Imagine working at a restaurant as a server, and another server is also your supervisor. If he refused to wait on a table that was supposed to be his table, would you argue with him about it, or simply wait on the table?

In this story, one server is in this situation, and she’s really frustrated with the supervisor. She seems to consider him lazy and annoying, and she’s not the only employee who feels that way.

While she doesn’t think he’ll ever get fired, she’s not sure how much longer she can put up with his annoying ways.

Keep reading for the whole story.

Dealing with tyrannical shift supervisors?

So I work with this individual who… there are many things. Let me start off by saying he is a supervisor server, not a manager.

There are four shift supervisors and he is the only one who ever behaves as if he has the authority of the GM.

He often (read: every shift) screws up but last night put me over the edge.

Here’s what happened.

In short form: there was a table that had been sitting in his section, his turn in the rotation, for approximately ten minutes.

The host told him it was his table. She dropped water after two minutes.

He never went over to greet the table.

Finally, she came over to me, the only other server on to ask if I could take the table as they had not been greeted by any server yet.

I lightly push back against him whenever he pulls this kind of stuff whenever I can. Asked if it was his turn, yes. In his section, yes.

Why won’t he wait on the table?

So I told the host, there’s no reason he shouldn’t take it. Tell him it’s his.

I would have gone over earlier had I seen him ignoring them, but they were seated behind a partition and I didn’t even know they had entered the restaurant prior to the host coming over to me.

She goes into the kitchen, tells him it’s his table.

He snaps back in her face: “I don’t want it.”

She ended up having to take the table.

So I go in there: “Dude, it’s your table.”

His answer was thus: “I am above you when I’m the supervisor, you understand that right? If I don’t want to take tables that’s my prerogative. (GM) said I could cut myself at the beginning of the shift if I want to and not take tables.”

It was clear that standing there arguing with him and keeping the guest waiting any longer would be inappropriate and a waste of time so I went out there and took the table.

While I was first pretty ticked off that he claimed he was allowed to not take tables, according to the kitchen manager who was pretty neutral throughout this, this is what the GM said. To what degree, I’m not sure.

She’s really upset.

However, he KNEW he had a table, he KNEW he was keeping them waiting, and he avoided facing his mistake by dumping it onto me.

And this isn’t the first time he has done this to me, or to other servers.

He had already royally screwed up when I got on earlier that afternoon.

Whether or not I’m ticked off by a coworker matters less, but he fails to provide good customer service, and that’s a big problem.

Here’s how the rest of the night went.

The rest of the night he stood behind the bar chatting with customers (a no-no) while the bartender tried to work around him and took tables in the dining room.

I was feeling pretty upset and it was Monday so we only had two parties come in after that and she offered to take them for me as I was feeling fed up and just wanted to get out of there.

I completed all my side work and then some of his and he made me stand around for two hours on the clock waiting for him to finally cut me, likely to spite me.

I’m going in this morning to talk to the FOHM about it.

She has given up hope that he’ll ever get fired.

It’s amazing he still has a job the way he behaves.

This has been going on for months and I am not the only staff member who has complained about his conduct. The three other shift supervisors and the bar manager are also sick of his behavior. The GM and FOHM just aren’t around enough to see him messing up.

It seems hopeless that he’ll ever get fired, but I need some strategies for dealing with him. I obviously don’t want to be picking up after his mistakes all the time, but since he is most certainly going to continue to make them with his attitude, I need to deal with it some way or another.

Never Miss a Story

Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.

Does anyone have any stories or advice?

I wonder why he refused to take the table. Was he just being lazy, or did he have another reason? I’m wondering if he knew them and didn’t want to wait on them, but if that’s the case, he could’ve just said that.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person suggests talking to the general manager.

Another person suggests contacting HR.

This person offers some more advice.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a manager who wonders why productivity dropped after he banned overtime with no exceptions.

But this person comments on the supervisor’s job description.

It’s possible the server doesn’t know the whole story. If it’s typical for the supervisor to refuse to take tables, that’s super annoying, but if this was a one-off, then there might be something about the people at that table that we don’t know.

Either way, the supervisor sounds really annoying, and the restaurant sounds short staffed.

If talking to management doesn’t help, she should probably look for another job, one where the supervisor isn’t also a server.