Restaurant jobs are always stressful and busy, and that is made way worse when you have a power-tripping manager making everything more difficult.

The server in this story recalls working at a busy restaurant where the supervisor was always making people stay late and do extra work. One night, he was told to clear a station that was already cleared before he went on break, so he did a quick once-over and left for break.

The manager got irate because he meant another station, and said that he had to do the work and fill the ice bin before he could go home. So, this worker didn’t just add ice to the bin, but actually overfilled it until it reached teh ceiling and then left.

The supervisor called and fired him for this little stunt, but the general manager thought the prank was funny and rehired him the next day.

I was fired, then suspended, then unfired for this one…

Worked as a server at Max & Erma’s in the late 90’s and had a real peach of a manager get hired in.

How do people like this always find their way into management positions?

He was the sort that would always find a way to power trip but never actually did anything to earn respect from his coworkers.

He NEVER did anything in the kitchen to help out during the rush, assigned extra work to servers (who earn $2.65 an hour) often for the silliest of reasons, oh and homey used to speak to the lady servers completely disrespectfully

No surprise that they can’t keep good employees.

He even made one of them cry once basically just because he could, so like I said a real peach. He and I did not get along well.

Not specifically because this guy is a soul sucking jerk, but I’m sure it played into it, our busy corporate restaurant’s turnover hits a little harder than it should and we end up running short handed for several months.

He has already had a very long day.

Because there are always things to be done in a restaurant after each shift, short handed means that everyone working has to do extra, and at that $2.65/hr extra work is no one’s favorite.

This particular day I’ve done double duty rolling silverware (100 instead of 50), restocked two sections worth of tables rather than just one, and done my assigned closing work before punching out and grabbing an employee meal before heading home.

Well, I guess this will be easy.

This day my closing work was to restock service station #2 (there are 3 in total), glasses, coffee cups, paper goods, and ice were all stocked up, everything cleaned and shined, all the stuff you would expect.

As I’m punching out ol’ peachy tells me that I have to restock service station #1 as well, so I go and take a look to what’s needed and it’s completely stocked/cleaned.

Happy to help, boss. Why is he so upset?

He meant to tell me to stock #3 (which was completely hit) but as he said #1 I restocked a few straws, put a few coffee cups in, and called it a day.

As I’m sitting in the employee break room 20 minutes or so later enjoying my lunch with one of our restaurant’s line cooks as company, Mr. Peach comes storming in, red faced, huffing and puffing.

I’m not sure how much I would care if I were fired at that point.

He starts berating me and accuses me of insubordination. I point out that he told me which service station to attend to and he yelled back that “I knew what he meant” and “if you don’t wipe it down, restock the glassware, and refill the ice before you leave then THAT’S IT!”.

The line cook, normally a quiet and reserved guy even said after peach-holio walked out “wow, so much disrespect!”

He wants to keep the job, so he does his best.

Now I liked this job and in fact have friends to this day from back then, so even though I’m even less fond of working off the clock than I am of $2.65 an hour I figured I would get it done, but understandably the whole interaction left a bad taste in my mouth.

I finished lunch then did the work quickly. I wiped everything down, restocked the paper goods and glassware, all that was left was the ice. When the ice bin was completely filled up and it was time to go I just felt like it wasn’t good enough.

Now that is a lot of ice.

So, I went and got another bucket full of ice. then another. then another…. I filled the ice bin until it was eye level, an actual “full” ice bin is roughly waist high, not good enough, so I hunted down a ladder and continued piling ice on top of the bin… until it was to the ceiling. Then I went home.

The title of this post is what happened next. Peachareno called me at home and left a message with my mom to call him back and that it was “very important”… yea, no thanks.

At least the general manager seems reasonable.

The general manager was cracking up when I came in for my shift the next day. She told me not to do it again and I said OK and she rehired me lol.

Peachy boi put his 2 weeks notice in after that. For the time he was there afterwards he couldn’t make eye contact with me.

It is always so satisfying when a practical joke like this hits so hard. The shift manager simply could not take a joke and overreacted even though nothing was really harmed. This worker is lucky that the general manager had such a great sense of humor.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a warehouse worker who noticed some fellow employees were always sneaking out early for the same strange reason.

Now, let’s take a minute to read through what some of the top commenters on this story had to say.

Yeah, but this story took place 30+ years ago.

To be fair, this is before tips. Many restaurant workers make pretty good money.

Untipped work should be paid at a higher rate.

This commenter is exactly right. Always document this type of thing.

It would be so humiliating to fire someone only to have your boss hire them back. I love that the general manager actually had the back of an employee.

He clearly knows how to run a restaurant and how hard it is to get good workers. It’s a lot easier to replace a bad manager than a good front-line worker.