This Owner Is (Fifty-Plus Slices Of) Toast

I worked at a pub that was attached to and served the menu of a chain restaurant next door. The restaurant was known for breakfast and greasy food. The owner was an… interesting man. He was extremely strict, and if you were new or a customer watching the interaction, he would be seen as horribly rude. Thankfully, he didn’t care about the business whatsoever, and we would rarely see him.

[Owner]’s attitude made servers come and go in droves; I think there were only three long-timers. I was originally hired on for the pub side only due to my extensive bartending experience, but due to mass quitting, I got tasked with working the dreaded Sunday morning shift one week.

Between 6:00 am and 10:00 am, everyone was mostly friendly and left good tips, but once churches let out, all Hell broke loose — no pun intended. The churchgoers were the most hypocritical of all people; repent and ask for forgiveness, then come and scream at waitstaff making minimum wage, let their kids make horrible messes, and sit for an hour and a half even though they saw the lineup out the door for a table. And 99% of the time, they’d leave no tip — or they’d leave a note or pamphlet about how I was going to Hell, smeared with strawberry sauce that their kid splattered in a five-foot radius around the table.

I grew to like the early morning regulars, and I was the only person who volunteered for the weekend mornings at that point.

One glorious Sunday, I clocked in and saw [Owner]. Uh-oh. Both the manager and assistant manager, scheduled to serve that morning alongside me and one other server, called in sick. Due to [Owner]’s INCREDIBLE cheapness and distrust of us “peasants”, only the manager had a PIN to do discounts on orders — including for the fifty variations of coupons [Owner] sent out in flyers, newspapers, and online ads to try and drum up business. Yes, a manager was on call or physically in the building between 6:00 am and 2:00 am closing time. Absurd.

On top of that, there was a hockey tournament happening, so we had four reservations for tables of fifteen, PLUS the regular church reservations (five tables of six), PLUS the regular walk-ins. It was going to be insanity.

So, here was [Owner], rolling up the sleeves on his $295 shirt — yes, he told us how much it cost after he spilled jam on it — looking like he was going to work. Thankfully, the other server and I were rockstars and were doing pretty well, to the point that [Owner] decided he could expedite in the kitchen rather than interact with the lowly customers… until orders that normally took fifteen to eighteen minutes to come out were taking upwards of thirty to forty-five!

I went back to see what was going on when I had a minute to breathe, and I saw LITERALLY fifty-plus slices of toast on the counter, twenty-plus plates dying in the window, and [Owner] red in the face and dripping sweat all over everything.

Me: “[Owner], what’s going on? Why haven’t you called me or [Server] for pick-ups?! And what’s with the toast?”

Owner: “I know what the f*** I’m doing. I’m the owner, not you.”

Me: “Okay… Not what I asked, but all right. Can I get some of these out?”

Owner: “No! I tell you when to take them. Don’t you ever try to do something without being told!”

Me: “‘Kay.”

I walked away and continued apologizing to my tables for the delays. Thankfully, most people were understanding, but it definitely took a toll on morale in the restaurant. Another ten minutes or so went by, and I still hadn’t been called to drop food. [Server] came running up to me with a panicked look on his face.

Server: “[My Name], oh, my God… Please. Do something.”

What had been fifty-plus slices of toast had now become THREE four-foot-tall piles of various types of bread, toasted and now stale, piled up on the counter. The plates that had been under the warmer were now flooding every flat surface, and the window was full again.

I started checking plates and calling out remakes, and then I felt a hard bump right on my spine.

Me: “Ouch! What the h***?!”

[Owner] had just jabbed me with the corner of one of the square plates.

Owner: “I SAID I GOT THIS! GET OUT!”

The restaurant fell silent as everyone heard that, and almost everyone was now focused intently on the doors to the kitchen 

Me: “[Owner], this is insane. Table thirteen has been waiting an hour for bacon and eggs! Please just go to the office and let me sort this out!”

Owner: “F*** YOU, STUPID B****! I NEVER SHOULD HAVE HIRED YOU, F****** KNOW-IT-ALL! I. AM. THE. OWNER. I WILL ALWAYS HAVE MORE EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE THAN SOME DUMB SLUT WAITRESS! IF I TELL YOU TO F*** OFF, IT MEANS F*** OFF AND GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN!”

I stood shocked for a moment. Then, I took off my apron, tossed it on the ground, and started collecting my belongings from my locker to leave. [Server] followed behind me, as did two of the cooks and the dishwasher.

As we made our way out of the kitchen, [Owner] continued screaming, swearing, and hurling insults at us all. Slowly but surely, tables of shocked patrons got up and followed behind us, loudly proclaiming how they’d leave bad reviews and post in the community groups about what they had witnessed and how [Restaurant] had gone downhill since [Owner] bought it six years prior.

The community groups were full of almost exclusively posts about [Restaurant] for the next week. Their Google rating went from a 4.6 to a 2.8 within that same amount of time, with only friends of [Owner] leaving positive reviews and comments in the Facebook groups, calling all of us who’d walked out “entitled brats who haven’t worked a day of real work in their lives”.

Eight other staff members (five servers and three cooks) quit that week after hearing what had happened. [Owner] was down to three front-of-house employees (a manager, an assistant manager, and one server who was a relative of his) and only one back-of-house employee. He left me a voicemail saying more horrible things, begged me to come back halfway through, and ended it with more insults and comments about how I’d never amount to anything in life.

A decade later, I own a successful business in the same town, and [Owner] is riding off of investors’ money and begging for customers, but everyone remembers what he is!