One Greasy Mistake After Another

I work at a popular international burger restaurant. I am working nights, and there are only two of us for the shift: me on the till and another guy on the grill. One of the guys I work with is great, always on the ball. The other guy… not so much.

One of our duties as night shift is to filter and refill the fryer oil. This involves flipping a few switches to make the oil drain into the filter area, waiting for it to go through the filter area, flipping more switches for it to be sent back into the fryer, and topping it up with fresh oil. There are five different fryers that have to be done separately.

I have done it many times and know the process quite well, but tonight it is my coworker’s responsibility. I am walking around cleaning while he works on the fryers. He drains one, and a while later I see him flip the switch to drain the next one… but the first one is still empty.

Me: “WAIT! NO!”

I flip the switch back up.

Coworker: “It’s fine, it’s fine. I know what I’m doing!”

He flipped the switch back down. Seconds later, the filter area overflowed and flooded half the kitchen with oil, which we spent the entire rest of the shift cleaning up.

A few weeks later, we had run out of the wrapper for [Burger #1] — two patties and one piece of cheese — so we were using the wrapper for [Burger #2] — two patties and two pieces of cheese. I looked over, and since he was using the wrapper for [Burger #2], I think he went autopilot and put two pieces of cheese on it.

I thought about correcting him but realized that I would most likely have to correct him for every single one he made. I decided this was one battle I did not want to pick, and everyone who ordered [Burger #1] that night got a free bonus piece of cheese.