Man This is Such Crap

As much as I know it is almost impossible to do, i have to attempt to not find work with anymore franchise style places, even if they seem nice to work for. I am going to express my quite hatred of places like these. I recently got a sweet sounding job offer from a cool 50's style diner in my town. the thing that makes this place special is the fact that it is part of the local Harley Davidson shop. For those in other countries, it is a chain of motorcycle shops. Anyway, i got called while i was working for a small organics cafe. The Route 62 diner (as it is called) manager called me and said she wanted me to come in and do an interview with her. I did and they offered me 9.50 an hour starting and full time employment right out of the starting gates.



My mind was screaming on the inside. I had finally found a job that would allow me to pay off my bills and have a bit of spending cash left over at the end of each pay period. I went in and started training under the training of the main cook who started it, Carly. She had been taught at the San Fransisco school of culinary arts, the best culinary arts training center on the west coast. for me it was sweet. not only did I get a chance to learn from a person who had something other then a high school education in my home town, but i got to do something I loved as work.

I should have known better.

The first day went off without a hitch, then came the problems. On my second day of training, Carly quit. She walked out halfway through service which left just me on the line. Now this wouldn't be too much of a problem if I knew the menu at least, but I didn't. For that matter, it has been 3 years since I even cooked breakfast and to make the whole thing as bad as it could possibly be, I was so sick that I should have stayed home. Well it didn't stop me because I managed to overcome the crowd on a saturday and sunday (the two main days where we get more than 3 customers an hour).

During this whole ordeal there was one other cook who, despite his lack of enthusiasm for his job, came in and helped. Long before he came in though, I had asked the manager to call The cook in for help. Ed( the manager) simply said "I know you can handle it." It's times like this that I question if i get put into these kinds of situations as some sort of cosmic retribution for my deeds from the past.

Well to make things worse (if such a thing was a true possibility in this place) two of the servers also walked out the same day. Spiffy, the crew went from 7 to 4. I am so in for a promotion. It was right about that time that my mind simply gave me the finger and walked out of my head through my ear and hailed a taxi home and I pretty much dropped a hamburger onto my new clean work boots as i watched it happen. Something should have made me quit right then, but I am a bit of a whore, and I needed to money. so i continued to work there going for 5 days straight doing 10 hour days with no lunch break because the diner was breaking the law.

So now comes the fun part. The management left for a vacation in the middle of a crisis and the main owner of the place walked into find half his crew gone and a total newbie chilling out over the grill (and yes I mean a flat top griddle, not some Hoe's teeth). At the sight of this debacle, the owner instantly got a massive headache and had to go to his office to find some way to self medicate (It was the only possible reason as to his consistent cheerfulness.), or so i assumed. To everyone's surprise, the owner (who never comes in for more than 5 seconds on any given day) shut the place down for training at his own personal hands.

Shit!!

He has nor at any time in his life ever had cooked on a grill, for that matter even touched the one that sat in his business. So training went on. Everyone trained two new servers were brought in, and all was well with the world.....except one thing.

They took me away from my line.

The Bastards had the mind that the dishwasher would be a better cook. Just as a little background between me and the former dishwasher turned cook, i'll give you this. I have worked as a cook at over 4 different restaurants and eating establishments, from the greasy spoon style to heathy cooking in two different Organics restaurants where I cooked with only the best, highest quality ingredients, from grass fed cow to pure true fresh from the goat cheeses and produce that was never introduced to bug killers. It was the cleanest, freshest way to cook and I ran one of the restaurants.

The Ex-Dishwasher has never touched the griddle except to clean it.

Great choice made by the owner don't you think?

So I was moved to the back of the house, so to speak in a place that has an open bar that shows the entire cooks line from every table in the place. I was resigned to wash dishes and help out the new cook for the duration of my time there. She called me no less then 30 times per day to come out and help her, even when there was only 2 tickets up, and each of those only had a sandwich and a burger on them.

Something somewhere in my mind must have clicked, because I lost a bit of my luster for the job. After a while the new cook was getting a bit upset at me for not doing the food prep for her, mainly because she prepared it long before I got there for my shift. It would be like you coming into work as a dishwasher at noon when your shift started and I said "You haven't washed any dishes." when i had been there for the better part of 6 hours. She talked to the owners and the manager and said that I wasn't performing like a well trained west highland terrier. The manager and owner told her, in the most illegal fashion possible, that they would lower my pay if I didn't step up my game. It was then that I knew what my brain had been telling me this whole time. After a brief talk with the owners later that day i went home.

The talk had been a productive one. I had been assure that I was alright and that they dont call people into their office unless they want to make things better. So i went home and came back to work the next day (my 6th in a row doing 9 hour days) with a completely renewed sense of Vigor. I was cooking with gas and nothing could stop me, I took care of tons of prep, a bunch of extra Clean up that hadn't been done in months (trust me, you could tell). I went home happy as could be, i had done a good true days work.

Damn it again!! Lies all Lies!!

I got called in the next day and told that i have two days off. Sweet, they found a part time dishwasher to take my place so I could actually have a life for two days a week. Mostly it meant that I had time to do my laundry and clean my apartment, instead of doing only one. Well after my two days were up i called in and asked when I worked again was. I was told to come and talk with Ed the manager.

This is when I knew that something was up.

After driving across town 3 times to talk with him, he finally was spotted over at the store across town from my work. I drove over and talked to him and he dropped the bombshell that I was Fired. FIRED!!! Now I am mad. His words were, "I felt like I owed it to you to tell you this way instead of having you call in each day and see when you worked next."

Funny thing is that I know that means that if I hadn't talked with him, he would have never told me I was canned, and I wonder if he did it to the other 3 people he hired.

So To hell with that place. It is now run by nothing but mexicans and one english speaking server. I doubt that they will still have the high customer volume and turnover that they had even before I was there.