In my 20 years, I have had my fair share of part-time jobs. I started as a Saturday girl in my sister’s hair salon when I was only about 15. When I was 17 I thought it was time I got a ‘proper job’, and by that, I mean a job with employers that were strangers. So I brushed up that CV and had a couple of interviews before I got a job as a waitress in a very bougie Tapas Bar in my hometown. I lasted about a month. These are the reasons why that was the worst job I’ve ever had:
A hectic first shift
My first shift was a Saturday night in the ‘blues festival’. The blues festival is an excuse that my hometown has every year to drink. Supposedly we are celebrating blues music, but I don’t think many people actually hear any blues for the whole weekend. Instead, every pub, bar and restaurant opens its doors wide and rakes in the cash.
As you can imagine, this was not the average workday. The tiny restaurant was packed full. All of the tables and chairs were moved out and my job consisted of picking up plastic cups and cigarette-butts. There was no time to meet my new colleagues or train for my new job, I was thrown right in the deep-end, of 50 rowdy middle-aged people.
The sleepy manager
I think that there are 3 things that make someone a good manager: compassion, organisation and an ability to work well under stress. I know my manager had no organisation skills, but I am not sure if he worked well under stress or had any compassion, because he was never awake long enough for me to be able to work this out. The guy would regularly go out to his car and nap for hours at a time. The owners were not happy about this when they caught his extended absences on the cameras, which leads me onto my next point.
Invasive owners
The owners of the restaurant were a young couple with a lot of money but no knowledge of how to run a business. All they would do is buy new chairs and watch us work through the cameras they had installed whilst they were on holiday in Spain. I guess this was helpful in order to catch-out the sleepy manager, but it was still very invasive.
Misplaced blame
Most of the nights when the female owner was in, she would just stand behind the bar in her Gucci belt and on her phone, but I will never forget the one night that she actually worked. On this particular night, we had a hen party of 8 in, and they ordered a lot of different dishes as well as cocktails. Everything was handled badly. However, the female owner did chip in and by making all of the cocktails, for me and the waiter to serve. The party left a rather colourful review on trip advisor about the cocktails which they compared to dishwater.
The next morning, the very same manager that made the ‘dishwater cocktails’, sent a screenshot of the review to the group chat as if to blame me and the waiter for the bad cocktails. Looking back maybe she had a few cocktails that night because she clearly had lapses in memory.
Finally: the threatening drunkard
Now we cannot blame the said restaurant for a drunk man, who had been sitting up the street drinking since noon, deciding to pay us a visit at 9 pm. Things like this happen. But the problem was how badly this was handled. On this particular night, the aforementioned sleepy manager was in, supposedly managing. He was actually awake and present for once which was promising, but he still failed to do, well, anything.
As the drunk man walked from table to table, standing uncomfortably close to customers and mumbling about a knife, and all the manager did was point him in the direction of the toilet.
At least he was polite.
Now that I have had a spoilt rant I must make a disclaimer: I was so lucky that I could just leave this job and look for another. I know that not everyone has that luxury. If I had mouths to feed and bills to pay I would have stuck it out. But I was a 17-year-old college student who just wanted some extra pocket money, hence I had to chance to walk away from such an awful place of work.
Let’s just give a moment of silence for the true heroes that put up with this BS for years.
This article was originally published on Her Campus Leeds