I had a job as a line cook at a very fancy fine dining restaurant. It was run by a woman who was fabulously wealthy and very out of touch with reality.
At this time in my life I was around 25 and my wife was 21 and pregnant. We lived in a shithole apartment that consisted of 1 bedroom / kitchen and a bathroom, barely making ends meet.
My boss would regularly get under my skin as she would complain about her rich lifestyle. One day she was telling me about how she owned 3 houses and wanted to sell one, but she put it up for 3.5 million and the highest offer she got was 3.3 million. She was furious.
Another time her daughter, who was single, didn’t work, and had two babies, got into a car accident and wrote off her Escalade. Despite being angry at her daughter she bought her another Escalade almost immediately. I remember she said something to me like “I was young once. We used to drink Courvoisier and Remy and smoke joints. I know how it is.”
Anyways. It was my wife’s 21st birthday and she was pregnant. I asked for the weekend off a month in advance. The owner seemed like she couldn’t care less. I reminded her as time passed and every time she gave me a brushed off answer.
Friday night came and near the end of my shift my boss came up to me and told me she couldn’t get my shift covered and was going to Florida for the weekend. I laughed and told her I wasn’t coming in. She got red in the face and started losing it on me, demanding that I come in. I stood my ground and kept chuckling, assuring her that I wouldn’t be there for the weekend. She eventually started laughing thinking I was joking and kept repeating “it’s ok, your gunna come in” as I told her “I’m not coming in”
The next morning before my gf and I went away for the weekend I wrote a note stating that I asked for the time off with plenty of notice and would not be coming in. I dropped it off at the front door.
A few hours later, just as we got to our cottage, I got a call from my boss Screaming at me that I had ruined her weekend. I asked “but you were fine ruining my weekend ?” But she just screamed until I hung up.
I got fired. On Monday when we came home I called the restaurant as I had to pick up my final paycheck. The owner answered and at first told me she wasn’t going to pay me, then changed her story that she “already mailed out my cheque” which I knew was a lie. Fortunately for me, I was in the parking lot when I called.
She was baffled to see me walk in the door minutes after she hung up on me. It was during the lunch rush and the restaurant was fairly busy with its usual ritzy clientele. I said quite loudly “you need to pay me” to which she responded “I’m going to call the cops if you don’t leave”.
I was pissed off at that point and yelled, loud enough to disrupt the whole restaurant, “bring the police. YOU owe ME money !” It got so quite you could hear a pin drop. Unsurprisingly to me she pulled out my paycheck from under the bar, fully knowing she could have easily avoided the whole situation.
The restaurant closed in Covid, though I doubt it meant much negatively to her financially. Still felt good sticking it to the man.