Hi guys,
So, I got hired at a relatively nice restaurant as a line cook, and nothing too much was out of the ordinary. As is common in my area, most of the kitchen staff is native Spanish speaking, with the occasional white dude like myself. I have picked up some Spanish over the years and worked at a few different places no problems. And yes, this does become important later.
So, conflict starts with an expo we had that often would intentionally try to sabotage me on ticket times and out of order going out. The first time it happened, he went on for about 3 hours during a very busy shift getting angrier and angrier I just started ignoring him as all he did was give wrong information. He started bragging that I failed finally and I made an extra dish, the waitress comes down like 30 minutes later wondering were her food for her table was, he was rather upset he was wrong, and started saying I stole his ticket. I was telling him before that he missed it and was even doing stupid singing I was wrong, so I just walked out during service for the first time.
He got caught a few times doing really stupid stuff like this, including blaming me for a waitress not grabbing her food, saying how slow and lazy I was, massive amounts of shit talking. Demanding I apologize to the waitress for something that was not my fault, as it was in the window well before she came to grab it. Naturally going into Spanish with my coworkers to talk even more mad shit. That was the second time I walked off.
Terrible expo guy got lots and lots of flack for his behavior from management, and eventually he went on a vacation back to his home country and never came back.
You’d think this would be the end of it but no, it just got worse. They would openly talk massive amounts of shit in Spanish about me, and intentionally use heavy amounts of Spanish for a while in attempts to annoy me, not knowing how much I could pick up what they were saying.
A lot of the hostile behaviors was coming from, turns out, believe was the kitchen manager. On one holiday was expected to be slow, so we only had 2 people for kitchen, and the GM helping run food. It was manageable and my coworker and I worked well together. Few days later, and at this point to stop being annoyed I started zoning out Spanish conversions doing whatever I need doing. My coworker was calling him out and said omg did you hear his shit talking, as he was apparently apologizing for scheduling me with the coworker as he always has to “carry” me, which the coworker said was rather the opposite, as we both worked together and helped each other stations to get out tickets reasonably well on short staff.
There was a few dumb incidences involving the kitchen manager in meantime, like leaving early and dumping a gallon jug of foaming hand soap on the floor beforehand, taking over an hour of mopping to clean. Also, cutting and rubbing bacon on coworkers station that’s highly allergic, causing breakouts and rashes, not expecting the contaminated surfaces.
Leading up to my quitting was one shift dishwasher called out 30m before shift, so I picked to go do dishes when needed. Eventually was busy, so kitchen manager was just go do dishes I’ll take care of line with my coworker. We were also short one cook on top. Kept up fine and when I was told to not worry about pan of dishes. He was busy trying to get laid by other coworker, so he didn’t really do much he was suppose to, like flipping his station 2 hours before closing. He brought back a massive pile of stuff, which took me me more time past usual and closing to complete. I didn’t care as I get paid by the hour, which I said. Turns out, he took a picture, sending it to coworkers shit talking about how bad I was right after giving me all his stuff at closing rather than 2 hours before closing per usual. I’d get yelled at if I was late bringing that to dish. They talked massive shit to me about it entire night. Like how I couldn’t keep up when it was so slow, and so on, thinking I just didn’t do them until past closing.
The day that I quit, it was suppose to be a very busy day and was, and as I setup my station by bringing back morning stuff, they started hiding the spoons for my station, which was sauté, and kitchen manager did his stupid let’s fill my station completely by putting on 4 pots (no spoons and only few spatulas to stir) and overfilling them, so after steam table was filled, it being a cup low, so I had 4 half filled pots left. Not first time he did that to be intentionally annoying and obstructive to taking up ring burners to slow down orders to blame me, or trashing my station if I go for few minutes to grab something in back or bathroom. One time he decided to clean ring burners during service, in rush, so I had 2 to work with.
Started noticing zero clean spoons and only few spatulas, which they said I must have dropped them, all 10+ spoons. There was more than 1 when I got there. This is a major safety issue as people come in with allergies, and in particular shellfish. I ended up having 1 spoon for my station and a few spatulas, on top of 4 pots with food I’d likely have to throw out. Right before a busy dinner rush, so I pulled out my phone to text the chef to put in my notice to quit if I don’t see any spoons appear. They all appeared within 10 minutes, with them talking about what just happened, in Spanish of course so I’d not “understand” them, trying to get their stories right about what happened, blaming me for over reacting and not seeing them. Me and another coworker walked out after dinner rush, only I didn’t return back for any more of my shifts.
Also, often times they’d be dicks and cross contract my station with shellfish not thinking anything of it, having to basically throw lots of stuff back in dish to make sure nobody gets an allergic reaction. A lot of times customers assume if there’s no shellfish there won’t be cross contract and don’t mention the allergy to the staff to just assuming station is free of allergens. High levels of stupid.
Not really into poisoning people or playing dumb games that severely affect service to reflect badly on me. There’s more but that’s the highlights. Place will be run into the ground by kitchen staff. Not first to quit or last.
We all have food handling safety and allergen certification too.🤷️