General Manager, General A**hole

I show up to my fast food franchise for an afternoon shift and find we are already knee-deep in OMG-ville. The lineup is huge, with lots of students and various other downtownies. I clock in five minutes early, wash my hands, and take stock of garnish.

We are almost out of tomatoes, low on lettuce, low on onions. I run to the back fridge where all the toppings are kept, only to see that things are so hectic that there are no backup bowls of garnishes prepared!

As quickly as I can, I make a bunch of bowls of lettuce and onions and bring those up front along with tomatoes and put away the extra bowls.

General Manager: “[My Name], you need to work faster! You were too slow getting up here with three bowls of stuff.” 

I try to explain that I was actually filling three or four bowls quickly so we’d have more when we ran out — every thirty minutes or so — but she just scoffs, turns her back on me, and barks at me to get to the cash. 

Roughly five minutes later, she literally starts screaming at me — IN FRONT OF CUSTOMERS — to get off the registers and get back to garnish. At this point, I have had enough and I admit, I snap.

Me: “[General Manager], I am sick and tired of being constantly belittled and badgered about every little thing. I’m doing my best to help my coworkers out and you screaming at me isn’t making things better.”

General Manager: “You don’t seem to value your job. I can easily fire you and find someone to replace you quickly.”

I guess she expects me to roll over and grovel for my job. That doesn’t happen.

I look her dead in the eye without even flinching. I am admittedly on new-employee probation, but my probation has been nothing but verbal abuse from her. This is still in front of all the customers and ALL my coworkers.

Me: “I can walk right out of this place right now and leave you deep in the weeds. The threat you made about my being under probation and how you can get rid of me at any time goes two f****** ways! I can quit without notice, too!”

She grabs me by the elbow. Yes, you read that right: she GRABS me. I’m not sure what she thinks this will do, but the one thing it does NOT do is deescalate the situation.

I shrug off her hand once and tell her not to touch me, but she grabs me again. I shrug her off again.

Me: “If you touch me one more time, I will charge you with assault. I do not want you to touch me, and you have no right to touch me. I have multiple witnesses, so kindly back the f*** off of me.”

She abruptly left me alone and was very cheery and kind to me, but I typed up my resignation that night and handed it to her the next day.

She got a hilariously panicked look on her face. Apparently, having her bluff called made her realize exactly how dire her straits were. She tried all sorts of tactics to make me stay, like telling me how I was leaving my coworkers in the lurch and how hard it would be for me to find another job, and when that didn’t work, she practically begged me to at least give her two weeks.

I told her to take the job and shove it. It wasn’t worth my self-respect.

Because we were chronically understaffed as it was, the look of sheer despair on her face as I walked out gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling. The fuzzy feeling got even warmer after I made a phone call to her higher-ups, with some very specific details. I never did see her at that franchise again.