Sell Out
Management has cracked down on all aspects of the restaurant due to the owner's new totalitarian regime.
Write ups were threatened and management warned us that they were keeping a secret police type log on any rule infractions and that they may write us up without us signing the documents or being aware we are being disciplined.
Well about a week ago one of my coworkers that I am friendly with was called back into the office to discuss a card that was filled out with him as the waiter.
Apparently a table had come in later in the night when we ran out of the fish entree, being that it is the lent season we have been running friday features as an alternative to our red meat dishes.
"Nick" as we will call him, informed the table and went on to the other features and such.
The table made a comment about us running out of the dish, but if we don't have it there's not much we can do, there are other seafood entrees on the menu as it were.
Around that time Nick was seated another party, this time of eight.Once again they were not able to order the features, no big deal this time around.
So Nick received a comment card from the first and smaller party.
Apparently their side of the story was Nick told them we were out and then went on to sell the other party the fish feature.
They said Nick lied to them and was a bad waiter and yada yada.
Nick relayed his side of the story and that no, the party of eight did not receive any fish features as we were out.
Why would he lie?
A party of eight is automatic gratuity so he wouldn't have held out for a larger tip from them.
Maybe if he didn't like the table he would lie, but that would be rather petty and since the feature spiel is at the beginning of a dinner he would have no motivation to lie for that reason.
Well the manager heard him out, and pushed the write up towards him.
When you sign a write up it pretty much means you admit to the actions described, which means he would have to admit to lying to his table while serving the dish to the other party.
Apparently Nick tried reasoning a bit further, but they made him sign it anyways.
Once again way to back up your staff.You take a very honest and hard working guy like Nick and call him a liar.
Management is so afraid that the almighty customer might call the owner, hell they probably sent the assclown that wrote that letter a free gift certificate as a reward for being a lying piece of crap.
Way to sell out your staff once again restaurant industry, and yes this type of behavior is the rule for these middle managers, not the exception, unfortunately.
Side Note, I may have posted this a long time back, it was in my document file, though not on my archives here.
posted by Waiter @ 3:51 PM
10 Comments:
This was already posted... Waiting for new material... :)
Yeah.I read this before
well, I'M glad to read it. cheers.
just today i lightly probed the assistant manager. about unions. unions. not with a part of my body. we were talking with a customer who was a shop steward at UPS for several years, so it was in context and thus less threatening to her. to be honest, our restaurant pays very well, management is usually supportive of staff run-ins with jerky customers, and it's a generally nice place to work. in my view, the only thing that _really_ needs to be dealt with is their tendancy to fire people without any warning. write ups don't happen, or if they do, they are the "secret" kind that an employee never knows about. or there might be a jovial and very casual mention of something minor, and then a week later they fire the worker for not snapping to as if they had been taken to the wood shed. my manager said she wasn't aware of any standing policy regarding employees unionizing. read: it's never been tried, but if someone did, they would quite possibly be fired-- which is *wildly* illegal, for those who don't realize-- but you never know till you try.
hey, you never know until you try.
That's yuck man. Something similar going on at my restaurant. Our front end managers chew the cooks out for "undermining their authority" when we get mad at servers for breaking rules, and the back end managers do absolutely nothing to back us up, if and when we can even find them.
Yes this was already posted. I am not saying that in a 'what is your blog so boring you have to repeat' sort of way just letting you know as an FYI. Either way, it was worth reading again.
BD
I'm glad you added that last comment on there. It sounded strangely familiar; I thought I was going nuts. ^_^
Shitty people. Shitty all around. For the first time, I am working in a place where my boss has my back, where I don't get thrown to the dogs if somebody looks at me sideways, and I am truly, snivelingly grateful for it. It changes everything.
Best of luck to your friend.
Just FYI... when presented with a formal write up, the employee has the right to document their version of the story ON the write up in question before signing it. That way, they are acknowledging that they received the write up, but they have disputed in writing the contents of the disciplinary action.
If you live in a right to work state you really have no right to document your side of the story or anything else. It's just a courtesy extended by employers that value their staff. Of course, if you feel you've been wronged you can always hire a lawyer to represent you. I wonder how long it will take you to pay him at $2/hr.
One of the managers at my restaraunt told a host not to say anything after an old woman called her a bitch because her table wasn't ready in time. Again, way to back up your staff management.
I used to work at a restaurant with high management turnover. A new GM every 6 months.
I got to where I would just do whatever the fuck I wanted. They would write me up. I'd smile and sign it. As soon as they were out of the office or when they got fired me and the shift managers would go through our files and remove all of our write-ups.
Since the management changed so often they would never know about it. The shift managers actually ran the place and they stayed on for years.
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