Long time lurker. First time poster.
I'm a chef and moved from Boston to Oregon JUST before the pandemic…not a great time to find a job. When things started opening back up, I finally found a restaurant in the town I live in that was looking for a new head chef.
I immediately knew this place was gonna be a project; The kitchen was a DISASTER (Dirty as fuck. The walls were permanently stained yellow), the menu (and the prices) hadn't been updated in god knows how long, and staff turnover was a huge issue. I knew it was a gamble but I was desperate because I did not wanna continue working as a private chef to make ends meet.
Shortly after starting, I started hearing all sorts of things from people about the place including stuff (verifiably found on local news outlets) about how the owners had said some super anti-homeless stuff and then when the BLM protests in my city started they were pretty outspoken about that, and then finally when the indoor mask mandates were implemented they originally had a sign on the door basically stating they wouldn't enforce it “bEcAuSe HiPpA.” (Please keep in mind that I did not know ANY of this before accepting the job nor did I ever even think about looking up a potential employer for any past reported shittiness to this degree…and like I said earlier I was desperate to get a job in a real restaurant. Forgive my naivete)
Beyond any shitty personal opinions, the owners of the restaurant were fucking TERRIBLE restauranteurs. They gave me a laundry list of issues to tackle and I chose to tackle the biggest problem first: restaurant profitability. I painstakingly costed EVERYTHING (which had probably not been done in years), updated the menu to improve margins and to make the menu easier to execute in the kitchen to improve the restaurants terrible ticket times.
This is where the problems began. The owners would not give me full kitchen control and wanted to approve all changes to the menu. Fine. Reasonable. They own the place and I was new so it made sense for them to want to make sure I wasn't going to do something stupid or crazy. The problem with this was that the owners were almost never there to try the food and when they were there they were usually too busy getting drunk with their annoying friends who would consistently distract them when I tried presenting them with new dishes.
Eventually after 3 months I began looking for an exit. Another local restaurant was looking for a head chef and was offering over 30% more in salary. Interviewed for the job. Got the job. Put in my notice (call me stupid or whatever you want but I believe in giving a notice. Sue me.
3 days into my notice, Oregon got hit with a BLISTERING heatwave with temperatures reaching 107 degrees Fahrenheit (41.6 Celsius) outside. I know that may not seem TERRIBLE to some of you in the Southern US but the Pacific Northwest is not equipped to handle that kind of weather.
The A/C in that shithole kitchen barely works and temperatures were getting dangerously hot…so hot that I had to send my dishwasher home because he got so hot that he started to throw up. I texted the owners telling them I was gonna shut it down (several other restaurants in town didn't even open that day for that very reason). The owner texted me back telling me I couldn't. HE EVEN SENT ME A PICTURE OF HIS HOUSE TELLING ME HE HAD TO TURN ON THE SPRINKLERS TO HIS FRONT YARD TO COOL THE HOUSE DOWN.
I would have walked out right then and there but if I did that the line cook I had working with me that night (who was not ready to leave) would have been left to shut down the place by himself with no dishwasher and no other help. I could not do that to one of my guys so I toughed it out.
The next day I was talking to the FoH manager who was also treated like shit. I told her she should look for an exit too as the owners clearly didn't give a shit about their employees.
The day after that, I went in to open the restaurant and apparently the owners caught wind of me “talking shit” about them and fired me (apparently they have secret cameras everywhere and are constantly listening to them)
I gladly left because I really only gave them my two weeks notice as a professional courtesy. On my way out, I texted one of my line guys that was gonna open with me that morning “If you walk out right now, you'll have a job with me this afternoon.” He leaves. I drive back and pick him up and we both started that same day at my new restaurant.
Because of both of us leaving they couldn't open the restaurant for the weekend an were forced to close two days a week because they couldn't find the staff to open. Their reviews are tanking to the point where I heard they are offering free pints of beer at their restaurant to anyone that posts a good review and shows it to one of the staff.
Fuck those people and that business.