Some People Really Shouldn’t Be Given Responsibilities

I work at a popular sandwich shop. We get a new hire, and he’s not the greatest of workers. He tends to show up late, if he shows up at all, often with little to no warning beforehand. But it’s nothing too bad, and I start to think he’s an okay guy.

About five weeks in, my manager decides to have him trained to open. On his first day opening, I come into the store for the evening shift to find things are not going well. They ran out of bread earlier in the day and had to bake more. I just think it was super busy that day and the new hire didn’t bake enough bread in the morning. As things go on, I find out more and more.

Every day, the evening worker is supposed to put a certain amount of frozen bread in the retarder, which will soften the frozen sticks and make them faster to bake in the morning. One of the most important opening jobs is to bake all the bread in the retarder. The new hire didn’t bake any of that bread. Not only that, but he didn’t cut any of the vegetables, which is another one of the most important opening jobs. I also find out that when one of my coworkers came in for the midday shift, the new hire was sitting outside in front of the pizza place next door where his girlfriend works and ended up leaving an hour before his shift ended.

Amazingly, the new hire doesn’t get fired for this fiasco, though he does get written up and chewed out, and he is warned that if he misses another day or shows up late without warning, he will be fired.

The next Wednesday, he sends a message to our group chat asking for someone to cover his shift that Friday for him, but nobody is able to. The next day, he sends a message saying that his brother has been hit by a car.

Friday is Homecoming for the local high school, and this is a small town with not many places to eat, so when I come in for my afternoon and evening shift, I find the store packed with high school kids that have been let out of school early. The new hire is nowhere to be seen, so it is just my boss and me left to fend off about forty teenagers. I find out that the new hire didn’t come in for his shift and ended up coming an hour or two later just to tell my boss that he didn’t want to work Fridays and Saturdays. I guess his brother was fine if he was able to take the time to do this. He ended up getting fired.

But there’s still more.

That evening, I am working with the closer when the recently fired ex-coworker comes into the store and grabs the key: apparently, he thinks he’s still opening tomorrow. When he leaves, I quickly excuse myself from the line and send a quick message to our boss to let her know.

When I come back the next day, I’m told that this guy came into the store and started putting the key back in the safe. My manager was there training another coworker to open so he could cover the recently fired worker’s shifts. She asked him what had happened the day before and he nervously and quietly muttered, “My brother got hit by a car.” He was informed that he would not be opening that day or the next day, and my manager went back to training the other coworker. After staring at the register for about ten minutes, he left his store-issued hat on the counter and left the store. A few minutes later my manager got a text from him: “I quit.”

In the end, I guess he did get those Fridays and Saturdays off like he wanted. My manager says hiring that guy was her worst mistake.