Nepotism Rarely Works Out Favorably For Anyone

Many moons ago, I was a wide-eyed, young innocent employed for the very first time at the tender age of seventeen in a fairly snooty country club. Even to my eyes, some of the behaviours were obviously wrong, but the staff generally pulled together and just got on with things as best they could.

That is, until [Manager #1] started. [Manager #1] was employed to look after the restaurant and events by her good friend, [General Manager]. Until this point, [Manager #2] had been looking after all of that, plus the cafe and bar. He was a great guy who kept things ticking over. I never did learn why [General Manager] felt that [Manager #1] was needed, but it was quickly obvious even to me that she didn’t have a clue what she was doing.

This came to a head for me during a large Christmas party a company booked for their employees in our event room. We got the event set up quickly and were allocated sections, but I ended up pulling extra tables because [Manager #1] miscounted. 

When the guests arrived and were seated, I zoomed around my tables taking drinks orders until I had this conversation with one of my guests.

Guest: “Hi! Thanks for taking the orders, but can I check when the free wine will be arriving?”

Me: *Laughs* “Good one! If you like I can get you a wine list, though?”

The guest’s smile started slipping a bit.

Guest: “Umm, no, I’m serious. The package we booked should have included two bottles of red and two bottles of white per table.”

Me: *Very confused* “Oh, I’m sorry for the mixup. Let me just check on that for you and I’ll be right back.”

I consulted with the other waiters who were now receiving similar comments from their tables. It took us a little while to find [Manager #1].

Manager #1: “Yes! Of course, they were meant to get wine. Why hasn’t this been done?”

All Of Us: “Well, because this is literally the first we are hearing of this.”

Manager #1: “Bah, just get it done! Quickly, before they start to complain.”

Remember how I had extra tables and that drinks orders had already been served? In all of the confusion, I missed distributing the free bottles to one of my tables because they already had wine on their table and I mistakenly thought that a colleague had helped out and given them their free bottles.

Eventually, one of them complained to my manager who summoned me to explain myself.

Manager #1: “[My Name], explain to me why I had a complaint from one of your tables that you haven’t given them their drinks.”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m not sure how that happened.”

Manager #1: “I’ll tell you how it happened: incompetence.”

I was a bit taken aback for a moment.

Me: “You know what? I agree, incompetence was definitely the problem here. I’ll go serve them now.”

I’m pretty sure that she and I had very different ideas of whose incompetence caused the problem. I left the job a month or two later, and from what I heard, [General Manager] had to let her friend [Manager #1] go not too long after because of her many screw-ups.