pushing me aside, and grabbing a drink cup. She shouted, ‘I’M FREAKING DONE!’ and then stormed out, harshly elbowing a new employee on the way.
I went to go see the manager who was messing around with the schedule, not looking at all like she’d just been screamed at for a solid 15 minutes. She looked up at me and casually said, ‘She’s fired.’ Afterward, they had to write up an incident report because Martha actually bruised the new employee’s ribs when she elbowed her. Shortly after I was eating lunch with the manager and mentioned Marth’a comment, ‘I wish they’d just fire me so I could get unemployment.’ My manager grinned and asked if I would be willing to sign a document saying I’d heard that. Martha was fired, did not receive unemployment, and was lucky not to get charged with assault.”
He Took It Further Than He Ever Had Before
“When I was in college, I had a job in the kitchen of a restaurant. My coworkers were mainly my age, although we had some who were older. When I started, there was a guy who worked on the frying station side. This guy had a temper and would often say the funniest insults under his breath when we were busy.
He was a good guy but when we got slammed, he straight up lost it to the highest degree. These hilarious meltdowns usually got the whole kitchen staff laughing and surprisingly it helped everyone stay loose during those ‘holy crap’ moments.
One day he was having one of his usual meltdowns and went to take the dishes over to the dishwasher to cool off a bit. While coming back, he decided to grab some fresh plates and ended up dropping one. However, something felt different about this particular moment of rage. It felt like instead of jokingly melting down, like usual, this was serious.
He started cursing out loud and kicked one of the broken pieces down the line of cooks. The piece was moving pretty fast and after bouncing from boot to boot and breaking further it came to rest at my feet. I looked over at him as he stormed out the back. Needless to say, this guy lost his job over the whole ordeal which led to him threatening the kitchen manager’s life. For a week or two, our manager brought a bat with him to work and from what I heard, the authorities took care of the situation. It was the craziest thing I’ve seen on the job. Stress does some pretty crazy things to people.”
Talk About Being A Being A Picky Eater
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“I washed dishes a while back and one day some guy ordered a well-done porterhouse steak. Then he got SUPER ticked it was taking so long, getting even more ticked when the manager refused to comp his meal.
The guy went full meltdown when the manager said, ‘I have your name and I will call the police and file a report that you ordered a meal, refused to pay, and then left.’ He left anyway, so the manager called the police, and an hour later he came back and paid his bill quietly. Man, my boss John was the man. He was an old-school restaurant owner and hard as heck to work for, but he paid amazing for the 90s and made the best food on earth. RIP, you’ll be missed.”
Not The Ending Everyone Was Expecting
“I was working at a restaurant on the main road of a ski mountain. It was December 30th and we were on pace to do 600+ dinners that night. The two weeks around Christmas/New Year’s is pretty much the busiest time of the year and we were cranking out. The restaurant had an open line setup, so while the prep and storage are done in the back kitchen, every dinner is made on the line that basically every table in the restaurant has a pretty clear view to.
For whatever reason, management had the idea that this night would be a good time to move cooks around from their normal positions and see how they handled high pressure on a station different from what they were used to. One of the cooks, Mike, had moved up from New York City and while he knew his cooking inside and out, he was placed as an expediter (coordinating and passing orders out so the food flowed to tables properly and with good timing). Working the oven on the pizza/pasta station was Karl, an older gentleman who was close with the owners, so he was only ever on that one station. Karl was very particular about how orders were called out and after a few hours of service, a pizza was called that he didn’t have prepared.
Now, the missing pizza was ‘A Natural,’ which was a personal-sized cheese pizza. The dough was prerolled out and the rest took just a quick moment to put together and toss in the oven. Karl decided to take it personally and Mike exploded on him, screaming and freaking out on him to get it done. Karl, rather than handle the issue or try to argue his point, decided to storm off the line out to the back kitchen. I was caught up on my orders, so I darted back to try to reason with him. In the back kitchen, our prep cook was bewildered, saying Karl just walked past, grabbed his coat, hopped in his car, and drove off. I told him to join us on the line and we went out to tried to salvage service.
Due to our relative experience, I wound up expediting while Mike covered the oven. He had a few loud comments about how to handle the job and what an example he’s providing by working with everyone else before getting told to be quiet. We managed to finish up service and make it through the night.
After work, Mike met with the owners who ‘were disappointed in the way he handled the situation.’ He was told that his employment depended on being able to work with Karl and the rest of the staff professionally. Upon finding out Karl would not be fired for walking out on one of the busiest nights of the year, Mike quit on the spot. It was a pretty big Shyamalan twist when it really seemed like Karl was going to be the one leaving the restaurant.”
