It seems that I'm finally at the end of my rope. For six months I've been working as a line cook in a pub with manipulative management, understaffed and underpaid. This brand has multiple pub locations, and about a month ago our GM (who was very competent and a good guy) left to work for the competition after the company stalled his advancement. The AGM was fully ready and capable to step up the position, and by all rights deserved it. However, in a move that shocked everyone, a GM from a neighboring location convinced our corporation that he could manage both locations at the same time. He immediately put everyone off with insults, fake kindness, boundary crossing, and baldly manipulative behavior. This led to the AGM, sous chefs and head chef all following the old GM to the new company. It's within this environment that I've experienced:
- Working a two man station by myself and getting absolutely crushed by heavy summer business with no increase in pay.
- A meth addicted line cook threatening to stab me on her first day and receiving no consequences.
- A former meth addict and serial abuser getting up in my face and physically threatening me and being fired for doing so (he made a lot of people uncomfortable, particularly women, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief). He busted another employees windshield on his way out and was arrested. This person would repeatedly make allusions to me going to hell for being bisexual, and it amounted to constant harassment and a feeling of being completely unsafe.
- A new sous chef telling me to change the way I've been doing things for 6 months, saying “I've trained everyone to do it this way and it needs to be consistent”, completely gaslighting me when I've been the person training everyone on my station for the last 6 months, only to have people fired for drug use, the physical violence mentioned above, or moved to fill gaps on other stations and other shifts. He also constantly sends me on “bitch errands”, like asking me to grab him something when he has more than enough time to do it and when I'm buried in my own work.
- A passive aggressive head chef who told me the dough I was making had issues, having a fellow employee instruct me on how to do it better, only for that employee to give absolutely no instruction on what to change, and in fact ruining the dough in the process. Later on they commented that the dough was much better… even though I changed nothing and continued to make it the same way as I always have.
- And so much more that I can't even list it all without getting exhausted.
This all culminated last night when an employee working their last shift at the end of their two weeks notice called out the dishwashwers name, and when he turned around he hucked a piece of pizza dough at his face, giving him a black eye. The dishwasher pushed the cook into a table and I had to get between them and break up the fight. Afterwards I told the sous chef I mentioned above that I needed to step off the line because I was rattled (having experienced my 3rd violent incident on the job in the last month), and he told me that he needed me back on the line because he didn't want to work the station or have to stay late, which is precisely the responsibility of a sous chef. I erupted at him, yelling at him in front of guests and customers in an open kitchen before going into the walk in and punching boxes of fries until my knuckles were bleeding. After being subjected to so much stress and violence in my workplace I had a complete mental breakdown. My boss called me about an hour ago and told me he was letting me go.
I can't fucking do it anymore, guys. I can't be exploited and abused like this. I've had a job since I started delivering papers at 10 years old, and I have nothing to show for it. I have 2 months of living expenses saved up if I'm frugal, so I'm not in immediate danger of ending up on the street, but I just don't know how I'm going to get myself to go work for someone else again. I grew up in a very abusive household, I've been sexually assaulted and physically threatened at work so many times, and now I'm to the point where my personality and demeanor are so fucked up that it's causing a feedback loop of people being really off put by my defensiveness and lack of patience.
Hopeful edit: You know what? I know by now that kitchen work is just bad for me, and I've been wanting to change my life for a while now. Now that there's no net to catch me, it's time to let this spurn me into action. I'm going to take a few days to decompress and take care of myself, and then I'm going to look for a different kind of work. I don't expect anything will improve dramatically, but there's got to be work out there that doesn't make me feel constantly under pressure, threatened, and beat down. I've been improving my life in other ways, eating better, exercising, learning to be good to myself… I think that my reaction was actually me telling myself and the people around me that I'm not going to be shit on anymore. Wish I'd done it in a healthier way haha but it's a start.
To anyone slaving away in restaurants and feeling completely overwhelmed, I feel for you. I've been in the trenches for 15 years and it's never been worse than it is now. Hang in there, and remember to take care of yourselves. You don't exist to serve everyone else around you, and you deserve to be happy.