Imagine working at a restaurant and your supervisor tells you to do something that technically isn’t your job and usually isn’t done until the very end of the night. Would you do it anyway just because she told you to, or would you explain why you think it’s better to wait and let the person who is supposed to do the job do it?

In this story, one fast food restaurant worker is in this exact situation. The supervisor wants her to clean the bathrooms, but the bathrooms are technically supposed to be cleaned by another employee. Instead of doing the task, she explains why she thinks it’s a bad idea and that it should be done later by the person who is technically supposed to do that job.

Her supervisor wasn’t happy and neither was her dad when she told him about it later. That leaves her wondering if she should’ve kept her mouth shut and simply done what she was told to do.

Keep reading for all the details including the reasons she refused to clean the bathrooms because she had multiple.

AITAH for not cleaning the bathrooms after my supervisor told me to?

Okay so I work at Subway as a sandwich artist. My supervisor came in to check on us, so when I showed up to my shift, she was there.

I was only there 20 minutes when she instructed me to clean the lobby and the restrooms.

By the way, I was closing, and I had a coworker there who was scheduled to leave before closing. Their job as pre-closer was to clean the lobby and the restrooms and restock chips/drinks.

My job, as closer, was to do the dishes and clean the line/the kitchen at the end of the night and close the drawer and everything.

She did some of these tasks anyway.

Even though it wasn’t a part of my duties, I said okay, and I cleaned the lobby.

However, I wasn’t planning on cleaning the bathroom. I was hoping she’d just forget or not see after I finished the lobby. I swept it, and I wiped all the tables.

Before mopping the floor, my supervisor asks me why I haven’t cleaned the restrooms, so I make an “eek” face, and I tell her “I’m not really comfortable with cleaning the restrooms then making sandwiches after. I think it’s unsanitary.”

She got upset with me and told me “So I tell you to clean the restrooms, and you don’t listen to me?”

She explained her reasoning.

I explained to her that I am extremely clean, and I get disgusted by dirty things, and I’m just putting myself in others shoes because I wouldn’t want someone making my sandwich who just cleaned the restroom.

She said “Wash your hands?”

And I said that it still gets bacteria on your clothes, and that we usually just clean the bathroom at night when we close or right before the pre-closer clocks out because it’s nasty to me to do it any other way.

She kept trying to convince me, but I refused to do it.

This does seem rude.

She is Hispanic and so is my coworker, so she calls my coworker over, and starts speaking to him in Spanish. Very angry tone. All I hear and understand is baño.

I thought it was pretty rude that they spoke English and were talking in Spanish right in front of my face, obviously with me in their conversation, but whatever.

Anyway, I waited awkwardly for them to finish, and my supervisor, when they are done talking, just turns around, ignores me, then keeps working.

I stood there awkwardly until she looked at me and just told me to go mop if I wasn’t going to clean the restroom, so I did.

Here’s how the night ended…

While I’m mopping, I see my coworker in the restrooms cleaning them. Like cleaning them VERY well. To the point I knew that his hands weren’t the only thing being dirtied by cleaning the bathroom.

I wanted to tell him not to worry about the sandwiches and to just leave it to me, but I didn’t want to continue anymore confrontation, so I just rolled my eyes and put in my two weeks that night lol.

Anyway, I came home and told my family about it, and my dad instantly gets upset and tells me it wasn’t right what I did, and that when my boss tells me to do something, I do it, and that’s what is wrong with these younger generations, that they don’t respect authority or work hard.

She kind of sees her dad’s point.

I can see what he means, I mean, it’s true, less kids respect authority now than they did when he was a kid (maybe for good reason but that’s irrelevant right now), but this seems SO MUCH DIFFERENT than just being a lazy worker.

I mean, I already was doing something I didn’t have to do because my supervisor told me to do it (cleaning the lobby).

This is was personal moral thing that I didn’t want to give up on just because my boss said-so. Thats literally chancing an e-coli infection in our subway for what? To have the bathrooms cleaned out four hours earlier than normal?

Idk. I should’ve asked him if he would want me to jump off a cliff if my boss asked me to. AITAH for going against my boss’s orders?

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who reported her manager to HR after being forced to work 24-hours straight.

Let’s see if Reddit agrees with her or her dad.

This person thinks she should’ve done what she was told to do.

Another person points out consequences.

This person is 100% on OP’s side.

But this person is 100% on the dad’s side.

She quit, so there aren’t any consequences, but should she have simply cleaned the bathrooms? Honestly, I’m wondering why the supervisor told her to do a job that was her coworker’s job. Why was she told to clean the lobby and the bathrooms when she had other things she needed to be doing? While doing what the supervisor tells you to do is almost always good advice, I’m wondering if this supervisor was new and simply didn’t realize who was supposed to do what.

It seems that most of the people in the comments were on her side about it being a gross order of events to clean a bathroom and then go back to handling food, and it’s almost scary to think that we’re supposed to set aside common sense and cleanliness just to do what a supervisor tells you to do. It’s like being told to be a robot.