She Had Some Sort Of God Complex
“We had a new hire in her first week who rubbed everyone the wrong way, acting as though she was the hottest thing to hit our restaurant since food itself. When told her schedule for the next day, she argued with the manager about her availability. Threats of litigation started coming out of no where.
She then approached two police officers who were trying to enjoy their meal, completely in tears, breaking down and begging them to arrest our manager for firing her unjustly. They helped take her out of the building.”
The Rollercoaster Ride Of Boris’s Life
“I bartend at a restaurant by the sea which is incredibly busy and has a high turnover rate for managers: 12 in two years. One time we hired a new food runner, a slick-haired, good looking Sicilian guy named Boris. He said he was going to be our manager but had to run food for a couple of weeks before the job was open.
I started to get to know Boris better, learning that he was going through a divorce, was selling his car, and liked to smoke weed. He also kept inviting himself to hang out with my friends and I. I mainly just ignored him because I don’t party with my bosses. Boris ended up selling his old Volvo to my buddy Joel and became our manager a couple weeks later.
Boris was basically the worst manager ever. If I needed something, he would finish a 15-minute conversation with a guest then deligate the thing so it took another 10 minutes for someone to get their drinks. He was awful and kept trying to hang out with me.
Everything came to a head on Pride weekend, which is especially huge in San Francisco. I got to work at 6:30 am since I was the opening bartender. I looked across the street to see four people on the beach. It looked like 3 high school girls in rainbow outfits and a homeless dude still partying. I thought to myself, ‘Dang, still going at it. These people are crazy.’
As I was opening, I got warm so I decided to open the windows in the dining room. Then I spotted the four revelers in the parking lot talking to our pregnant manager. I thought nothing of it and got back to work. A few minutes later the homeless looking guy was standing at the end of my bar while we were still closed, and it’s Boris.
At that point, I’d worked with Boris for 6 months and couldn’t recognize him from 50 feet away. He was in a dirty dress shirt and khakis. He turned around and there was brown crap stains all over the back of his khakis. He keeps babbling on and on, definitely out of his mind on some substance. He kept going on about how things are going to get much worse when he’s gone. The pregnant manager got him some water and bread.
Boris disappeared for a bit and my homie Joel got to work. I tried to tell Joel about what happened with Boris, but before I can get the words out, Boris was back and asking Joel to borrow his keys. Joel throws Boris the keys as my internal voice screamed out ‘Noooooo!’ and Boris said he had to get ready for work and was going to buy a suit from Neman and Marcus. After Boris left in Joel’s car we didn’t see him again for two hours.
I told Joel about Boris being on one and he flipped out and started calling Boris. The thing is, it was gay pride Sunday and the suit shop Boris was going to was is in the middle of the parade route. We were starting to worry.
Low and behold, two hours later Boris comes back in a crap-stained suit. The general manager fired him on the spot. Then Boris proceeded to go and steal two bottles from the bar and gets wasted outside on the steps to the building.
Joel and I get off of the shift and he has his keys in hand but no car. We searched everywhere, but no car. Weeks go by and eventually we find out Boris crashed the car, broke the axels, and then Uber’d back to work. The damage cost thousands of dollars in repairs and tickets.
But that’s not all. He got his divorce from a woman with whom he had children and started hanging out with my friend Tony, who is a bug chaser (trying to get HIV on purpose, I know it’s messed up). Long story short, Boris started doing the same thing and now has HIV. What a spectacular burn out.”
He Was Always Reserved, But Then He Went Prehistoric
“I worked at Taco Bell while in high school and one of my coworkers was this guy who was really friendly but also really strange. He was a 6’3” 250 pound burly guy who wore eyeliner and had blue hair. He was also obsessed with being a ‘straight edge’ kid and drew the x’s on his hands, the whole nine yards. He had a high pitched but pleasant voice and spoke in an overly polite manner.
After he had put in his two weeks, he was working the front counter register on his last day. This lady walked up to order and he just stared at her. After a few seconds, she said, ‘Umm…can you take my order?’
In his very calm and polite voice he replied, ‘Oh, I am sorry ma’am, but I cannot.’
There was another awkward pause and she said, ‘Umm…well why not?’
He responded with ‘….BECAUSE I AM A DINOSAUR!’
He immediately started growling and roaring at her as he walked back and forth behind the counter like a T-Rex. He did this until the general manager who was back making food realized what was going on. While she was on her way up to the counter, he calmly clocked out and left. The GM had to apologize over and over again to the poor woman trying to order. That kid was a Taco Bell legend for several years.”
