About Cristiana
There was never a single time when she spoke to me normaly, alway with a rude and bossy attitude.
She never asked politely to do something, she gave me orders to do something.
The tasks that she asked me to do never made sense whatsoever.
Some examples of nonsense and misbehaving :
– In the preparation phase she would constantly ask me to stop what I'm doing to do something else. Eveytime I took an initiative by myself she would stop me. This is also true for the rush hour.
– If I'd come early I would start to setup the basics to gain time. If we had napkins to roll I would do it . When she'd come she'd blame me for doing this instead of something else. And this is true for a lot ; I decide to put the tables outside : I get blamed because I do this instead of cleaning windows ; I decide to broom : I get blamed for not polishing the previous day's glasses. And so on. And very rudely ever single time.
It's always the same scheme : I take an initiative to work ; Cristina will be there to stop me from working.
– In the beginning I was taking orders. So I did. I'm a waiter, I take orders. I took 3 orders in a non-busy period because I just happened to be there when the customers came and she blamed me for stealing the job of everybody.
– When the new menu came, I took a plate to a customer (just once) : she blamed me for stopping others to learn the new presentation of the menu. Costas was there when this happened.
– New customers come and I bring them the menu, ask them if it's their first time and they reply “yes”, so I take 5 min to explain them the degustation, the wine pairing and the way the restaurant works. It's the begining of the shift and we don't have other things to do. She explains me very rudely that “we don't do that here” and the I should “never do that again”
So obviously after a while I have no idea what I should do, so I just wait for Cristina to tell me what to do. She blames me for not doing something and gives me a task very rudely.
A few more misbehaving :
– Before Lazaros came we used to have a tray in the kitchen where we'd put cutleries. I thought I was impractical and replaced it by the cutlery rack that was unused. I also prepared some reasy-to-go plates with forks, knifes and everything to set up the tables very fast. She stormed in the kitchen to remove the tray, took some time to undo everything I prepared for the shift and screamed at me that I had no rights to change things here. When Lazaros came, he did exactly what I did, without any reaction from Cristina.
– When the team forgot an item on the table, or an other details, she would blame others for making the mistakes, even though she is also part of the team.
In the begining I was defending myself. But this was doing myself more wrong than good, so I stopped. I let her behave this way without defending myself from the day you told me that I would be part time.
After that I just didn't know what I was allowed to do, so I didn't do anything until I was told to do so. I completely stopped taking orders, I didn't want any problems so I wouldn't take any initiatives. When a customer or anyone wanted something, I always asked them to ask somebody else.
I was litterally afraid to do my job in case this brings me problems with Cristina.
To avoid any problems, I was trying as much as I can to limit all interactions with her, and whenever she would ask me to do something, I would listen to her whatever the order was, just so that I wouldn't create any problems. I remained silent and didn't speak for most of the shift for this specific reason.
In summary that was 4 months of constant bullying from Cristina, she doesn't behave the same way with anyone else here but me. I didn't say anything because I hate to do what I'm doing right now, I tried solving my problems with her face to face many times but it always backfired to causing me problems, so that's why I'm telling you all that now.
There are high chances that I wrote this message poorly or that I didn't retranscribed exactly what happened and my experience working with her, maybe my examples were not the best to describe you what I wanted you to know, but my point is that I truly feel that I was not able to do my job properly because of that one person in the store.
Also because she doesn't behave the same with other members of the team, so I guess that with me gone, the problem is solved.
To finish, here's a list of the things that I felt I wasn't allowed to do because I knew it would bring problems if I did :
– Greeting customers and sitting them
– Taking customers the menu and presenting it to them
– Taking an order, at any time of the shift
– Speaking to a customer's table, including trying to fix a mistake by speaking to the customer
– Being in the floor to watch the tables when I don't have something in the kitchen
– Staying too long in the kitchen
– Giving passo to the kitchen
– Giving a bill to a customer without telling her
Rous is an amazing place to work and I was so proud to work there, and I legitimately loved what I did there, seeing the customers happy and listening to my explainations, behaving like a gentleman to our clientele… I truly loved it from the bottom of my heart and I'm not lying, I'm leaving the island and I have no reason to tell you all that if I don't mean it.
But you have a rotten apple in your basket.
Good luck.