It can feel impossible to work somewhere with strict rules that you’re told to enforce when there are apparently unwritten exceptions to those rules that you’re supposed to somehow know.

Imagine working as a parking lot attendant at a restaurant. Your job is to make sure that customers and only customers park in the parking lot. If you knew that the manager was really strict about this rule, would you be willing to make any exceptions, or would you enforce the rule no matter what?

In this story, a parking lot attendant was yelled at when he made an exception to the rule and let an employee park in the parking lot. After that, he decided not to make any exceptions for anyone. Only customers would be allowed to park in the parking lot.

The owner eventually had to get involved. There was a lot of drama, but he still stuck by the rules he was told to enforce.

Keep reading for the whole story.

Restaurant parking lot was for customers only so I made the owner’s daughter go find street parking 4 blocks away.

Years ago I worked as a parking lot Attendant for a high end restaurant. Parking was for customers only. Not even employees could park there.

I got chewed out by a manager one day because I let a cook who was running late park there (the cook apologized to me because I got in trouble).

He decided not to make any exceptions.

One night the owner’s daughter (completely spoiled brat) showed up and I told her “Sorry, Customers Only.”

She flipped out on me but, again, “Sorry. I Was Just Yelled At By Tony (the manager) And He Said CUSTOMERS ONLY.”

She wound up having to parallel park four blocks away and apparently scratched her bumper backing into a street sign.

He didn’t really care about this job anyway.

Tony promptly showed up and fired me on the spot.

This was a beer money job so I told him where he could stick it.

A couple days later the Owner called me and apologized for the whole thing. He said the whole situation caused restaurant drama because employees took my side. I did the right thing by letting the cook park there and then Tony overreacted by yelling at me.

He obviously knew I was being tough because I had been yelled at and wouldn’t let his kid park there. He offered me my job back but I politely declined.

A couple more people got fired.

A couple months later I found out that the guy who replaced me got fired for taking bribes from people to park in the lot and never go into the restaurant.

Tony then got fired because turns out he was fudging sales numbers and stealing money from the till every night.

And the wheels on the bus go round and round.

They lost a good employee.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a third-generation business owner who is thinking he might know the people in his community a bit too well.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This is a good point.

The owner does sound like a good guy.

One person shares what they would have said.

This person isn’t surprised.

The real problem here was Tony. It’s a good thing he eventually got fired.

The owner sounds like a good guy. He wasn’t upset that this daughter wasn’t allowed to park in the parking lot, and he offered OP his job back. If the owner hired a decent manager, it might actually be a great place to work.

Tony’s rules were too confusing. You can’t let employees park in the parking lot, but you can let the owner’s relatives? If that’s an exception, fine, but that needs to be stated. He shouldn’t have been fired for that. He could be told, next time let her park there, but that would be next time.

I’m assuming the owner’s daughter complained to the manager that she had to park so far away, and the manager was probably worried that the owner would get mad at him for allowing this to happen. He probably fired OP to point the blame at him, but the owner still found out the truth through the other employees.

Again, the owner was not the problem. The manager was.