TwistedSifter

Restaurant Starts Reusing Uneaten Soup, So Employee Gets Healthy Revenge

Source: Reddit/AITA/Unsplash/@sofiameli

If you’re already paranoid about cleanliness at restaurants, you might be triggered by the Reddit story you’re about to read.

It comes to us from a worker who worked for a real jerk and decided that some revenge was in order when they found out something unethical AND gross was going on where they worked.

Re-use unfinished soups for the next customer? Lose your restaurant.

“This revenge story happened in the ’90s when I was working after school as a line cook / chef’s assistant at a Chinese restaurant.

This place was all about soup!

The place specialized in noodle soups, with the main attraction being our soup stock. The owner used a much revered passed down family recipe. It consisted of freshly cracked pork bones, fresh spices and fresh vegetables all kept at a rolling boil for over 12 hours.

It had to be started the night before and the owner was very particular about the soup stock. If it ran out, then it ran out. He refused to ‘cheat’ as some places do by adding water or powdered stock etc.

The owner himself was this really awesome, old Chinese gentleman. He had some incredible stories. For example, he enlisted into the Kuo Ming Tang (Chinese republic) Army in the 40s and worked as a chef for KMT officers during WWII.

It sounds like his boss was a great guy.

He told us about how one time his Division’s HQ was over run, and he had to escape on a push bike ahead of the advancing Japanese Army. Eventually, when the Chinese Communist Party took over in the 50s, he was assigned to a steel factory to work for the rest of his life. He got away and eventually made his way to the US as an asylum seeker.

I digress but my point is that he was an awesome guy and was a genuinely kind and considerate boss. He always made sure his employees were fed before the evening shift and let me study during quiet nights.

But then there was the boss’s son…

His son on the other hand was a real piece of ****. This guy dropped out of college (his parents saved up for him to study medicine) after 2 years. He floated in and out of jobs but mostly stayed unemployed, living with his parents and using their money to well into his mid-30s. He eventually started working at the restaurant, nominally as the front of house manager but in reality, did nothing but watch TV and take naps.

And suddenly, the son was now the boss.

While I was only a line cook, the old man and I got along really well. He trusted would routinely get me to make the soup stock the night before under his supervision. Sadly, the old man passed away after my 5th year working there. That’s when the son took over (the mother had passed years ago).

This guy was clueless.

The son had zero cooking experience but decided to take over as the chef. He didn’t like the idea of putting the soup on overnight (waste of gas) and instead got me to do the prep the night before and then would just switch the pot on himself in the morning. He would also routinely add plain water to the soup when it got low so he could continue selling noodle soups.

And he was also a creep.

The most incredible thing however, was disgustingly, he got the wait staff to throw customer’s unfinished soups back into the stock pot for reuse. When I confronted him about it, he told me that it was no problem as the heat ****** any germs and threatened to fire me if I said anything.

The place went downhill.

Not surprisingly customers started leaving as the food quality degraded. This caused the son to panic and cut even more costs.

He fired most of the old staff and thus overworked the remaining. He couldn’t fire me because I was the only one left who knew how to do the soup.

He also stopped using quality ingredients and started to buy cheap pre-packaged staff in order to reduce my prep work hours. After a few months of this I got sick of his ****. As I was about to start college myself I told him that I was giving him my notice. He of course took this poorly and told me that I was a loser.

The new boss made a demand of the worker.

He told me not to bother coming in tomorrow, but I was to spend the remainder of my shift showing a recent hire on how to do my job, stating that he would not issue my last check if I didn’t complete a thorough handover. I laughed in his face and walked out on the spot, I didn’t bother chasing up my last check.

So they decided to take action.

As a parting gift, I sent an email to our local Food Safety board, informing them of the poor sanitary practice of reusing leftover soups. I helpfully also enclosed a few photos that I had sneakily taken of the practice.

And the son got what was coming to him.

The board sent inspectors the very next day and closed the restaurant (there were other issues such as unhygienic bathrooms, uncleaned eating utensils), he was issued a massive fine and a list of undertakings to carry out before it could be reopened.

The restaurant remained closed and was eventually sold off. I didn’t bother chasing up what happened to the son but I hope he has learnt his lesson and done something productive with his life.

Now it’s time to see what people said about this.

One person has a lot of respect for the guy who started it all.

Another individual was glad they did this.

This person had some thoughts about the person who wrote the story.

And this reader said the guy’s son is a scumbag…and they want the recipe!

This guy had what was coming to him.

What a creep!

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