I started at this upscale restaurant a little over a year ago as a dishwasher, it's one of the most popular spots in the entire city which makes working a 9-10+ hour shift with no break gruesome at times. I started the job with a lot of optimism and a positive attitude. I was respectful to my co workers, I showed up on time, I never called off, I did my job to the best of my ability and rarely showed up on the “radar”. Anytime someone called off or they needed some extra help I would come in on my off time. To this day I'm the only dishwasher that can keep up with the insane amount of covers that we do on a daily basis.
But now, after a year of constant disrespect from servers, people slamming plates, having to listen to endless complaining from people who make close to 6 figures for doing nothing standing around in my way completely oblivious to someone who has a job to do, and literally having dishes thrown at me, I've become exhausted and jaded to the point where I just want to wash the dishes and go home. I smoke a little weed and put my headphones in so I can ignore the servers existence just like they ignore mine.
Normally this isn't an issue. I get along with most of the managers who seem to have a basic understanding of how loaded my plate is when we're doing over a thousand covers for dinner, and they leave me alone and let me do my job. The Head Chef (main Boss) is a glaring exception to this.
His expectations are for me to drop whatever I'm doing and divert my attention to some side project or something that accomplishes nothing in my head, like wiping down stainless steel that's just going to be dirty again in 5 minutes, and he keeps expecting more and more as time goes on. A year ago he'd bother me about something maybe once or twice a week, and now he hovers over me like a helicopter the entire time and god forbid I check my phone for 5 seconds even though all of the servers have been congregating in the hallway on their phones and chatting each other up since we opened. By the way…. what does Head Chef do all day? Delegate the tasks he's supposed to be doing to the cooks/prep staff and walk around on his phone.
Head Chef also refuses to let me train on other stations or do anything but be in the dish pit, despite other managers and staff telling me that I have lots of potential and they don't understand why I'm still a dishwasher after a year. When I finally confronted him about this last week and notified him of my desire to leave the restaurant he didn't want to listen to a word I said and just said I need to work on my attitude, which I'll give him some credit for that but I don't have an attitude problem with, in fact I get along great with every other manager and kitchen staff with the exception of Head Chef, because unlike everyone else… there's no point where he's satisfied with the amount of effort you're putting in and he will continue to chastise you over every little thing whether you're giving 0% or 110%.
When I started the job it wouldn't bother me much because the great pay kept me focused. But inflation has gotten so bad and my bare bones no frills whatsoever living expenses have increased over 600 dollars a month compared to last year, and they only gave me a 75c raise in January. I'm being paid significantly less but am having significantly more expected out of me as an employee. We were supposed to get a raise 2 months ago but they conveniently forgot about that and will now get to it “sometime” in August. But you know they didn't forget to raise our menu prices in June, and they just hired 2 dishwashers on top of the 5 we already had despite summertime being our slow season, so now they're only giving me 25 hours a week. I can't live off of that.
I'm pretty much on the way out in general, but I want the next couple weeks to be somewhat pleasant instead of a continuation of the miserable nightmare that is working there, so I'd definitely appreciate any advice on how to set some boundaries with him.
Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post.