Imagine owning a restaurant, and money is tight. If you were trying to cut back on expenses, would you consider forbidding staff from charging their devices?

In this story, one restaurant owner makes that exact decision, but his wife thinks he’s being unreasonable.

Now, this work decision is causing problems in their marriage.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for charging my watch at my husband’s restaurant

My husband basically inherited a restaurant from a family friend.

The restaurant has been running for almost two decades but the original owners (friends of his parents with no children) handed it down to him around 6 years ago.

Not long after that was the pandemic so he learned to run a tight ship.

She’s a busy, working mom.

We got married almost 3 years ago, and I took a manager position there since I come from a service background.

Like I said, he runs a tight ship, but he’s a very fair person and is very loved by the staff.

Our daughter is old enough to be in daycare now so I’ve been taking on the morning opening shifts, but I still put her to bed myself and care for her most of the afternoon when I get home usually around 5.

Phones aren’t allowed at work, but she has a workaround.

Between dinner, chores and my daughter I forget to charge my smartwatch often.

He depends on me to have this smart watch on during business hours since we don’t allow phones on the floor and I’m expected to be an example of that.

I usually charge that watch early in the mornings.

She doesn’t agree with her husband’s latest rule.

Lately the bills for the restaurant have been getting crazy.

He’s been making some severe, but reasonable cuts, that have been annoying the staff.

His newest thing is staff is not allowed to charge any devices at the restaurant.

I pushed back and said that was crazy and have been allowing it while I’m on shift, we have a lot of parents here who need to get updates on kids, and younger hosts who need to talk to parents etc.

He doesn’t want her to charge anything at the restaurant either.

He’s been super upset and saying I’ve been setting a bad example by keeping “20 devices on the charger.”

I have headphones, a phone, and a watch. I only ever charge the watch, and this is before staff even gets here.

I told him my stance and it devolved to a weeks long fight, during which whenever he gets home, he’ll take my devices and plug them in himself.

AITA for resisting?

Is it really making that big of a difference in the electric bill when the staff charges their devices? Surely there’s another way he could save a buck.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person thinks the husband is being weird.

How much financial trouble is the restaurant really in?

He’s killing morale.

There have to be better ways to cut costs.

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