These employees have had it! Whether it was a customer, manager, coworker, or just a plain old bad day, food service employees share what made them quit on the spot. This content has been edited for clarity.
One Too Many Snide Remarks
“I worked at a fancy restaurant for my city’s nicest hotel. It had great food that I still yearn for, awesome coworkers, and the head manager was such a sweetheart.
The assistant manager was a pain. I don’t know why he didn’t like me. I think he associated me with the fact the two waitresses he sent to train me both stopped coming in so I never got any training and learned the job and menu by myself. He was never satisfied and started yelling at me two weeks after I’d been there stating I should know everything by now. I had asked him several times for some actual training but never seemed to get it.
My job title was hostess/waitress/food runner. I would seat people, give them menus, take room service orders, and run them up. With a few bumps along the way, I got a handle on the job but the assistant manager was still extremely harsh to me. The head manager had talked to him a few times but I don’t think it sunk in.
I would come home in tears sometimes because he would tear me to shreds before I left like listing all the mistakes I made even if they were tiny (I forgot a single fork on a table and I did not hear the end of it). One fateful night, we were a little busy but we were nearing close so it slowed down. I was proud of myself because I hadn’t made a single mistake.
Then the phone rang for room service.
I was in the middle of taking an order when a new hire suddenly started asking me questions. When I tried to direct her over to the assistant manager, he got mad at me and started yelling. Long story short, I forgot the room number because I had three different conversations going on. He went on a tirade about this and started calling me names as I was making the drinks at the bar and said something that made me think ‘I can’t do this anymore. I don’t deserve to be treated like this.’
I gave him a look when I set the drinks down and asked if he had better things to be doing. He said some snide remark that ticked me off so I took the soda hose that was behind the bar and sprayed him with it. Then I dumped the drinks I made into the ice so they couldn’t use it to make more drinks. I grabbed my stuff and left.”
Shoe Regulation
“I used to work at IHOP as a server, and our manager was wildly incompetent. She would leave with the manager’s card (which was the only way to correct an order/refund something etc.), and she was spiteful and stupid: a deadly combination.
I was poor and had a raggedy pair of non-slip shoes you’re supposed to wear in food service. I also had a pair of Doc Marten work shoes that were slip/oil/electric proof, the same color and all. She made a big stink about me not wearing the correct shoes so I explained they were on their last leg, and that even though the docs were technically not regulation, they fit the criteria (they even said it on the sole). She threatened to fire me over the shoes so I caved and wore the raggedy ones to work.
On a packed Saturday night halfway into an understaffed shift, I was carrying an appetizer sampler and a tray of drinks to a table when my shoe sole ripped causing me to TRIP AND SPILL THE WHOLE SAMPLER ON THE TABLE. Ranch. Honey mustard. Marinara. Four Dr. Peppers. All over me and a couple. Face and all.
I freaked out and apologized, explaining that I would comp the food, and went to find the manager. Guess who went home with that almighty card you need to void checks or discount them? Not to mention I had about five other suffering tables who saw all this happen. I called the manager to find that she was at her house fifteen minutes away. I told her not to bother, asked how she could be so stupid to go home with the card for the 1000th time, screamed about the shoes, and told her to get lost. I took my tips out of the cash I had, told all my customers their meals were on the house and stripped down to my underwear right there in the parking lot. I walked to my car to change my clothes and never looked back.”
Mayonnaise
“I got hired at a burger joint in the south loop in Chicago. Even though I was going to work nights, they only brought me in to train for one weekend breakfast shift. I then went to work an evening shift a few days later and it was a nightmare. The night shift consisted of the manager (not a working manager, just someone who assumed he was there to schmooze customers and yell at the staff), a petulant bartender, a megalomaniac cook, and me. I worked with these people as the one waitress on shift for the entire restaurant with zero dinner training. I think the restaurant sat at least 100 people inside and out.
