86 Jake -or- How To Fire A Waiter

How to fire a waiter

It's a Spring-Time FIRING SPREE Jamboree!        

You might remember that I reported to you that my co-worker Ruby got fired recently. Well, not two days later, another co-worker (Jake, whom I've mentioned to you already) got fired as well. 

Only this time, they were gunning for him.

Without going into detail, Jake had fallen out of favor recently by challenging a manager's integrity on something relating to his (Jake's) income. Turned out Jake was wrong with his inquiry (i.e., accusation) and in a very step-by-step way that I've seen happen once or twice before, management was just waiting to have enough on him to 86 him - without having to deal with a possible labor dispute, a "wrongful termination" suit, or pay him unemployment, or whatever.

I'm not going into whether my bosses really needed to take things to the extreme of firing the guy or not. Such is not my call to make, altho I do have my own private thoughts on the matter. I just thought you might enjoy reading about precisely *how* a waiter or waitress can be marked, targeted, then fired in an overall planned-out 1-2-3 way, when the company really doesn't have anything strong enough (like stealing; customer complaint of rudeness or incompetence) as the reason to let a server go.

In fact, I remember when working in Roswell New Mexico, our corporate president attended one of our employee meetings and for whatever reason the topic of firing people came up. He jokingly lamented to us how "Back in the good old days you could fire someone just as soon as look at them. But nowdays, you have to document everything: It's a real pain in ass ..." he said.

What he means is that nowadays - in corporate restaurants anyways - you really need to have a series of corrective write-ups and written warnings "on file" to prove that this person deserved to be let go. Otherwise, the state's labor board or perhaps your company's human resources department was going to come down on you.

Once - again while working Monday-Friday nights bartending at Cattle Baron - we were beginning to suspect some trouble with the weekend bartender, and a manager specifically came and asked  me whether I'd be willing to cover his shifts for a short period while they replaced him, if they could find a reason to fire him. (I knew they were looking for a reason to do so, based on suspicion of wrong-doing, but he'd not been caught.) So, I've seen the "pre-meditated firing when you really don't have an easily defensible airtight reason to fire someone" scenario played out before. Usually the three-strikes-you're-out rule comes into play - if someone gets written up three times for any reason - even trivial and unconnected reasons - they can be legitimately dismissed. 

So anyways I think where I work now looks at things the same way, and plays by the same rules.

Back to Jake. Well, the way I heard it (from him, btw) is that he did something that was arguably within his rights, and that almost any server might have done if we'd found ourselves in the same position. It caused the managers to unfriend him and so the process begins.

I've told you before how servers here need a manager's permission for things like smoking when it's slow, or ordering something to eat out of the way while on the clock, for instance. Welll, like most places I've worked, rules like that are sort of arbitrary as it turns out. It depends on exactly what policies are being enforced any given week. It often depends on your standing at the restaurant, or whether a particular manager likes you or not, whether little infractions like this can become serious trouble for you. 

For instance, Server A could come in two minutes late and (depending on his/her track record or combined with the above) be written up for it, while Server B can be five minutes late on the exact same shift, and greeted warmly by the same manager. Just standard work politics as I'm sure you've seen before. In our line of work, slight, or occasional, tardiness is most often met with a verbal "Glad you could join us today" if even that. A verbal warning, at the most severe, unless you're a habitual offender. Or a write-up if they're gunning for you. I once saw a guy fired for eating a cracker off of the salad bar without paying for it, for that matter. For reals.

Well, one night about a week before he was dismissed, Jake started going to the back for a smoke - without seeking permission - and a little earlier than is the norm in fact, as he told it to me anyways. A certain chef who was "in the know" yelled at him "What are you doing?!? Don't you know you're on the radar?"

"On the radar ..." words I hope I never hear. (Edit/update. Been there, done that, got the scar.) It means the chef knew the managers were just looking for a reason now. Any reason. Jake was a dead man walking from there.

A couple of days later he tells me he got written up. "For what?" I ask.

"For having a (tobacco) dip in (his mouth) while setting up the patio tables." 

I know "Ewwwwww." you may be thinking. (Like smoking wasn't already bad enough. It was the norm then tho child.) This however is a story less about what's right or wrong tho, and more about how you only get in trouble for things when they decide they don't like you. 

Just so you know, setting up the patio is a duty performed outside before the restaurant is open, and there's no customers around yet. He explained to me that he has done so for the entire year+ that he's worked there, that he doesn't spit, and that no manager has ever said a word about it - good, bad or corrective. Nope, not even a verbal "Ew. That's gross. Don't do that." Never. 

And today he got written up for it. Mmm-hmmm.

That's what "being on the radar" means tho. Everything you do is suddenly under scrutiny, and subject to being challenged. In writing. He got written up for doing something that he'd never been corrected for in over a year's time of employment. DUDE ... that's when you should know it's time to start putting in applications elsewhere ...

A couple of days later I'm about to leave from my lunch shift and I see Jake come in, and then start looking for a manager because his name is not on the "floor plan" (a chart filled in at the hostess stand every day, usually by the manager-on-duty which tells servers what sections they'll be taking that shift). It happens. Usually this is no biggie ... most likely a human error of reading the schedule wrongly ... whatever.

But unlike most times, where Jake would have just gone to the manager and had things rewritten, I witnessed the manager all tactfully say to him "Hey, can I borrow you in the office for a minute?" 

Done. I know it, whether Jake does or not. I had just left the office thirty seconds ago upon clocking out, and knew that our top manager was still in the office. I do the math .. Jake's not on the floor plan, and is being called into the office with two managers present. That tells me one manager is there to serve as a witness that whatever goes down in there gets done in a professional manner.

I walk outside and sit down, away from the restaurant's front door, but on what I am presuming will be Jake's long walk to the sidewalk. Another server on her way in to work - whom I'll call Briskette for the sake of blogging, as you know is my custom - plops down beside me and asks why I'm hanging around. 

I tell her what I just saw, and that I'm hanging around to give Jake (who doesn't drive - DUI) a ride home, in case today turns out to be "worst day ever" for him. We both know that for Jake getting into and home from work is an ordeal involving bummed rides, cabs and busses, so at least on this day, I didn't want him to have to deal with the additional unplanned hassle.

A minute later, from afar, we see Jake being walked outside by the same manager who "borrowed him" into the office. Jake's posture and body language indicate to both of us that he's still appealing something. Briskette snaps her head in my direction gasping "WOW! You blankety-blank called that one, didn't you?!"

I'm sorry to say, I did. We both get up to avoid being seen by the manager, she goes into work and I head for the parking lot, stopping just outside of the restaurant's line of sight. Jake eventually turns the corner, and the fact that I'm there waiting for him tells him I already know.

Turns out that last night he went to smoke four minutes before the allowed time, got written up for it, and this was now his third strike (he tells me of a previous write-up in his file from months earlier). I ask were there already others back there too, and he says "three people." I know the game ... none of them got written up for it, just him. 

Last thing he tells me when I'm dropping him off twenty minutes later is that the manger told him "Don't talk to anyone on your way out ..." 

Great. D'oh! 

I imagine Briskette walking into work with the gossip of how I "blankety-blank called that one" and now I've probably inadvertently aligned myself in the manager's eyes with the out-of-favor exile, by giving him a ride and hearing his version of events - which they didn't want any of us to hear. 

Twenty-one minutes too late, I shoot Briskette a quick text telling her to please not tell the story, in hopes of not falling out of favor myself. 

In hopes of staying off the radar.