Badly Monitoring The Orders

(I work at a restaurant that has a sort of 50s/60s theme and hypes up its root beer. The customers order and pay at the cash register and then seat themselves. The servers then grab the food and look for the order number. There are no assigned sections or anything so it is sometimes hard to keep track of when tables arrive. We have had a pair of bad managers for about six months or so. I’ve worked every position in the store and am acting as server at the moment. A family flags me down to ask about their meal and this follows when I report.)

Me: “Hey. Order #11 over here says they’ve been waiting for 30 minutes for their meals. They have a movie to go to and need the food soon.”

Manager: “Just take that to them.”

Me: “But that’s a different order. If I take that it’ll just mean someone else doesn’t get food and these people will get the wrong food.”

Manager: “Okay. What did they have?”

Me: “Isn’t it on the monitors?”

Manager: “We’re getting slammed here. We had to push a few things off the monitors to make sure our times were good.”

Grill Worker: “Wait, you’ve been bumping orders off the monitors? How am I supposed to know what to cook?”

Manager: “Just listen to the cashiers. You’ll be fine.”

Me: “Are you serious?!” *looks through the paper meal tickets to find the right number* “Here’s their order.”

Grill Worker: “Cool. I’ll get right on it.”

Manager: “No! Don’t cook that! It’ll slow everything down!”

Me: “What am I supposed to tell the table!?”

Manager: “Tell them to wait. We’ll get to it when we get through the rest of this stuff.”

Me: “I’m not doing that.”

Manager: “Listen! We don’t have time for this right now. Just tell them to wait.”

Me: *rather pissed and near yelling at this* “I am not going to deliberately not serve my customers!”

(Someone applauded. I got a couple of tips that night, which was unusual. We weren’t officially a tipped position. The crew that night ended up having to ignore the managers and handle the rush in spite of their orders. Don’t know if the incident got back to the owners but two of the assistant managers were promoted soon after and those two left.)