Good thing you quit...you'd have been fired anyway!

[KuariKaydrith]

Our café manager quit yesterday. I can't say that I didn't see it coming though because she had expectations that were in no way feasible. And she honestly couldn't handle the job to begin with, especially as we started getting busier as word that the café was open again spread.

And I say she quit only because that was one of the things that came out of her mouth during her freak out yesterday. At the end of it she would have been fired regardless.

The café kitchen is not very big so putting out large amounts of meals all at once is never going to happen. But the café manager had been getting overwhelmed with the four tables the café holds at once, unable to handle all of those tables at the same time if the café was full at any given time. And she demanded help right from the time the café opened in the morning until it closed in the mid afternoon, despite not being busy enough to maintain the need for two full-time staff. The idea was for the spa attendants to help out when it got really busy during the week and have a p/t person help in the kitchen on the weekends. But apparently this wasn't enough for her. On top of her already complaining about being the only one in the building at 7:30am - she was demanding that there be somebody with her...despite there really being no need for it.

I don't know for certain what finally tipped her over the edge yesterday as I was off work, but I know that my boss and co-assistant GM are very grateful that I don't mind giving up my weekend off to man the café. Hell, that's was I was originally hired for back in February 2022 before the pandemic shut us all down so it's basically back to my roots for a few days.

I do know that she kicked a spa attendant out of the kitchen area despite said spa attendant being there to help her, and that she yelled at the spa manager to get off her ass and help her...despite the spa manager having work of her own to do. She caused a huge scene in front of a bunch of clients because she felt that there was too much for her to do on her own, despite her having a LOT of downtime. Poor time management skills maybe?

Either way, if she hadn't said she quit during her freak out, the spa manager had put her foot down and said that the café manager would not be welcome back up in the spa ever again. And I fully agree. Besides, one of the employees we hired for the summer is more than willing to run the café for the remainder of the season before she heads to college in September - we just have to find somebody to cover her two days off, and we're good to go. I just hope it's not expected to be me every time...I have enough work to do as it is and this will seriously cut into my time to deal with the management stuff I handle. But for now, we're going to pull together as a team and get through this for the time being!

[Ghel]

I don't know anything about running a café, but four tables doesn't sound like a lot. If she couldn't handle it, it sounds like you're better off.

[Kristev]

The K-Mart cafes were bigger than that. And she couldn't handle this?

[KuariKaydrith]

So, in two days of working in the café I've made more in tips than the wackjob missus managed in a month. On credit card sales, at least. Considering that I'm the one who submits the credit card tip report to the accountant I can see how much everybody gets, I can confirm that last pay period she got $5 in credit card tips, whereas yesterday alone I received 6 times that amount. And today wasn't a whole lot different even after sharing the tips with the p/t lady who was in helping. Plus cash tips on top of that.

A lot of the customers were staff, which is not a surprise considering how far we are from restaurants, but they were telling me that they never tipped the other missus because she was absolutely horrible to deal with. Thankfully, I live in a place where our pay doesn't change based on the potential for getting tips so she wasn't losing any money, but she also wasn't receiving any sort of bonus above and beyond which we consider tips to be.

The kitchen we cook out of isn't much bigger than most home kitchens so I do understand that it can be hard to put out up to sixteen meals at any one time, but we have never had that many customers come in all at once. I think the most I dealt with at one time was 7 people all at once, and I still managed to get their food cooked, plated, and served within a reasonable amount of time, and managed to come around to refills drinks and take their empty plates away.

Then I come to find out that the big boss had expressed uncertainty about the former café manager and if it was all going to work out, at least for the summer. And considering every time the big boss has had reservations about somebody she's hired it's all turned to crap eventually, well, one would think she'd learn to follow her gut feeling by now.

My co-assistant GM and I had a good chat today after I closed the café for the day about how everybody is verbalizing how happy they are since the missus left, and how much smoother things are going in the past three days since she's been gone. If we run out of something during the day I grab the company credit card and the keys for whichever work truck is available and go buy it instead of waiting until the large weekly shopping trip that the owner's wife does for us. She was told that if she needed something for the next day to let us know and we'd ensure it was picked up. For a tiny café this is the norm, but she would blame myself or my co-AGM for her running out of stuff. And that's on top of the fact that for pretty much all the shopping orders she submitted SHE was the one missing items for the list in the first place. But it was our fault that she didn't include something? She never could understand that we had no way of knowing what she did or didn't need, and that it wasn't our job to do her shopping list for her - she was the café supervisor and was running the show which meant it was her responsibility to ensure that 1) she ordered everything she needed, and 2) to let us know if she'd run out of something unexpectedly so we could buy it for her.

Then to find out today after working with the p/t lady that the former café supervisor was letting her racist flag fly...well, let's just say that I'm glad I never have to deal with the bitch ever again. My assistant for the day is coloured, and yes, this is relevant. The FCS (former café supervisor) treated the lady like absolute dirt and refused to train her how to make any of the food items we serve. And it's not like anything we have on the menu is rocket science. FCS would belittle N (the lady's name starts with N and it's easier to call her something other than 'lady' or 'assistant'), and give her all the disgusting jobs FCS didn't want to do. On top of not sharing tips with N, despite them BOTH being responsible for the orders - N would do the front-facing customer service while FCS would cook the food and plate it, and only go into the main part of the café to see if there were any tips left on the tables...and then promptly pocket them. The only time N got a tip is when she was first to the table and clearing it off. Not once since N started in the café did I see a tip report for her if FCS was working that day as well. When I shared the tips with N at the end of the day she was almost in tears because she'd never made that much in tips before, and she loved that I treated her like an equal and was teaching her in how to make various menu items when we had the chance. As we were leaving for the day she thanked me for treating her like a person...it was my turn to tear up.

In a lot of ways I'm hoping that FCS is served a very large portion of karma, because holy jeez does she ever deserve it!

[RealUnimportant]

What a shame that N didn't speak up before, but with someone like that over her I can understand her being unsure how it would be received. Glad you're helping turn things around in more than one way now, and definitely good riddance to bad rubbish!

[Pixelated]

What's that phrase about the trash taking itself out ....