Getting a customer complaint is bad enough without your manager putting it on display for everyone to see.

Yet that’s what happened to one fast food worker after a customer got upset about waiting for his order.

At the time, the restaurant was short-staffed, so the worker was covering the front while helping the only person in the kitchen.

But rather than accept the explanation, the customer took a photo and emailed it to the general manager.

Then, rather than confronting him privately, the manager posted an enlarged copy near the time clock with complaints written across it.

Read on to see how it all played out.

Customer attached a photo of me to a complaint email, manager hung it in the kitchen instead of talking to me. Is this unprofessional or is it just me?

I work in a fast food restaurant, and I am kinda upset about this situation with the general manager.

I work the evening shift, from lunchtime to closing around 11, and my GM is rarely around past 4. So we don’t interact a whole lot.

Last night, we were super short-staffed on account of the GM scheduling barely enough people and one of those people not showing up for his shift. It was around 9:00 at this point, and my one coworker who was working the drive-through window was on break, so it was just me up front.

They were busy, so he was doing all he could to help.

Due to the aforementioned short staffing, I was doing drive-through, bagging orders, making drinks, helping my one coworker who was in the kitchen by himself, and various other minor tasks.

So while I’m by myself up front, about 9–10 decently sized orders come in at once, including both DoorDash/Uber Eats as well as drive-through, so I’m pretty swamped and am rushing around trying to do things in the order they came in.

At one point, I’m making drinks for a DoorDash order when a customer comes in and yells at me to get my attention. I should mention at this point that I have one headphone in as I’m working, which has never been an issue before, and lots of my coworkers do it as well, all with no comment from the GM.

He answered the guy’s question and went back to work.

I take out my headphone to go talk to this guy, and he says he’d been sitting at the drive-through window for 5 minutes and no one has come to the window, so he came inside.

Now, I know this is an exaggeration because it had only been about 3 minutes since I handed the last person their order, but I apologize and say I’m working as fast as I can and I’d have his food to him as soon as it was ready.

He continues to talk about how I should have said something to him about the food taking a long time and yadda yadda. I go back to continue what I was doing.

Then, the guy took a picture.

While I have my back to him, he apparently walks back behind the counter to take a photo of me with a headphone in, bagging an order, and goes back to wait for his food at the counter which takes just around 2 minutes.

Anyhow, sometime between when I clocked in today and when the GM left at 4, she had printed the email she received from him with the photo of me blown up to about 3 feet tall and taped it to the wall above the area where we clock in, and had marked it up with giant circles and comments in Sharpie, and then left without saying anything to me.

The email read (verbatim): “Just wanted to let you know what was going on. I own a business and would hate to see this. Drive thru times are horible, and you have workers who seem like they don’t wanna be there and have an Airpod in. Thought I’d let you know. Hope you get the problem taken care of!”

Now, he’s wondering what other people think about his boss’s approach.

And the comments written on the photo say “(OP) AIRPODS UNACCEPTABLE,” “FLOOR TRASH UNACCEPTABLE” (with 4 fries on the ground by the fryers circled), and “DRIVE THRU 11TH PLACE UNACCEPTABLE.”

Is it just me, or does it seem like this is the least professional way to handle this kind of situation?

Also, it feels incredibly dumb to blame me for ticket times being slow when there are people no-call, no-showing to their shifts and the GM’s not scheduling enough people. Just wanted to get some thoughts from others who may have similar experiences.

Wow! That does not seem like the best way to handle this situation.

Let’s take a look at what the people over at Reddit think should’ve happened.

According to this comment, the manager should’ve been helping.

For this reader, it’s all about asking the GM how to handle it.

Here’s a good plan.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who isn’t happy with the company’s new time tracking rules, so decides to find a way around them.

A little subliminal messaging here.

The manager went about this all wrong.

She should’ve started by talking to the employee directly about what happened.

The fact is that embarrassing someone in front of their coworkers is a great way to make them want to quit. And with the restaurant already short-staffed, that’s the last thing she needs.

As far as he goes, it may be time to contact someone a little higher up and let hem know what’s been going on.