When I was still a teenager, I worked for a country club. The job was very easy most nights, and the clientele was very polite. The only bad thing about it was our general manager. He was a very pompous man who would eat more than he worked and would get in screaming matches with all the staff. The chefs especially hated him because he was always trying to tell them how to do everything, when he knew nothing about food. There was one night, above all others, that encapsulates him as a manager.
We were hosting a wedding, birthday party, golf tournament, and normal dining. We were very understaffed, and I happened to be sick, so we were all floundering. My supervisor put me on the hostess stand where I wouldn’t have to strain myself too much, but I still had quite a bit to do. At one point my GM approached me and demanded I clean the bathrooms. I tend to get very confrontational when I’m sick, and I told him no. I would not be cleaning a bathroom and dealing with food. That was not part of my duties. I guess he wasn’t expecting that from a young girl, and just scampered off.
I found out the next day what had happened. At some point, one of the women in the bridal party got drunk and tried to flush multiple tampons down our toilet. Our sewage is connected to the kitchen, and sewage water from the bathroom flooded the kitchen. My manager tried to get every person on staff to clean it, but they all had the same response as me. Instead of calling in a cleaner, a plumber, or closing down for the night, he told the dishwashers to just occasionally sweep the sewage water out the back door. He closed down both bathrooms with a full house, and we continued to serve food the entire night.
After all that, this man even had the gall to write up each person who had said no to him for “insubordination.” I quit not too long after. He is still the GM, years later.
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