Previously: Getting Rolled: When Middle Management is more important than the guests
Day Four. I’m at my early morning job and I’m already dreading showing up to the Rolling Workplace based on just three days of experience there. I did tell the bartender I would be there even after the frustrations of the previous day.
So off I go.
Get into the place, open up the bar, get the floor ready. There wasn’t that much to do as the night before the closing crew did actually shut down the business properly, including burning the ice in the bar!
After a while the GM got there and informed us she wanted to get the bar cleaned up, so get on scrubbing. At least by now we, the floor employees, had decided it was going to be a slow day.
Got that entire back scrubbed and bleached. By the end of it there was no mold anywhere, because there was mold everywhere. Just because you cannot see it does not mean it isn’t there. Mold is one of those things you just can’t get rid of if you let it have a foothold in your kitchen or your bar. But we got it downright spotless!
Which is when everything went sideways. The GM had me follow her to one of the private dining rooms. We sat down and she was short and to the point: “Management thinks you’re hard to work with so I have to let you go.” I couldn’t be sure if she was okay with this or not but one thing learned from years in the service industry is to know when to pick a fight and this was not the time for it.
Thanked her for everything, gathered my things, left the place. Went to another one of my workplaces to grab a drink or two while I collected my thoughts and tried to decide what was next for me. This was supposed to be my big Front of House break and … it went nowhere real fast, aided by the fact I wanted to work and not hang out.
This is one of those parts where having working in the kitchen for so long turns out to be counter-productive. I don’t quite know how to carry on a conversation when I’m cooking or cleaning; months after the experience I’m getting better but at least back then I could not quite handle it.
I have not been back to this place since then, nor have I eaten at any of the other restaurants managed by the company. The real kick in the shins is social media keeps suggesting this GM as a contact. Even LinkedIn.
As people say now, please, miss me with that shit.