This is the number one thing I hate about hosting.

Me: “Hi friends! Welcome to—”

Customer: “Hi. Two. Booth.” *Crosses their arms and sighs like a baby*

Like… can you not interrupt, and let me finish my script?

We are currently in “The Great Resignation” and I have discovered another restaurant that is offering much better than the minimum wage I am currently on. I put in my two weeks for a new job.

Boss: “You are not to tell anyone what your new income is.”

Me: “Why?”

Boss: “It wouldn’t be fair to me, because then people might leave.”

Me: “I’m fairly certain that you telling me that I can’t talk about my own salary at another job is illegal.”

I wasn’t going to say anything before, but because of this, not only did I start a chat group SPECIFICALLY talking about this, but I managed to get job applications for most of my coworkers, too. That’s what the boss gets for paying everyone unfairly and making people stay twenty minutes after closing with no extra pay and no overtime.

I worked in a fast food restaurant, and one of my coworkers did an exceptionally fantastic job with any task he was assigned to, whether it was as a cashier or working in food prep. It came to no surprise to any of us when he was promoted to a shift manager position.

Our actual surprise was that he somehow confused the word “manager” with “Gestapo.” He constantly stood next to working people and was either snapping his fingers or clapping his hands: “LET’S GO! LET’S GO! MOVE IT!” Mess up an order? He’d go grab the poor prep worker from the kitchen and then say, right in front of the customer:

Manager: “Is this what you call customer service? How long have you been working here? Apologize to him right now!” *To the customer* “Sir, we’ll get you another order made, and I’m writing him up for this right now! This is inexcusable!”

He would constantly give blatantly obvious instructions to crew workers on how to do their jobs, even though many of them were “veterans” who had been there ten or more years and could recite protocols while in a coma. Write-ups started streaming in from him over petty issues like clocking in two minutes late from break or forgetting to give a customer their receipt, which infuriated many of us since a lot of us had been there for years without a single blemish on our records.

One day, I called in to let my work know I would be fifteen or thirty minutes late because my car was not starting and I was taking a bus instead (I don’t trust Uber), and I was unlucky enough to have him pick up the phone.

Manager: “Why didn’t you prepare to leave earlier? It’s your responsibility to make sure you get here on time! I’m starting to consider having a talk with [General Manager] about whether you should even be here! You need to take your job more seriously!”

I arrived at work on time after pestering my roommate for a ride, and as expected, [Manager] was there driving everyone like sled dogs. As I was listening to a customer give her order, he walked past me, snapped his finger repeatedly, and snarled, “Pick it up!” as though I was supposed to control how fast the customer was deciding. Then, as I was putting her order together, he barked:

Manager: “Napkins! Ketchup packet! Come on. You know the drill already!”

I locked my register, grabbed his hand, shook it, and walked to the back.

Manager: “Where do you think you are going?”

Me: “Unemployment office.”

Manager: “No, stay right there— HEY! [Coworker], that’s too much lettuce! This is the third time—”

Coworker: “Goodbye, sir.”

They walked to the back with me.

We both left just as we said we would, and as word got around, three more employees walked out that same shift. When I returned to the restaurant the following day to turn in my uniform, the general manager met up with me and took me to the office. There, he put me on the phone with the franchise owner, who apologized to me and reassured me that this situation would be handled immediately.

Surprisingly enough, that shift manager wasn’t fired, but please believe me when I tell you that it felt GREAT to come in to work the next day to see him dressing in a common crew uniform, looking completely humiliated. He quit after three weeks of being relegated to all the mundane tasks such as deep cleaning machines and handling delivery all by himself with no help.

This was several years back, after the Mars rover Curiosity successfully landed on the planet, the first Mars rover that could dig up soil samples for chemical analysis. There was excitement about it all over the news.

My sister, parents, and I were out having lunch with our parents’ friends, a very extroverted couple who love to travel and meet lots of people. The conversation turns to the Mars rover.

Friend #1: “You know, we know one of the engineers working on that project! He’s one of the guys in charge of getting the soil samples with the rover.”

Friend #2: “Oh, they were all ecstatic over there when it landed.”

Friend #1: “They were! And you know what? This guy is so brilliant — he works for NASA, after all! — but when he told his dad that he wanted to study engineering back when he was in college, his dad said he’d never be anything but a ditch digger! Can you believe that?”

Sister: *Pauses* “Well… his dad was right. He is a ditch digger. On Mars.”

Everyone froze for a second and then burst out laughing. The friends agreed she was right and that they had to tell the guy what she said the next time they talked to him. We never heard back about a reaction, but I sincerely hope he got to go home and gloat to his dad about landing the best ditch-digging job in the solar system.

If you want to book a large table for your Christmas party at a restaurant, you need to order and pay for your meals in advance. In November, you think, “Roast turkey with all the trimmings? Yum!” But a week before Christmas, by now you hate the sight of turkey, and you know you are having it again next week. During the meals, it’s like watching military exercises — the precision of those teams of cooks and servers moving like an army, serving more meals than they usually do in a week each night. There is no room for specifications or special orders that haven’t been informed about and paid for in advance.

My sports team had organised Christmas dinner at a pub to commemorate a successful year. As the meals we had ordered a month ago started arriving, it was clear some dishes were more impressive than others. My — ahem — friend expressed her disappointment that [meal #1] she had chosen looked relatively unappealing. Then, a few moments later, the waitress came out.

Waitress: “I’ve got three more [meal #2]s.”

My friend’s hand shot up.

Friend: “Yes, I ordered [meal #2]!

And she shamelessly took someone else’s dinner. When the final dish was brought out, the poor team member had to accept the inferior dish that was all that was left. I still remember her disappointed face.

I didn’t say anything. For a moment, I was just shocked that she would do something so blatant in front of me, and by the time I regained my composure, she had started eating, so nothing I could say would rectify the situation.