Owners Want to Know What's Wrong With Their Restaurant, Not Happy to Hear That It's Them

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Aug 1, 2022 2:00 PM EDT

When this server, who has a bachelor's in business management, was brought on to work in a restaurant's bar they were told by the owners to keep an eye out for what might be causing the problems in their establishment. After starting up, it became abundantly clear to the server that it was the owners themselves that were the problem. Predictably, they did not like being informed of that fact.

This story is probably not going to be of surprise to anyone with experience in the service industry.

This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by Redditor u/mynameisfifield. They shared their story with the popular subreddit with the title "Owner of a restaurant wanted me to "spy" and tell them what was wrong with the restaurant, so I did."

Commenters had the following to say:

"What they really wanted was for you to ferret out the bad workers that were costing them money," commented StoicJim. "When you did, and it turns out it was them, they rejected your claim."

"Wow!" remarked Cfwydirk "The costs and scrutiny of obtaining a liquor license and paying the insurance bill. No doubt the kitchen is not fully up to speed. This is a tough business. Even well-run bar/restaurants can be hard to make money. What a wonderful way to flush money down the toilet!"

"The kitchen is even worse," replied the original poster. "They also had a 'trainee' by themselves with the menu hung up on the ticket rack making the orders."