A week went by when one evening, a customer asked for mayonnaise for his burger. The manager was too busy talking to someone to help me (surprise, surprise), so I went into the kitchen and asked the chef where they stored the mayonnaise. He yelled at me to figure it out. I went down into their storeroom and spent ten minutes looking everywhere. I finally went back up and told the cook I couldn’t find it. He cussed a blue streak at me about how I was an idiot, but still refused to help me, so I had to tell the customer he wasn’t going to get his mayonnaise.
Right after this happened, a table for twelve came in. Each one of them ordered a different drink from the bar and a different temperature of meat with either cheddar or American cheese. The bartender was ticked at me (as if I have any influence whatsoever over what drinks they’d order). The cook threw food up in whatever order he felt like working on first. After he cooked them, he refused to tell me which burger was which. He’d put all 12 burgers up on the counter in no particular order and wanted me to magically figure out how the meat was cooked and what cheese was used. The buns were giant and you couldn’t even see what was in the burger, so I started to peel back the buns a little to at least see if I could tell what was on them.
He saw me touching the burger with my hand and screamed bloody murder at me about how I was an idiot. He cussed me out in both English and Spanish (I had previously told him I spoke Spanish, so he loved being able to cuss me out in his own language). I looked from his screaming red face down to 12 burgers and knew I’d never be able to deliver the food to the table.
I went out on the floor to try to think for a minute while I picked up the drinks from the bar, but the bartender still wouldn’t give me my drinks! It was then that I said ‘that’s it!’ I walked toward the manager to quit, taking off my apron as I walked. He was coming back from the kitchen red in the face and screaming in front of the customers that he was going to fire me because the cook said I was an idiot and wouldn’t deliver the food.
I told him, ‘You can’t fire me. I’m quitting.’
I grabbed my stuff and left, and I’ve never been back. They make good burgers there, but DANG, what a bunch of scums.”
I Ruined My Denny’s Career
“I worked at a Denny’s and we had an assistant manager that was very full of himself. I had gotten a booty call from this gorgeous redhead that I’d been trying to get with for months, and she wanted me over at her place at 11:30 p.m. AT THE LATEST, and she stressed that.
I was scheduled to get off at 11, so I was working hard to get all of my side-work done, making sure there was no silverware left to roll, etc. I got everything done and had no tables when my relief came in. I got my bank transferred over, hung up my apron, and started to clock out.
The assistant manager strolls in and says, ‘Hold on, hold on, where are you going?’
I finished clocking out and said, ‘Going home. See ya tomorrow.’
He stopped me and said, ‘What about this?’
He opened the pie oven and it was disgusting. One of the waitresses skipped it on her side work.
‘Tracey messed up. She’s off the next few days, so you’ll have to ask her about it Thursday,’ I said as I started to leave.
‘Get over here, NOW!’ he said in his most authoritative voice.
I turned around and he pointed at the oven and said, ‘You’re going to clean this oven from top to bottom. THEN you’re going to go clean the desert cabinet. After that, you can go ahead and clean out the ice cream freezer. I want them spotless.’
I stared at him for several seconds before flicking my name tag off and throwing him the bird. The look on his face made it so worth it. It was clear he wasn’t used to being talked to that way. At that moment, I wasn’t worried about my Denny’s career. It felt so good. It’s one of my fondest memories.”
A Wrong For A Wrong
“About four years ago, I worked at a very well-known chain restaurant. I worked every position they had from bussing to serving, to take out, to hosting, to making the bread. My management was some of the most underappreciative people I had ever encountered.
One day, I woke up and realized I was extremely sick but couldn’t particularly afford a doctor’s visit at that time. I figured I would stroll over to my job since I worked across the street so that I can give them a visual of my condition since they wouldn’t believe me over the phone. It was hours before my shift so I dragged myself to the manager’s office looking like I was going to die at any moment.
I explained my situation and was told ‘I don’t care, you’re the only one we have scheduled for this shift today.’
