Imagine working for a fast food restaurant where you notice multiple health code violations. Would you stay quiet or point the problems out to your manager?

In this story, one employee was in this situation and chose the second option. It ended up making his time at that job more difficult, but in the end, the manager was the biggest loser.

Let’s read the whole story for all the details.

My General manger ignores several health code violations after I point them out to him, it comes back to bite him in the most spectacular of ways

So around the beginning of the pandemic, I landed a job at a well known US fast food chain.

The GM(General Manager) was a tall stocky bald guy, really liked my interview so from the beginning, he told me that he hired me with the intention of making me a manager someday soon.

So I busted my butt everyday, proving my worth, often doing the work of a full staff(around 7-8 people) all by myself.

I worked this hard because my previous job had just laid me off due to the effects of the pandemic on the hospitality industry (cancelled vacations and so on) and so I was just happy to have a job.

The promotion seemed closer than ever.

In order to become a manger, you had to take the servsafe exam. Usually, you’d get promoted whether or not you passed the exam, but per state law, there was always to be a servsafe certified manager on duty at all shifts.

Given that there were so few of us (3 including myself and GM), that servsafe cert was invaluable but I’m getting ahead of myself.

One day, in the middle of my shift, the GM approaches me with a book to study for my certification. I’m excited because I know that this means a promotion and a significant pay raise.

I study this book like my life depends on it, with every free moment that I get throughout the day spent in the book.

But the more he learned, but more he realized there were big problems.

I’m a quick study and I progress really well through the book, but there is one major issue; the more I read, the more I discover that there were sooooo many health violations happening at the workplace.

People, a lot of these fast food workers aren’t paid enough to care about cleanliness, most places will be ok with the appearance of cleanliness.

I mean, improper food storage, cross contamination, changing the dates on expired products just to name a few.

We even had minors(16-17) working in the kitchen.

The GM had no intention of fixing any of these problems.

I decided to approach the GM about my concerns, hoping that we could get to work on fixing a few things, instead, I’m met with him snarling back at me; “just do what I say”.

I am shocked.

Then, he begins to make my life as miserable as he can.

He would intentionally short staff the shifts that I worked because he knew that I wouldn’t complain about doing extra work, and then when our numbers suffered because there was literally 3 of us doing the work of 7-8 people, he would bark at me at the beginning of the next shift in the presence of my coworkers.

He started to believe that he really was doing something wrong.

He went in deep, calling me worthless and all types of names just to degrade me.

He would normally threaten my job about 2-3 times during a shift.

I actually began to gaslight myself into believing that I was in the wrong and to just work harder.

It didn’t really click that I wasn’t doing anything wrong until one day when I stopped by during the morning shift(I worked nights) to check in on something and I noticed the morning manager clock in, then go back outside to smoke and have breakfast.

He wanted to know more.

I was so shocked because no one said anything.

I approached one of the morning guys that I knew I could trust and asked him if this was a normal occurrence.

He said yes along with so many other things that this female manager got away with that I would probably be fired on the spot for.

There’s good news, and then there’s bad news.

During this entire fiasco, after many breakdowns where I would go to the freezer to cry, I did it, I passed the servsafe exam.

I was very proud of myself.

If my life was miserable before, I don’t have the words to begin to describe what my life became after getting certified. Apparently, and I have no way of verifying this, the GM became threatened by me and intensified my misery.

The manager was breaking yet another rule.

I forgot to mention that in an attempt to save money so his numbers looked good, he would literally make some workers work DAYS for free.

Let me explain; I noticed that some employees would work double 5 days a week and get paid the exact same as the workers who worked normal hours.

PEOPLE listen to me; Hard work is rarely, if at all rewarded in the US.

This man would manipulate the timeclocks to essentially force some of the more gullible employees to work overtime and only get paid for 40 hours.

There was a huge double standard.

I kid you not, there was this young girl, fresh out of high school, who would somehow manage to work 70+ hours a week and only be paid 40.

SHE SOMEHOW THOUGHT THIS WAS NORMAL.

Here’s the kicker, while he was manipulating the clocks abusing some of these kids, he would always be on the clock even when he’d left for the day.

One day, I had the audacity to clock him out because he wasn’t in, this man gave me the tongue lashing of a lifetime next time he saw me.

Now, for some good news.

Now comes the karma, and it was sweet.

The thing about cosmic justice is that it has a sense of humor and irony.

I specifically remember that in one of my GM’s tirades, he would tell me that I would be coming in here as just a customer and not an employee at some point, keep this in mind because this is important for later.

So, a random Tuesday morning, I’m still recovering from last night’s shift when I get a phone call from one of the morning employees. She can barely get a word out in utter shock but I made out that she was saying “They just fired GM”

Things are going to change!

I let out this maniacal laugh that I’m sure my entire neighborhood heard. I laughed to the point of crying.

So apparently, the store was doing so bad that it caught corporate’s attention, they sent a couple guys to do an audit and, get this; they pointed out EVERY VIOLATION that I had previously pointed out to the GM.

It was so bad that they fired him ON THE SPOT.

The corporate guys became our acting GM, the store had to be shut down for a couple days to fix the crapfest that it had become.

I’m really surprised he would come in as a customer.

Get this, remember how GM said that I would one day come to the store as a customer and not an employee? Well, guess who ended up coming to order food a week after being fired?

I almost snapped my ankle running to the front to serve him with a smirk.

To make matters worse, his wife left him after he was fired. Apparently, he was cheating on her with the morning shift manager.

It all made sense now, how she got away with anything. We only found out because she used his phone to text the work group chat exposing the affair and telling us that this man had contracted an STD from the affair ……. 😂

Here’s how it played out…

It felt great to be validated and vindicated for everything I pointed out.

Over the next couple of weeks, we went through a couple GM’s from neighboring stores who came to fill in.

Eventually, things got way better.

I left the job a few months later for health reasons and got a better job that paid twice what I was making back there.

I’m glad corporate fired the GM. I wish OP had been promoted to manager though.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is some good advice.

Someone gets rewarded.

Another person loved the story.

You know it’s bad when corporate shows up.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.