An Assistant Hotel Manager’s Abusive Former Boss Came Begging for a Job—So She Handed Him a Towel and a Pool Skimmer

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The way you treat people at work can come back to bite you when you least expect it.
That’s what happened to one restaurant manager who lost his temper with a teenage employee.
The sixteen-year-old was handling the host stand while her coworkers cleared tables, but the manager accused her of thinking she was too good to bus. Rather than hear her out, he grabbed her arm, pulled her into the kitchen, and yelled at her.
Eventually, she quit and worked her way up to assistant general manager at a hotel. Then, one day, her former manager walked in looking for a job.
After explaining their history to her new boss, she got permission to offer the man a position, though it wasn’t the one the former manager was expecting.
Read on to see how he reacted to the offer.
The time I got back at my old manager.
When I was 16, I worked two jobs.
The first job was great. I was a pool attendant at a hotel with a waterslide. We would basically just turn on the slide and make sure no one drowned, and we were CPR certified in case we needed to pull someone out of the water who wasn’t breathing. The best part was, on slow nights, I could turn the slide off and do homework if no one was in the pool.
The second job was as a host/busser for a chain restaurant, which was owned by a co-owner of the hotel I worked for.
Three hours into a busy shift, everything was going great.
The GM at the restaurant had a tendency to fly off the handle. Often, when I’d work, the other hosts/hostesses would ask if I would seat people and let them bus the tables. Of course, I’d always agree if they asked.
Despite the GM not wanting us to make this type of arrangement, we would because he also wanted someone at the host stand at all times.
Well, one night, they asked me to host while they bussed because some of the servers were getting ****** about the rush of elderly people coming in for soup and salad bar deals. I agreed, and after three hours, I had managed to calm down the servers, and everything was going well.
Then, the GM got involved.
At least until the GM finally emerged from the office and saw me standing there, only putting customers’ names on the waiting list, seating customers, and checking to see which tables were ready. It’s important to note that if I saw a bussed table that needed to get wiped down, I would also do that.
So the GM stomps up to me while customers are walking in, grabs me by the arm, pulls me back to the kitchen, and reams me for “thinking I’m too good to bus tables.”
I told him the others asked me to stay at the host stand because the servers were being rude to them about seating “too many geriatric patients” in their section and that it just goes smoother when one person handles seating people.
Angry, he kept yelling at her.
He continued yelling that my coworkers aren’t the boss, that he is, and that it isn’t up to us to decide to do that.
I just said, “OK, are you ******* done?”
He said yes.
I replied, “Great, let go of my ******* arm.”
Just when she least expected it, the guy showed up at her new job.
I got to bussing tables and refused to go back to the host stand for the rest of the night, which meant customers were waiting 10–15 minutes at times without having been greeted.
Eventually, I quit that job and worked my way up to the assistant general manager position at a new hotel the company I worked for opened in town.
One day, the GM of the restaurant came in, handing in his resume and asking if we were hiring for any positions. I told him we weren’t currently hiring, but that I’d keep his resume on file.
Here’s where she had a chance to tell her story.
I asked the hotel GM if he knew why the restaurant manager was looking for jobs. Turns out he got fired. My GM told me he’d be fine adding another front desk worker if I wanted to hire him.
I explained the time he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the kitchen and that I wouldn’t be comfortable having him working alone with my pool attendants (they were harder to replace than front desk clerks), but that I’d be willing to offer him a pool attendant position.
My boss laughed and let me make the call to offer him the position on the condition that I put it on speakerphone so the GM could hear the guy’s response.
Apparently, that wasn’t the position he wanted.
When he picked up, I said, “Hey, [old GM], it’s me. I talked to the GM, and we do have a position we’re hiring for right now.”
He excitedly said, “Oh, perfect! I’m excited for the opportunity…”
I interjected with, “We really need someone reliable to work as a pool attendant.”
In a very defeated voice, he said, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
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Yikes! That guy sounds like a nightmare to work for.
Let’s check out what the readers over at Reddit think about it.
This is excellent advice!

Here’s a different way to say the same advice.

For this reader, the kiddie pool is a job they’d never take.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who alerted their manager after seeing a customer sign the wrong name on a credit card slip.
And these are great thoughts from a restaurant manager.

It’s so crazy that some managers think they can just grab an employee like that.
Even if he didn’t like how they were dividing the work, he could’ve explained it to everyone instead of treating her like that.
Luckily, she didn’t have to stay there long, and it sounds like she has a really good thing going now.
As for him, he’s lucky she offered him a job at all after the way he treated her.
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