Her Manager Said Never Identify Customers by Race, And He Then Embarrassed Himself Doing Exactly That
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Sometimes the details matter more than people want to admit.
That’s what this restaurant server found out after her manager decided skin color should never be used to identify a customer.
She didn’t argue with him. Instead, she remembered exactly what he said and followed those instructions the next time he asked who needed help.
It didn’t take long for the manager to realize he’d made a pretty big mistake. Finding the right customer suddenly wasn’t nearly as easy as he’d expected.
Then, somehow, he still found a way to blame the server for doing exactly what he’d told her to do.
Read on to see how it all played out.
Manager doesn’t allow skin color descriptions
Years ago, I was working at a corporate chain sports bar. One of the managers famously had “short man syndrome,” where he HAD to be right at all times and didn’t allow anyone to deviate from his edicts.
One day, a server was asking him to go talk to a customer due to our mistake.
When asked which person to speak to, the server replied, “Table 300, the Black guy wearing…” She was cut short by the manager yelling, “WE DO NOT REFER TO PEOPLE THAT WAY!!! We DO NOT see race. We DO NOT see color. They are ALL customers at this company! Do you understand me?”
The next time, she simply told him it was a man in an orange shirt.
The manager made sure to nitpick absolutely everything and micromanage her for the rest of the night.
Fast forward a few weeks. Same issue with the same server.
Remembering his previous screaming fit, she told him to talk to “the guy wearing orange at Table 250.”
It was football season. Virtually everyone in the building was wearing the home team’s orange.
Of course, that made him mad, too.
The manager had to awkwardly ask customers who had an issue, deeply embarrassing himself.
Once he was back in the kitchen, he REALLY laid into the server for embarrassing him before firing her on the spot.
The next day, we all verified his previous instructions and her malicious, but correct, compliance, so the general manager was forced to call her up and offer her job back.
The manager was not disciplined in any way, but that’s restaurant life.
Wow! The manager definitely deserved to be in some sort of trouble.
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Let’s see if the people over at Reddit have ever encountered something similar.
It would’ve, but it would’ve gotten her in more trouble.
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Well, let’s hope not.
Oh no!
Exactly!
Turns out the manager didn’t like his own rule very much.
If you’re going to make a policy, you also have to accept what happens when people follow it. You can’t expect employees to read your mind every time the rule becomes inconvenient.
And firing the server only made the whole situation worse, because she wasn’t the problem!
Hopefully, the manager thought twice before ever doing something like this again.
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