It’s funny how Things seem to fall apart when someone swoops in and starts fixing what was never broken.

What would you do if a visiting manager stormed into a busy shift and started barking orders without understanding how the team actually worked?

Would you push back and tell her to stop? Or would you show her how much she doesn’t know?

In the following story, a restaurant manager deals with this situation and chooses compliance.

Here’s what happened.

Manager Mayhem

This happened years ago when I was in charge of a restaurant. Not part of a chain or anything, this was owned by a couple who had two restaurants (both different) and a bar in the lobby of a movie theater.

We had quite the “bussy day,” so one of the site managers (for lack of a better word, the one supervising all 3 locations) came to help.

That day, I ran the kitchen, ordering the boss’s son around, and there were, I think, five people running service.

Then, she started shouting orders.

This manager was appalled by what she perceived as chaos (but in reality was a well-functioning team) and decided to put down manager law.

She started ordering me around: “Do this, go there, make sure that gets done now.”

At first, I just ignored her until she made that impossible by standing right in front of me, barking her next order.

He decided to fight back.

Game on! Every time she ordered me to do something, whatever I was doing got dropped, and I jumped right to it.

Grilling some burgers, but order me to clean something up? Sure, right away… charred burgers, but a clean workbench.

Plating up, but order me to run a few loads of dishes (dishwasher was a no-show)? Sure… cold food, but some more clean dishes.

It didn’t take long for her to leave.

It took almost a full hour for things to fall completely apart, and I mean completely!

No food coming out of the kitchen, service grinding to a halt (yes, she also completely messed that up), and the manager sitting in a corner crying.

Took me about half an hour to get things back on track once I got the owner to remove the manager from the restaurant.

Yikes! This whole thing sounds like quite the nightmare.

Let’s see if the people over at Reddit have ever experienced anything like this.

This person seems to get it.

Let’s hope this isn’t the case.

So true!

This reader has jokes.

That’s one way to handle it.

Maybe next time, she’ll step in and try to help rather than make a mockery.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.