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Antiwork

I quit my job because my head chef was bullying and nitpicking at me relentlessly

Initially, I got this job at a pretty popular restaurant in a college town thinking based off the interview that it'd be nice but the head chef always seemed to have a chip on his shoulder when it came to me. For the people he was cool with, he called them bitches and hoes and “Ms.Bitch,” which I never understood but just chalked it up to that being their way of showing their closeness. I came from a shithole restaurant before where my head manager was cutting my hours and I could barely make enough to support myself and my cat, so I took everything under the guise that this was a means to an end, nothing more. I took issue with the fact that, everytime we were on schedule together, he always had something negative to say about me or whatever I was doing, and I noticed this from…


Initially, I got this job at a pretty popular restaurant in a college town thinking based off the interview that it'd be nice but the head chef always seemed to have a chip on his shoulder when it came to me. For the people he was cool with, he called them bitches and hoes and “Ms.Bitch,” which I never understood but just chalked it up to that being their way of showing their closeness. I came from a shithole restaurant before where my head manager was cutting my hours and I could barely make enough to support myself and my cat, so I took everything under the guise that this was a means to an end, nothing more. I took issue with the fact that, everytime we were on schedule together, he always had something negative to say about me or whatever I was doing, and I noticed this from the first week. It's okay if you drop an extra piece of chicken or a side of tater tots down but when I did it, it was “pay attention,” or ” stop looking crazy and drop some fries.” I was on dishes one day and he yelled at me because I didn't know what to do; instead of telling me what I need to do, he made a big deal out of it and say i need to ask someone what to do “before I go turning knobs.” After about 30 minutes he just made me swap with someone on the fryers and that's pretty much where I stayed the whole summer. In the weeks that followed, it was pretty much the same. I felt like I was walking on eggshells and couldn't ask him anything. Nor could I report him to HR because he treated everyone else with a sense of familiarity and they were cool with being called out of their names or humiliated publicly. I just put up with it because again, it was a means to an end and I didnt want to make things harder for myself if I was only going to be staying at the job for 7 or so weeks. But it felt dehumanizing in a way having to put up with slick comments and just stand there and take getting yelled at for the same stuff my coworkers would get a slap on the wrist for and nothing more. In all honesty, the job was okay and I really didn't have a problem with getting up early if it meant having the rest of the day to myself. I didn't even mind the fact that we had almost daily rushes with orientation going on at a local college. I just could not deal with the constant nagging down my neck whenever this man was present. On my last day, a girl dropped a piece of chicken on the floor and we have timers on each station to see how much time has elapsed since the food came in. The guy comes to help out on the station behind me and accusingly says ” that chicken has been down for 7 minutes, where is it?” to which I reply “she dropped it on the floor so I [obviously] had to re-drop her another one,” as if it were my fault because she dropped the chicken on the floor. And as I said before, pretty coarse things get said between my manager and the people he's close to but when my other store manager was talking about going the chiropractor and my coworker made a sexual comment about getting our backs beat in. So the chef comes over and tells us he's okay with us talking but if we ever talk about something like that again he'll write us up. When worse stuff gets said on a daily basis. Additionally it was hot as fuck and I was left to basically run 3 stations at once while everyone else left to do a training. As soon as I was cut to go home I had it fully made up in my mind I was quitting. I told my mom and she told me to just give the guy his job back, and on the app we use to look at our shifts, I just put ” take me off the schedule” for my review and deleted my groupme account, leaving the back of house group chat. I'm moving states in less than 2 weeks and my final check is still coming next week [I would've only had 2 more shifts to work the week I quit anyways], so I really don't feel like I missed out on much by quitting. I feel like management in places where jobs are scarce can get away with treating their staff poorly because they know there aren't many other options available. I'm very thankful either way to have had the opportunity to leave because you shouldn't have to put up with shiity management.

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