Being the hard worker I am, I decided I was going to go in and not just ‘no call no show.’ Being the spiteful person I am, I also decided that since they were wronging me, I was going to wrong them. I waited for the entire restaurant to fill up and empty. While staring at every single filthy table, I took my apron off and walked directly out the door. I got a plethora of angry calls and voicemails from my manager while I sat on my porch and smoked a big joint.”
Smoke Break
“I used to work at Mcdonald’s (I know). Opening the store usually involved me at the front counter with a headset on so I could do drive-through orders, handle making coffee, put orders together, and help customers who came in. We would also have a manager working there and one person in the kitchen. It was in a small rural town so we were typically fine with three people but we were off a major highway so sometimes it would get busy out of nowhere.
One morning we got super busy and I started cracking under the pressure. I was a fantastic multi-tasker but my drive-through line was backing up since I was trying to juggle them and all the walk-in folks from my front registers. I glanced around trying to find my manager for help. I saw him on one of our cameras — he was outside smoking around the side of the building. Mind you, this was his third trip out to smoke that morning. I was absolutely dying trying to get caught up. Customers were being passive-aggressive saying they would come behind the counter and get their own coffee and stuff. I had people yelling at me in my headset from the drive-through. I ended up having to remove the headset to try to get the front line sorted. I started making progress with the front but had the drive-through customers waiting for two minutes.
Apparently, the cars outside started yelling at my manager, interrupting his smoke break. He came in, saw me with my headset off, and went berserk.
He screamed, ‘WHO’S TAKING THE DRIVE-THRU ORDERS?’
I was in the middle of trying to get a fresh pot of coffee going so I sort of auto-responded, ‘No one. Hang on.’
As I dashed behind our counter to grab a fruit and yogurt parfait for an order, he got in my way and started screaming at me.
I pointed to the camera and yelled loudly enough to disrupt the entire inside of the restaurant, ‘I’m these two registers, first window, the second window, and I’m bagging. I’m like FOUR PEOPLE and you’re out behind the building not doing ANYTHING!’
His eyes got wide. He knew I was holding on by my last thread.
He sighed and said, ‘You’re in a ton of trouble but we can talk about this later.’
No. I was done.
I tossed him the headset and said, ‘You want to yell at me for not being able to run four stations with no support? Run five. I’ll watch.’
I removed my name badge and hat and covered my uniform with a jacket. I remember telling the one girl working in the kitchen ‘I’m so sorry,’ and went to sit on the far side of the seating area to watch him go down in flames. About ten minutes into his struggle he started pleading with me to come back behind the counter. I couldn’t even see him on the other side of the sea of people.
I called back, ‘I need a smoke first!’ and went outside.
I didn’t smoke. I wasn’t even a smoker. I drove home.”
“We Took Our Aprons Off And Told Him To Buzz Off.”
“When I was fourteen, I wanted a summer job with my best friend. We went to the fast food shop at the beachside. It was quite popular since it was the only fast food around. We got there on a Friday afternoon and met the owner: a 50-something man with a big belly (probably from the fast food he served). He told us we could come in the next morning at nine and people would show us around.
We got there at nine a.m. as he told us and no one was there. The first employees arrived at 10:30 to open and had no idea we were supposed to work. They tried to help us the most they could but they were cashiers with no training in food preparation. Both their ‘cooks’ left that week and the owner had been doing all the work.
We finished our first day without any trouble, a slow day overall.
Sunday arrived and we were not prepared for the sheer number of customers. We still had no idea how to cook the food and how the equipment worked. The owner arrived with a bunch of his friends. Even though we were swamped with people, he shoved them aside and asked us to make six hot dogs, six fries, and six diet cokes fast. We knew it was for him so we told people to wait as we finished his order.
Not thirty seconds later, he came back behind the counter and began to tell us that we were trash at our job, that the fries were not cooked enough, and that we messed up the condiments on the hot dogs.
