Please Do Not The Sauce

I work at a pizza chain. We are on the opening Saturday shift, so there’s extra prep to do. On shift, we have me, [Coworker], and the only assistant manager (of four managers) willing to have [Coworker] on her shifts.

I’m the first to arrive; [Coworker] is set to arrive an hour after opening. It’s a slow morning, so everything gets set up pretty quickly. We leave [Coworker] with one task to do. Just. One (1). Task. He just needs to make two buckets of pizza sauce. It’s a “pour bag in bucket, add water, stir” kind of deal — not hard at all. It takes like five minutes per bucket even if you aren’t rushing.

[Coworker] comes in fifteen minutes late, even though he lives basically across the street. He’s on a video call, and he immediately clocks in and goes to sit around in the back as he usually does. We don’t care; there’s literally nothing else going on. We are a low-volume store covering the back ends of the actually busy stores in the area. We just need that sauce made and then we can play the waiting game until the lunch rush. 

I wait for him to finish with his phone call, which he does after like fifteen minutes, and tell him the one (1) job we have left for him — the ten-minutes-at-most task separating him from being able to sit around on his phone with actual managerial consent.

Coworker: “Can’t. Too sick to work.”

This was like early 2016, well before the health crisis. He certainly doesn’t seem sick, but of course, in the food business, I feel the need to ask why he showed up if he’s sick.

Coworker: “Because I want money.” 

Fair enough, everyone wants money. Still, I was not having this. 

I informed the assistant manager, and [Coworker] got sent home early. She would have fired him on the spot if she had the authority. I later got a call from the general manager asking if I wanted the early shifts next Saturday — the shifts [Coworker] was originally scheduled for. 

In the meantime, I got to be the only driver until like 4:00 pm that day, so ALL of those sweet sweet tips were now mine.