'I wasn't signing anything until I had everything counted': Restaurant manager doesn't receive credit for missing food from vendor, cue malicious compliance!

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Feb 7, 2024 4:00 PM EST

If you feel like you're being cheated by a company's messed up policy, make things harder for them! This thread, which was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by u/dawkc, is further proof of that fact.

This restaurant manager discovered a missing order of shrimp, but when he called the vendor to see if he could get credit, they enforced a new policy stating that they owed him nothing because he had already signed the delivery form when the truck driver arrived. Like any good tale of malicious compliance, the Redditor decided to be difficult by following the policy carefully. When the next delivery came, he refused to sign the form until after he made sure that all the items were counted. This took an hour and a half and screwed up the vendor's delivery schedule for the rest of the day. The real victim of this story is the truck driver who was forced to wait 90 minutes. Sorry to this man!

For more, here's a piece about a server who was accused of getting the best section at a restaurant. 

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  • 01
    Font - You want strict compliance Mr. Food Service Driver, you get it. M OC After undergrad, I moved to Texas to manage with a mostly local chain of Tex-Mex restaurants. At one of my first training stores, I was assigned a month in the kitchen to learn their BOH (back of house, i.e., the kitchen) process. As I grew up in the business and had worked during college for a large casual dining chain, I was familiar and skilled in all of the general aspects of running this type of kitchen. However, it
    via u/dawkc
  • 02
    Font - After driving from north-east Dallas to Grapevine early one morning I greeted the driver, retrieved my clipboard and started supervising the unload. He worked fast and had the truck unloaded in about 30 minutes or so. I knew I had a good 60-90 minutes left organizing (date dotting, rotating, breaking down boxes, etc), and was happy to sign him off so he cold get on his way while I continued putting away the order. For reference, this is how I had always done this and never had any problem
    via u/dawkc
  • 03
    Font - As I am working through the delivery, I notice we are short one case of 20ct shrimp. Obviously, that's quite a bit of money. But those types of things happen and in my experience, the process was to call the vendor promptly and let them know. Most times, they would contact the driver, he'd find it on the truck and bring it later or they would credit our order.
    via u/dawkc
  • 04
    Font - But not this time. This time, the vendor tells me that they have a strict policy about this and since I'd signed the order, they didn't feel obligated to credit us. I told them that seemed like a bad policy when dealing with a restaurant that was doing around $70,000 a week in sales (this is 1995) and and paid promptly. They didn't seem to care.
    via u/dawkc
  • 05
    So next week, I again meet the driver on delivery day. Everything was going pretty much the same, except this week, when he handed me the delivery form to sign, I informed him that since we were short last week and his company didn't want to work with us, I wasn't signing anything until I had counted and I couldn't count everything, until I worked through the large pile.
    via u/dawkc
  • 06
    Font - Since he couldn't leave without getting a signature, he got to stand on our back dock until I was done. I may have been a bit extra thorough counting and organizing that day, because he was *fuming* when I got back to him about 1.5 hours later with a signed form.
    via u/dawkc
  • 07
    Font - I assume that his made him late enough to miss several deliveries that day as many restaurants won't accept delivery between 10 and 2pm. But I know he was late to several stops because his company called me the next day and said that they couldn't work this way. They quickly agreed that if we cooperated and acted in good faith on future orders, they would return the favor. We received credit for the missing shrimp on our next delivery.
    via u/dawkc
  • 08
    Gesture - Newbosterone +4. 18 hr. ago It's not a problem until it's their problem.
    via u/dawkc
  • 09
    Font - Outrageous-Welder-47. 16 hr. ago That's why you make it their problem when you need something done and they aren't cooperating
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  • 10
    Font - Exotic-Locksmith-192 16 hr. ago Wow, in 25 years in the industry I've never had a vendor refuse to credit a missing case or mispick. Like Amazon, you accept a certain % of loss for saving labor/wasted hours. It is what it is. That's a strange hill to die on.
    via u/dawkc
  • 11
    Font - sergybrin +2 17 hr. ago Interesting. Years ago I had much the same thing happen in terms of missing goods. The difference was the guy running the loading docks had decided he would take one of everything from any large order as his personal tax. He had been doing it for years, apparently. In the end an audit uncovered a a paper trial of goods misappropriation and he police were bought in.
    via u/dawkc
  • 12
    Font - SimpliG +2.17 hr. ago I had a similar one with delivery drivers. I ordered a washing machine online. delivery guy came set it in my apartment, I signed for it and he left. I unpacked the machine, hooked it up, set it in its place... And it didn't turn on.
    via u/dawkc
  • 13
    Font - Contacted the seller, and while legally they have to accept returns of online orders for 2 weeks after the customer recieves them and refund the cost of the item, the customer is obliged to pay for the return delivery (which is not cheap as an individual for a heavy washing machine).
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  • 14
    Font - So I did the logical thing, ordered a new, same model washing machine from the same company, delivery guy came, set it in my apartment and waited for me to sign it. I told him, I'm gonna check it first if it works before I'll sign, as the revious didn't. He grumpily helped me remove the previous one and move this one into place. Then I said I will have to make a test washing to know it works correctly, because the previous didn't, at that point he got angry, but I explained that they alre
    via u/dawkc
  • 15
    Font - In the end he agreed to bring back the previous one and wrote that I didn't accept the delivery of the second one because it was faulty, thus they exchanged it for free after all, but it took more time and the nerves of a poor delivery guy.
    via u/dawkc

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manager malicious compliance server restaurant food reddit thread Reddit delivery
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