Mind you, there were a lot of customers waiting for their food at that point and they were all looking at us getting yelled at by the owner.
I looked at my friend, he looked at me and we both knew what to do. We took our aprons off and told him to buzz off. We left him with all the orders right there and then, and never went back. They closed down about two years later.”
The Last Straw
“I worked as a server at a bar during college. The head bartender each day was in charge of assigning tables to the servers. There was one bartender who really didn’t like me and every time she worked, she would give me the worst tables so that I wouldn’t make as much in tips. She also did the scheduling. She started only scheduling me for slow times early in the day, like during lunch when we would have 50 percent off lunch specials. It sucked but she did the scheduling and I needed the money. It kept getting worse and worse until I was barely making minimum wage even though I was making close to 20 dollars an hour when I started.
One day, during a slow lunch, I was working with a different bartender. When the bartender’s shift ended, the other bartender who didn’t like me came in to take over. I was serving a large table of around fifteen people, probably the best table I had had in a week or so. She saw this and decided to ‘reassign’ tables and work as a server as well as a bartender. She of course took my table and said it was now hers, even though I had been serving them for about an hour and they were almost done with their meal. This wasn’t the first time, but it was the last straw for me. I went up to the table, explained the situation, and instead of transferring the table, cashed them out which they were happy to do.
I collected the cash tip, told the bartender ‘Forget you, I quit!’ and walked out.
I never talked to anyone at that bar again and found a better job the next day.”
Turtle
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“I worked at Outback Steakhouse for two years growing up. We were a busy restaurant but began to have lighter-staffed shifts after a cutdown from corporate saying we could perform the same with fewer bodies on the floor. I always had a partner with me to wash dishes, but it was a solo mission after the cutbacks. One day, the dishes piled up so high and there was nothing I could do because the dish machine was broken and I was by myself.
My boss asked me, ‘What is going on back here, kid? Why are you being such a dang turtle?’
I waited until my boss finished his cussing rampage and went back into his office. I took my apron off and put it on the dish counter. I walked out of that place and never went back. Ever. I feel bad about the nice coworkers I left behind. They cared about me a lot, more than they should’ve.”
“I’m Never Coming Back”
“I worked for Papa John’s in college. I made out well and ended up moving into management. After moving home and needing a job while in grad school, I got hired at the local Papa John’s there. The stores in my area weren’t corporate though. It was a lot different. They weren’t nearly as strict and hired just about anyone.
The management was a mess. My GM was a drunkard that didn’t care, so people did what they wanted. There was a guy working who got released from prison that acted like he ran the place. The other manager besides me was an idiot.
Every time I’d get to work I’d start by counting the registers as I’d been trained. I kept finding that the register we never used was empty- it was supposed to have 50 dollars in change. It became clear that someone had a key or password and was treating the register like an ATM. I had no idea who, but it kept happening on days I closed so I’d report it. I got told by corporate if we were off more than $10, the manager would be written up. I just started throwing in the difference out of pocket.
I came in one day to the other manager passed out inebriated in the bathroom. He’d puked everywhere first and the store was a mess. I called the GM and he didn’t even know what to say so I called my corporate supervisor and said I was never coming back.”
Taco Sunday
“Roughly ten or so years ago, I was in high school and was working my first job at Taco Bell. I was about a year into my employment when one Taco Sunday (I don’t know if they still do this anymore but it was a day with extremely discounted tacos) I had enough.
There were roughly ten people working, most of them cleaning for a big inspection coming up. There were another four people in the front, one person on drive through, and the other three just standing around socializing. I was the only one stationed making the orders. I had a dozen orders, all having a ridiculous amount of tacos a piece. I called for help multiple times and no one came. The manager knew I was struggling and never once sent someone to help or came to help themselves. Not too long into this, I took off my hat, walked up to the group laughing and talking in the front, handed them my hat, and calmly said that I was quitting. Everyone just looked at me shocked as I walked out of the store never to return.”
