There’s this restaurant near my house that my family and I always order from and eat at. It’s literally down the street from me. I decided to reach out via email and inquire about a position. This would work out perfectly if I could come here before class, and especially since it was down the street, I would be saving so much gas money. The owner replied to me and told me that thankfully they were fully staffed and that I’m more than welcome to send in my resume for future openings, so I did.
A couple days later, I receive a text from her lead server and they set me up with an interview. She hired me on the spot and told me to come back the next day for training. She seemed incredibly nice and I was genuinely excited.
Came in for training and was “trained” by one of the servers who didn’t seem to even know she was supposed to be training me. The whole place seemed disorganized. I say “trained” lightly because I wasn’t taught a single thing. The very first thing I did was clean a toilet that had feces all over it that the night shift left overnight for the morning shift to clean. I couldn’t believe that a manager would even allow her employees to leave something like that. It’s so unsanitary and disgusting, and yes, they were all aware including the boss because it was apparently sent in a group chat with all the employees. So of course, the girl training me doesn’t want to do it, she hands me gloves and I just start scrubbing while she’s kind of just on the side complaining about god knows what because I’m the one doing everything. Im scrubbing for my life because at this point, it’s been left overnight and it’s stuck to the toilet. Absolutely disgusting. To top it off, the boss pulls out her phone and records the whole thing because she thinks it’s funny & sends it to the group chat I’m not even in. I felt humiliated and wanted to walk out, but I didn’t. I was trying to give the place and people the benefit of the doubt.
When it came to the serving portion of the job, customers would walk in and everyone just expected me to know what questions to answers about the menu, where things were, etc. I only got by as far as I did because of prior experience that I had working in a restaurant where they ACTUALLY trained me. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but even with prior experience, a job has to train you to show you where things are and how they like things done, right? I mean, how the actual fuck am I supposed to know what each meal contains if they never even told me to study the menu prior to coming in. The person “training” me was on her phone about 90% of the time, fighting with her boyfriend or was in the back somewhere.
I ask the person training me how she could tell which food was what because at this restaurant, everything looks really similar. She told me it takes time to know the menu and that I could just study it on my downtime since it was slow. Which, thank god it was because I was completely lost anyway. I’ll come back to this point later.
The manager has this board with everyone’s name and schedule for the week, but the names for all of the guys working there were changed to women’s names and the women working there were changed to men’s names. She seemed to think it was hilarious by calling me by a male name, let’s just say my name is Laura and she referred to me as Larry. So back to my previous paragraph about studying the menu, I was doing that after I served and checked in with all the tables(it was slow all day and there were only 2 tables), she calls me over and goes “Larry.” And she says it a few times because I’m not answering and why the fuck would I when that’s not my name. Finally, I walk over and she scolds me about how I’m doing nothing and just looking down not attending to customers. She spoke to me in the most condescending way, basically said that maybe I’m used to looking stupid and doing nothing, but here, they attend to customers. I was baffled and I didn’t even know what to say, I just nodded and said okay and then tried to tell her I was just learning the menu so that it’s easier for me to explain to customers what each item is. Scolds me again about not knowing the menu and tells me to go home and study it and come back and they’ll test me. How would I know the menu when it’s my first day and no one sent it to me to learn to begin with?
I finally leave and go home and just burst into tears at what I just had to experience (she let me out half an hour late btw), I couldn’t believe it, and it was a job I wanted so badly to work at. I can’t even eat at this place again knowing what I know now and how they treated me. I sent a message today cutting ties, and I said it in a polite way basically saying that my school schedule is more rigorous than I thought and it wasn’t a good time for me to start new work. I told her I appreciate her training me and hope she can understand. She tells me good luck and that my paycheck will be ready tomorrow night.
I’m horrified, I don’t even want to step foot back in that establishment, let alone see her. I had a really good job where I used to live with amazing management/coworkers, and unfortunately, had to look for new work because I moved really far away. I’m struggling to find a job that will even treat me as well as my last job, and after this experience, I’m afraid to even apply anywhere else in this industry. Sorry if this rant is all over the place, I’m still trying to process wtf I just experienced.