When I was in my early twenties, I worked at a small, family-owned Italian restaurant. The owner mentioned that the restaurant sales were down, and he was going to hire his sister, a woman in her fifties, as a hostess because “we (servers) must be doing something wrong”. We were all kind of shocked at that. I mean, we had noticed that it had been slower, but we were still dealing with the aftermath of the 2008 recession, so we assumed it had to do with that. Also, we didn’t have any complaints other than the wait time — the restaurant made almost all the food by hand — so we were confused.
I’m going to quickly explain how we did the hostessing in the restaurant. Every Friday and Saturday, we would rotate one of the servers and have them hostess. We would be paid more, and the servers would tip us out. As hostesses, we didn’t just seat people; we would also bus tables and run food if needed. We didn’t have a busser or table runner since, again, it was a small restaurant. (I think the maximum we could have in the dining room was seventy-five, and twenty in the bar. We also didn’t have sections, so the hostess would rotate who got seated next.
On the owner’s sister’s first day, she was supposed to start at 4:00 pm, but she hadn’t shown up yet. We had people waiting at the door to be seated. We quickly searched for [Sister] and couldn’t find her, so we seated the people. Of course, once we seated them, [Sister] showed up and immediately berated me.
Sister: “I’m the hostess! You are not allowed to seat people!”
I had never met [Sister] at this point. All I could think was, “Great. Here we go.”
For two years, I put up with [Sister]. She would berate us, and she would not allow us to enter our tips into the computer when she was working, even though we did that all the time by ourselves. She questioned me on a good tip I got and asked the guy if he was “sure he wanted to give me that much,” because she couldn’t believe that I had gotten that tip. The guy flipped out and yelled at the owner.
Another time, she gave every customer the owner’s number because she was mad at us for not busing our tables, and she told them to complain. We were slammed and could have used her help busing. Oh, yeah! She wouldn’t bus any tables or run any food; she would just seat people, and we had to tip her out.
She would shove trays into our hands if we were carrying out one plate; it didn’t matter, she said it was classier to carry everything on a tray. She would go between liking me and hating me because I’m not a pushover. She mostly hated me.
[Sister] also took everything as an insult. You would think you were having a normal conversation with her, and then she would get mad about what you said. When she first started working, she told me she had hosted before. Being friendly, I asked where. She got mad at me for that because she thought I was being snarky about her hostess skills; I wasn’t.
At one point, we were so fed up that we asked [Manager] (the head chef of the kitchen) to please talk to [Owner] about his sister. [Owner] set up a meeting with us. Right before the meeting started, [Sister] showed up, and all of us looked at each other, confused as to why she was there. [Owner] then berated us for treating his sister poorly and said that we needed to treat her better. We were all so pissed.
One server did quit over her. [Sister] really hated her. When we would hostess, we would write down each server’s name and make a chart of how many people/tables they had taken to make it fair for each person. The server’s name was Lacy, and [Sister] wrote her name down as “Lazy” because she was annoyed that Lacy wasn’t busing her tables because she was busy. Lacy quit and wrote a note to the owner saying [Sister] was the reason she quit. [Owner] still didn’t see an issue.
It started getting to the point that I was going to quit. I have no idea why I put up with it for so long, but I made good money and I knew the place. [Sister] was not giving me tables at all one night. I was talking to [Manager].
Me: “If she doesn’t give me a table, I’m quitting.”
He reached out to [Owner], who told [Sister] she needed to give me tables. She pouted, refused to work, stood at the entrance, and loudly called people on her cell to complain. Since she refused to hostess, [Manager] had to that night. [Owner] only (thankfully) listened at this point because he was starting to get multiple complaints about [Sister] but still hadn’t fired her because she was his sister.
Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I’m good at computers and learn super fast. I learned our Point Of Sale system very quickly when we got it and was even given manager abilities on it because I understood it so well.
Our POS system was at the waitress station, and [Sister] was helping another server with an issue. [Owner] wanted to discount one person’s food on a table that had one bill. If you selected the food and hit “discount”, it would discount the entire order, so you had to split the order to discount it; it didn’t separate the checks doing it that way. I had tried to help [Sister] with the POS system before, but she called me a “know-it-all” and said I thought I was better than everyone else. So, when she was having trouble with the discount, I said, “F*** it,” and didn’t help.
[Sister] had figured out another way to specifically discount one item. If she rang it in on its own, she could just discount it and then put all the other orders in so that she could separate the discounted item but keep it one check. That meant she re-rang the entire order and failed to mention to the kitchen that they didn’t need to make the food.
I completely forgot about it after a while, and [Sister] and the server had left. When the food came up and the chef rang the bell and said the server’s name, I realized what had happened.
Me: *To the chef* “[Server] already left. I think they re-rang an order in and never told you not to make it.”
He was rightfully pissed and called [Owner] to explain what had happened so he wouldn’t get in trouble. [Sister] ended up calling the restaurant and saying to the bartender:
Sister: “Is the b**** there?”
Bartender: “Who?”
Sister: “Tell [My Name] I’m going to come there and kick her a**.”
I’d had enough at that point. I called [Owner].
Me: “I’m done. I cannot work with your sister anymore. She’s nasty to all of us.”
I told him about what she’d said on the phone with the bartender.
She was fired. I stayed for maybe another year or so.
