You should be able to be safe while you are at work, and especially safe from physical violence from a manager.

What would you do if one of your shift managers intentionally burned you with a hot pan, and then the general manager didn’t fire them on the spot?

That is what happened to the worker in this story, so she gave the GM an ultimatum saying he either gets fired or she doesn’t come to work.

AITAH, for giving my manager an ultimatum?

Just make sure everyone will be on the same page, this happened last year and the situation has calmed down somewhat enough to let me not feel uncomfortable at work.

Ok, let’s see what happened.

The place I work at is an all you can eat buffet, specifically focusing on pizzas.

This job has been good to me aside from the story I’m gonna be telling, and another more recent experience that I’m currently working through.

Bad coworkers can make work difficult.

Just last year in September I (20F, 19F at the time) had a very traumatizing experience with a coworker. Specially on September 6, 2025 I was having a very casual day with my coworkers.

I had just learned how to work in the back, making pizzas, and was getting more comfortable with my coworkers.

Nothing wrong with wanting to stay private.

Note I really struggle connecting with people in a work setting, I’m pretty introverted and I majorly don’t like letting people I work with know a lot about my personal life.

So, learning to grow more comfortable with my coworkers was becoming something I was really excited about.

Ok, let’s get to the issue.

The two main coworkers I was around this day were two black men (this is important to make note, please trust me, it’ll make a lot of sense why I’m bringing up race).

I’ll call the man than was behind the pizza table S (early-late 20’sM), and the one taking care of the oven D (50M). The Who morning all three of us were picking on each other and cracking jokes.

Just fun workplace banter it seems.

Some of the teasing being me and S messing with D on how he’d use the term “young girls,” and he’d tease back about me and S on either our appearance, or just overall how we talked. It was all lighthearted and super nice for me personally. I was starting to feel genuinely safe.

Then the baiting started to happen. A and D both began talking about who had a darker skin tone.

This can get awkward.

D saying that S was far darker then him, which wasn’t completely wrong, but in all reality they were the same skin color, just with in having a warmer skin tone than the other.

Then D turned to me, asking which of of them was darker. I’ll be honest, I just said that they both looked about the same, and were just black.

She is trying to keep it light and fun.

I even brought up my own pale looking skin, because I’m a red head, and believe that someone’s skin tone doesn’t define who they are as a person.

D started making the “you’re being racist,” kind of joke and honestly it made me a bit uncomfortable given that I made it clear that I didn’t really care who was darker.

You have to be very careful in these situations.

He then tried baiting our cashier girl, idk her very well, but she managed to speak in a way that he wasn’t able to make the “you’re racist,” joke.

I’ll be honest here as well that I was grateful the cash girl didn’t have to feel degraded by being called a racist.

Excusing herself from the situation was a smart move.

After that whole conversation, I had walked away from the conversation for a bit to not only get some prep work done, but to also gather my thoughts on what happened.

Fast forward a few minutes later, I had just checking what pizzas I need to make for the front and was making my way back to the pizza assembly table. That was when D approached me.

What? This is not safe at all.

He’d grabbed a scorching hot pizza sheet, that had just gone through the oven. He tracked the sheet out to my left arm, making me lean away because I had no clue if it was hot.

He was holding it with his hand by the way, he wasn’t getting burned because he had gloves on. Because I saw he wasn’t getting burned, when he went to press it against my right arm instead I pause to see why he was putting the pizza sheet to my arm.

Burns are extremely painful.

The burn was immediate, I jerked away out of complete betrayal, fear, and pain. The burn immediately began to bubble and burn into my arm deeper.

When I looked at D he only said, “It’s okay, you’re white, it’ll heal.” I was utterly shocked. Never in my life had I had someone be so blatantly be racist to my face before.

Racism aside, this is assault and he belongs in jail.

I couldn’t say anything because of how terrified and betrayed I was, leading me to try and shrug off the burn.

Sadly no one had seen me getting burned, S had his back turned, the manager on shift was in the back office working on his own stuff, and my other coworkers weren’t even in the room.

Of course, if her skin was bubbling, that is a third degree burn.

With the minutes passing by, my arm began to burn like no other. The kind of residual burning that would make anyone break down in tears, but I held on.

That is until the Manager (early 20’sM) on shift walked into the kitchen, just checking on everyone. When he looked at me, it was clear I was in distress, and D notice Manager looking.

No way, don’t let him get away with that. This guy is a psycho.

He leaned towards Manager and tried explaining away my distress, saying, “It was an accident, she bumped the oven and got burned.” Mind you my burn is on my bicep, I literally couldn’t burn that area with his lie.

And that was the last straw for me. I waited a bit before I let S know I was gonna be using the restroom.

She needs to get to the hospital. And call the police.

Once in the restroom I broke down completely. Bawling my eyes out and constantly say “ow,” while calling my bff (18F, 17F at the time). I explained to her through tears and a plethora of cursing what happened.

To say she was livid is an understatement, she made sure I was going to end up okay and even convinced me to tell Manager about what actually happened.

What plan? Just call the police.

We made a plan, and after we talked I took some time to compose myself somewhat. Then leaving to talk to Manager in private over what happened.

Equally so he was horrified and furious that D had hurt me on purpose, especially since D is also a manager himself, he just wasn’t the manager on shift that day.

At least the manager is taking this seriously.

After tearfully telling Manager what happened, he clocked my out so that I wouldn’t have to walk in front of everyone crying and causing a sense (this was per-my request btw).

I then drove to my bff’s place, due planning her to clean and wrap my bubbling burn. Sadly her family had gone out to get some drinks and she was going to take a while.

Why aren’t they taking her to the hospital?

So I called my mom, telling her through sobs about what happened. My sister and younger brother ended up picking my up at my bff’s and taking me home to get me cleaned up and bandaged.

Fast forward, D had been texting me often about how “sorry” he was for purposefully burning me, and being blatantly racist to me.

Yes. Get the footage and save those texts.

One of my older sisters was furious, telling me that I need to get the camera footage (which I did) and get police involved (that I regretfully didn’t do).

I did put together evident and a statement about what happened, I just didn’t approach law enforcement.

Why wouldn’t she call the police. And sue the company for that matter.

D only got a harsh talking to, only because he was leaving in 2 weeks for a trip to Europe. I was livid hearing that, which lead to the part of AITAH.

I, with the recommendation of my older sister, reached out to my GM (General Manager, M) giving him the ultimatum.

I would think that this would go without saying.

He either fires, or doesn’t let D to come back to work her, or I’ll quit on the spot.

D hasn’t come back since, and I’m grateful, but I believe that with events that are happening now I feel like I’m being punished for being a victim of assault.

AITAH?

I can’t believe she even had to give the ultimatum. She should have gotten a lawyer and called the police immediately. This is a serious assault.

I’m sure we know what the commenters will say about this, but let’s take a look.

If she is being retaliated against, she needs a lawyer.

Getting treatment fast is important.

Yes, this commenter is right.

This is way more serious than she is treating it.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.