Was inspired by a happy ending story I just saw on here. Reminded me of a restaurant I used to be a server at.
Owner was put in charge of the restaurant by his parents who were the ones who built up the local chain. This guy was handed everything in life and grew up spoiled. He had a gambling addiction and would frequent the strip club (there was a phase where we were cool with each other and he told me this himself). I had no problem with this in and of itself but the problem was that he would get behind on paying his employees.
I would get paid as I would demand it, but some of the employees, due to meek nature or migrant status, were scared to confront him. As a result he started owing them as much as 1,000 dollars each at a time as a months-long backlog, which is a lot when you work at a restaurant.
Eventually, even they got fed up and would start no-showing. He started making promises to them he wouldn't keep and after about a week of broken promises we had to open with no cooks. I was the only one who had a clue in the kitchen because sometimes I'd hang out with the cooks and they'd show me recipes. The only items we could serve were the ones I knew how to make so people would leave when we'd inform them the menu was severely restricted. Very few people were staying upon learning this and so the manager on duty, who was pregnant, decided to go home. She was there to supplement as a server, but with so few people choosing to stay it didn't make sense for her pregnant ass to be there if the cooks were not coming.
About half an hour later we get a call from the owner's wife (yeah, the wife of strip club guy). She had also never worked a day in her life and would always come in at inopportune moments with “great entrepreneurial ideas” from her never worked a day in her life mind. This particular time she was upset the pregnant manager had left and I explained that the actual problem was her husband having no integrity and as a result us having literally no cooks on duty. At this point I was REALLY fed up. The day before we'd had a company meeting about how we all “need to pitch in more” and the owner had closed out the shift he had taken up by playing flappy bird in the bathroom while I mopped. So back to the owner's wife: I didn't hold back. I got real heated when I explained the situation to her and she fired me on the spot. I had never been so relieved to be fired and instantly saw it as the blessing it was. I instantly dropped what I was doing and left, with the only remaining employees not having a clue how to make anything in the kitchen.
Now to the happy part. They were really running that shit into the ground. They ended up having to sell. One of the waitresses they had been serially owing money had been saving up and BOUGHT. She has kept the restaurant running to this day, even through covid.