Have you ever been in a situation where you tried to help someone who looked like they needed help but they got offended and insisted on doing everything on their own?

That’s kind of the situation the restaurant employee in today’s story finds himself in. He offered to help the bartender on a busy night, but the bartender shooed him away.

Let’s see how that worked out.

This is “your job?” Okay, struggle by yourself on a busy Friday night!

I am going to be intentionally vague for the purpose of anonymity. I work at a bar/restaurant inside of an entertainment center.

Our weekends get pretty busy because of various events that happen.

One event occurs weekly on Fridays and it gets pretty hectic, plus we are open to walk-in customers during the event.

There aren’t enough employees.

We are extremely short staffed.

I am trained on every single position in the restaurant/bar/entertainment center because we never have enough employees.

Because of this I bounce around on different positions often.

On this particular Friday night, my position was to run food and drinks from the bar/restaurant out to the entertainment center.

OP is also a bartender.

There was a separate bartender this night whom I usually get along with.

Being a bartender myself (one of my multiple positions at this company) I can recognize when it gets overwhelmingly busy for one bartender to handle alone.

We split our tips regardless, so we don’t normally tend to mind helping each other out. Usually I will help out on the bar on Friday nights during this event while I wait for orders to be ready.

However this night was different.

The bartender didn’t want OP’s help.

This Friday night, I was helping the other bartender deal with 50+ customers, like I do every Friday night.

I don’t know why the help bothered them so much, but they said to me “You need to go back on the floor. This is MY job, I know how to do it by myself and I don’t need your help.”

Cue malicious compliance — I just said “okay” and didn’t enter the bar again. I just stood out on the floor and waited for the food/drink orders to be done, which honestly made the shift a lot easier for me with less running around and drink orders to memorize.

I stood and watched as customer after customer went into the bar and had to wait 10+ minutes for their drink, because the bartender decided they don’t need my help on the busiest night of the week. And then proceed to still give me half of the tips for the night 🙂

That worked out really well for OP. Why work harder when your help isn’t even appreciated?

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person can relate to this story.

Here’s a story about a bartender who liked to work solo.

This bartender prefers to work solo and explains why.

This person shares a story about a Christmas party.

Making the same in tips for doing less sounds like a win.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.