Shop NYC Top

I recently left an extremely toxic restaurant. The management was absolutely horrible and a majority of the staff were unbearable. You could work doubles (13+ hours) and only receive one 30 minute break. The family meals were actually inedible (and I’m not a picky eater at all!). It felt like they served us the bare minimum to legally get by. To note as well, you only had family meal if you were scheduled for a certain shift. Other workers could not eat.

Management also created a competitive environment among the servers and it caused a lot of tension on the floor. I’m a great server and have been told by many past managers, coworkers, and guests, however I felt like i couldn’t even blink without getting fired or talked to. As an example for the micromanaging, on my second week working there, I had to use the restroom. I noticed as I was going downstairs to use the restroom, I was being followed by the general manager to see if that’s where I was actually going. On my second week?!

Additionally, the managers would sit downstairs and watch the cameras for hours during service. As servers have brought up these feelings to management, management’s response to each other was “ we can’t let the prisoners run the prison”. The restaurant is very well known in the city and they put on this facade that everyone is overly happy to be there and that they truly care for everyone. That’s a huge lie. To make the environment even clearer, I and other workers were terrified of calling out if we were really sick. So terrified to the point that if someone wouldn’t take the shift, people would come in sick just to avoid the likely repercussions. Management even wanted us to not talk whatsoever on the floor. My coworkers even got scolded for talking to each other to give each other updates on a table during a transition.

Overall, the micromanaging just manifested into being even bigger and I’m happy to say that I’m finally out of there. I want to open this thread to shed some light on how some of these restaurants have treated their servers. We are just as much humans as we are servers deserve to be treated with respect.