This happened about a decade ago, but reading all your stories brought it back to mind. [TLDR: Manager tricks employees into breaking rules so he can rat them out to villainous owner].
I was working as a server in a restaurant that was co-owned by a married couple. The wife was very nice and laid back (no surprise she was in charge of the interviews/hiring); the husband, however, was an absolute tyrant. He had a reputation around our town as being a monster to his employees, and was openly proud of it. His favorite game was showing up unannounced and berating the staff until they cried. One server actually threw down her apron mid-shift and walked out in tears. Standing around when things were slow, or talking about anything not work related with coworkers was forbidden; we basically walked around cleaning and re-cleaning the same things all day (even if someone else had just cleaned minutes ago) to appease him.
He was also so paranoid about people stealing from the company that we weren’t allowed to consume anything in the restaurant unless we brought it ourselves (shift meal had to be taken to go because we weren’t allowed to eat there either). My first day training was outside in almost 100 degree weather, and when I asked if I could grab some water—because of course I didn’t know the ridiculous policy—I was told no because it was against the rules to use a glass from the restaurant and I didn’t have my own bottle. I thought it was a joke at first because wtf?…nope, it wasn’t.
For those who have never worked in restaurants that serve alcohol, a discounted or free post-shift drink is a pretty standard “perk”. But at this place, even if you were off the clock, closing out for the night, and no patrons remained in the restaurant, that was forbidden too.
Each shift had a “PIC” (Person In Charge, basically a senior server who acted as the manager du jour). One night, things had been pretty slow so the PIC “Don” dismissed everyone except for me and one other server. Don was a nice enough guy and we had good rapport; I actually enjoyed working with him until this fateful evening when I realized he was certainly NOT my friend…
As fate would have it, a party of 10 walked in minutes before closing. Side note—please, on behalf of everyone in the restaurant industry, I beg you: don’t be those people. “Still open for a few minutes” does not mean “bring the whole family out to a late dinner and act entitled when we are hesitant to serve you because the kitchen is already shut down”…which is exactly what happened. The other server had more tables than I did, so the 10-top went to me, with Don’s help bringing drinks and food out so we could hopefully hurry things along. This family was rude, messy (3 small children), and they stuck around for an hour after they were the only table remaining. Finally after the kitchen had been shut down a second time and it was just us servers there, they left.
We were exhausted at that point, and pretty grumpy about the last-minute whirlwind that kept us there until midnight. I was sitting at the bar with the other server while we closed out our tips, drinking tea—my own mug of course—because I had a sore throat. Don comes up and in a gesture of “screw the rules, we deserve it” generosity (so it seemed) asks what alcoholic beverages we liked best and says he’ll make them for us. As great as a stiff drink sounded on that particular night, something about the offer raised a red flag. I politely declined, explaining I wasn’t feeling well and was sticking with tea. The other server didn’t drink, so she declined too. Don shrugged it off with an “oh well, suit yourselves!” but he didn’t drink anything either.
A couple days later I heard from a coworker that Don had made the same offer to another server on a different night. That server took the bait…and Don immediately ratted him out to the owner the next day. The server was fired on the spot. In what I assume was an effort to gain brownie points with our horrible boss, Don was intentionally setting up his coworkers so he could snitch on them!!! I was SO disgusted; weren’t we supposed to be on the same side? What kind of culture encourages literal sabotage amongst peers?
I quit soon after and never worked in the restaurant industry again.