Basically I got hired to open a new restaurant concept that focused on serving craft beer and craft food. When I got hired, the owner was so impressed with my beer knowledge they asked me to put together their tap list for when they opened. I did this happily, and mistakenly, for free.
Did all the training, everyone was excited about opening and then cut to our soft opening. Our restaurant had 2 owners who were brothers. One of these brothers had a girlfriend who was about 20 years younger than him and had made some kind of small investment in the restaurant so she could call herself an “owner”. She would rack up huge tabs and then comp them herself, which is her business, it’s not my money or my restaurant and if that was all she did I wouldn’t have cared. The problem was, she almost always drank so much that she became an obnoxious mess. She would essentially bully employees into giving her rides wherever she wanted to go in her drunken stupor. She once badgered this poor food runner into driving her 40 minutes away to a strip club when he got cut from his shift. The two brothers did absolutely nothing to curb this behavior and essentially turned a blind eye to it.
One night I was taking care of a party of about 13-15 business type guys who were having some kind of corporate meeting/dinner. They were super nice and at the end of their meal asked me if they could invite their staff over to have some drinks on their bill. Manager and I both talked with them and established how we would do it. Basically gave everyone two tickets and once they used their tickets they’d have to go on their own tabs. So about 35-40 employees show up and I’m cocktailing for this group as well as taking care of any side orders the corporate guys said they weren’t covering. The owners gf comes up to me at one point when I’m on the computer and is trying to get me to ring food in her for her as I’m ringing up several groups of guests that were standing right there next to me. Not only was it unprofessional, I was completely embarrassed that this was happening in front of customers. I kept telling her to give me a second or go to a bartender if she wanted to order food. She became so belligerent that I had to sternly tell her I was taking care of HER guests at HER restaurant and then I would help her with what she needed. The next day I come in for my shift and the manager pulls me into the office and says it’s out of his hands but he has to let me go. It was so transparent as to what was happening. I went over to our office, which was in a separate door and I could see both owners cars parked there. Knocked on the door several times and they refused to answer it. Glass door and windows so I know they knew it was me. When I could tell they weren’t going to answer the door I yelled “cowards!” and drove back home. Filed for unemployment the very next day, and of course they tried to dispute it. But since I had been a competent employee I had no write ups and they didn’t even have documentation for why I was fired. Got to collect a nice little paycheck for awhile on their dime because of it while I looked for a new job
Learned my lesson there, never do work for free and it doesn’t matter how good of an employee you are, they will fire you whenever they want.