Apologies for the weird pic, I did a panorama shot from the bottom up to get it all in one photo, as I don't have a scanner. I realize I coulda done side-by-side, but this at least maintains the chain of messages in order. Start from the bottom and go up.
So I was the manager of this cafe for 1.5 years, and basically saved it from certain doom. The reason? Insane expansion (opened 4 cafes in 4 months after a decently-successful year) led to insane money hemorrhaging across the entire business. I came on board and single-handedly tripled our sales and turned around our public image from “an over-priced, greasy dump” to a fun, community-driven cafe, full of regulars and great folks.
Staff loved me. Customers loved me. We got a handful of reviews on Yelp and Google saying things about how much the manager seemed to care about people and made them feel welcome, and one acknowledging that I saved this cafe (they were a regular in the past who stopped coming for a few years). This was in the middle of our Skid Row district as well, so I had to also mitigate issues with users, homeless, food/tip-jar thefts etc, while making the place wholesome. I made friends with some local homeless and helped them when I could with “expired food” and let them change their coins for bills. I turned this fucking place around.
Anyway. On two different occasions within a month, the busses were late and two separate staff members were 3 and 6 minutes late to open, respectively. I said “thrice” in one email, which was a typo, as it only happened twice. As seen in the email at the bottom, the alarm emails the boss DIRECTLY when someone opens past 630am. What a fucking creep. He also used to watch the security cameras just “as something to do” while everyone else in his company was busy busting their balls to please him. He just sat on his ass watching cameras.
As someone who uses transit, I knew full well that busses can be finicky. When asked about why I didn't write them up, I explained my reasoning, having already talked to them about it, and the matter was settled. They're always early for work, save these two times.
But they NEEDED that paperwork. They needed to have lateness on record. For things that weren't the employees' fault. So they could use it against them later as they saw fit, of course.
I finally told the boss off, who I haven't said yet, is an absolute psychopath. People hated working with him. When one of our senior managers left, two more managers quit their cafes because they didn't want to have to face the boss without her there to mitigate. The corporate culture that permeated everything from pastry-orders to scheduling between cafes is so horribly toxic because everyone is so used to dealing with this asshole owner. One of the ex managers reached out to me a couple years ago to apologize for their behavior because the company made him feel crazy. This boss was -that- bad. Literally any time he came into the cafes (he liked to drop off paychecks personally, didn't believe in direct-deposit) the mood took a nosedive and everyone looked like they were at risk of getting shot. Nobody likes him. He was abusive over emails, shouted at people for things that weren't their fault, it didn't matter (oh BOY, the time I saw/filmed/emailed about the fly larvae in our “fresh” lemonade? He got mad at ME over email for not selling any during the “Fresh Summer Lemonade” promo, which of course I wasn't going to. Disgusting).
Anyway. I told the boss what was up in my last email, standing my ground and saying I wasn't going to write these employees up. As the manager, I felt it was my duty to manage my employees as I saw fit, having never heard of this “paperwork” for writing people up until just then. I thought I was doing a great job with my staff, heck I WAS. I'd had no previous warnings or writeups. I was exemplary.
He stormed in two hours after my last email to fire me in front of staff and customers after our lunch rush. I said I could bring up my employment contract to go over how this is not fair, he said “No, ____, you're fired. Here's your paycheck” and hands it to me. I told him to fuck himself and it's no wonder his cafes are falling apart when the owner is such an incompetent jackass. That all those people who left because of you dodged a bullet. He just sat there and said nothing, so I got up and leaned on the bar to talk to my staff about it for a bit. Told them all about the kind of shit he'd say to us over email and text. The kitchen staff were stunned, one started crying even, which hurt the most because I knew it was going to get worse for all of them.
Within a week, three baristas quit and one cook quit, slashing 4 people out of the 9-person staff we had (myself making it 10).
By mid-February, one of the baristas told me they were closing down because of a huge drop in customers and inability to hire new staff. The regulars were asking multiple times a day where the manager went, because I was there 6 days a week and they expected me. We had rapport. I became friends with some of them… I poured my heart into what I thought was an awesome cafe that I could turn around, that I could push through the toxic work culture to make my little slice of cafe a paradise. I was wrong. I tried to forget all about this bs, and with COVID life was turned upside down pretty soon after, so it was surreal to find this paperwork and remember this bullshit. I don't even know how the other cafes are doing, I haven't looked them up or thought about them since COVID. I don't even want to Google it now for an update.
