At my job there are two shifts - day and night. At night there are two and sometimes three people working the front of the house. One bartender and one server on weeknights, or one bartender and two servers on Friday and Saturday nights.
There is a female that has been working the weekend day shifts for the past couple years. I covered her shift today. Day can get crazy, because you are the only person working the front of the restaurant. That means you make all the drinks and take all the orders/serve all the food. At times it can get a bit out of hand. It's not steadily busy enough to keep a second person working. Sometimes you only see 5 customers in a weekend day shift. Sometimes you see 40. It's just your bad luck if you get caught with 40 customers all wanting attention at the same time. Guess what type of luck I had today? I had the urge to throw a cold salad in an old lady's face today. That might give you an idea.
But the more I thought about it, and removed myself from the equation, the more I realized this is a perfect example of an owner that does not do her job. She hopes to cut costs, so she hires just enough people that are able to get the job done, and sometimes not even that. She does not have a manager, nor a financial person (though I suppose a manager could handle the money part too).
Don't get me wrong, shes a really nice lady. But recently shes moved 4 hours away, and she somehow expects to be able to manage the restaurant from that far a distance. At her new house she has dodgy internet connection at best, so she cant even properly handle the money files via telecommunication. She relies on her staff to handle her money, make deposits at the bank, withdraw money from the bank, order condiments, coffee, basically all of the materials she needs...
As I write this down I realize its quite a mess. I liked working there because its small and intimate, and I only have one other coworker to interact with at any given time. But more than that, I liked the owner. It's such a shame she had to move so far away. But too bad, she needs to hire a damn manager! I dont get paid to run ragged to keep her restaurant working!
I told her today I plan on moving in February, and that I was telling her now so that would give her ample time to find a new person to replace me. I'm telling her so early ahead because I like her, and I love working at this restaurant. I like to take my time when saying meaningful things like this to people but in this case I had to blurt this out quickly, because she was busy talking about how the many splendid ways she could make me manage her restaurant for no extra pay. Once she actually processed what I was saying, she calmed down quickly. Her tone of voice changed from demanding and stressed, to calm. She calmly withdrew her stress from my brain and I felt SO GOOD!
I was so happy I stood up for myself. I wasn't dragged even further into her stress. I did my job. I even did my co-workers job! Covering for her... I felt great telling my boss to handle her own business... not in so many words of course...
I asked the female co-worker once, how it felt to work a really busy day shift by herself. Her eyes glazed over a bit and she feebly said "it can get pretty stressful at times..." then recovering herself she quickly added "but you get to keep all the money to yourself, you know?"
I know. And its NOT worth it!
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