Employee gets accused of 'slacking off' and gets assigned manager's tasks to fill time, he finds a way to automate every task, resulting in manager getting fired: 'He had nothing to do'

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Jan 31, 2025 7:00 AM EST

Plenty of jobs out there reveal themselves to be totally redundant once you actually start working in them. Jobs that have much more downtime than work time, and end up being pretty boring.

While we all like to think that having nothing to do at work sounds great, it is also well-known by now that when you have nothing to do, time seems to go by a lot slower. Being busy for 8 hours is apparently a lot easier than being bored, so if you have nothing to do, you find yourself completing the most random tasks just to fill time.

Or, if you can get away with simply reading a book or watching a good movie on your phone, who would jump on the opportunity to do that while also getting paid? It might be the dream scenario.

However, you can try to get away with that, but eventually, someone higher up will probably pick up on what you're doing and will find ways to keep you busy with more work-related tasks. But if you're smart, like the employee in the story below, you can still work your way around them.

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  • This story is about a line cook who had to deal with a lot of stuff being thrown at him while working in a restaurant based in a hotel. There is a lot to this story, so buckle up, and enjoy the tale of an employee who showed his boss, the head chef, the he cannot, and will not, be bossed around.

  • CHEFTOP UNO
    via Elle Hughes

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • I got hired as a line cook when I got out of culinary school, it was a big hotel chain. I got hired for the day to day work and we had 8 other line cooks and
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  • a head chef who was always bragging about his work load and how he: spared us from the paper monster. The head chef was for a better word
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  • absent from the kitchen floor and basically a pencil pusher. He did the ordering, the haccp lists, stocking, time sheets, rosters, schedules,
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  • communication with HR/GM/F&B and he made the menus. For the most part the work paid oke and there was not much hassle. Thing was the menu's we had to cook
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  • were outdated and very uninspiring. Like think about the cook books from 70 years ago uninspiring. At some point we as a kitchen team were done with that and we requested
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  • that we make the menus, head chef for some reason was happy to oblige. So now comes the kicker, we had a after hours menu with simple meals: BLT, pizza, salads, soup, fries, hamburgers. For some
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  • reason, corporate decided that the after hours menu had to go and be replaced by the normal day to day menu. This led to the following situation, almoste nobody ordered food during the Night Shift.
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  • Turns out when people come to a hotel late they are either to tired or to drink to eat a meal that takes around 15 min to serve or are in no mood for a sauteed salmon in white wine sauce. This went on
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  • for like a year and corporate saw the nose dive in the Night Shift revenue across the board and they made the only logical decision to combat this problem: fire all Nightshift line cooks or
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  • relocate them to other hotels if they could not be fired. Of course the after hours menu was not changed nor was it removed, no instead it meant the shift had to be picked up by another.
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  • So this is where the tale really started: So I worked there for about 2 years and I got in some trouble with the head chef, we didn't see eye to eye. This lead to the following situation:I had to pick up almost every
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  • night shift. I would come in at 4 in the afternoon and leave around 5 in the morning. I worked 40 hours on paper but in reality I worked around 50ish. I didn't mind as overtime was paid out and me as a
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  • 21 year old could do a lot with the paid out OT. Things was, it was so boring. In the beginning I cleaned the kitchen, checked the walkins for spoiled goods, set up a part of the breakfast and
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  • did some minor paperwork. After about 3 weeks I ran out of work to do, every 2 or three days I could clean something or check the fridges but what first took an hour now took like 10 to
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  • 15 min. So i did the logical thing and started reading books, watching Netflix, talk to the night manager, starting to experiment with new recipes and hanging out with the interns. Basically i was f-ing around on company time.
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  • So after a while I got called into the office of the GM, I got a verbal reprimand for slacking. When I asked him why he told me someone told him what I did during Night Shift. So I of course
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  • explained to him what I did and that in between these hour's I had little to do. This led to a discussion between corporate, GM and my union about what I could and could not do within the position I was hired for but that's a story for another time.
    via IAmWeasel93
  • Cheezburger Image 10461654016
    via bernardbodo

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • At the end of this whole ordeal I was tasked with kitchen paperwork and chef just unloaded his whole workload on me. Telling me to get to work and that the time for slacking was over. He said
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  • this all smug and apparently he was assuming I would not finish this or I would come begging for help. I had to do time sheets, order produce and answer emails. Chef was always
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  • bragging about the work and that it took a whole week. After one look I knew he was not familiar with computers and the various programs he had to work with. Within a month I had figured out that our time
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  • management system could be linked to our payroll system and I only had to check if the breaks were logged correctly, hit the sync button and place a request for validation by the GM/HR. Same went for
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  • our ordering software, I could upload a produce list and order from an iPad while walking around to the different walkins and freezers, also I combined this with the two day spoil
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  • check. Within 2 months or so I found out that the work schedule sheet could be copied to another week and with another software link I could sync our HR app so it would automatically generate a
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  • warning when someone was on leave or vacation. it took me 2 night shifts to do all of the above and the other 3 I could "slack". Due to this chef had nothing to do in the office and in turn was slacking, he had
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  • nothing to do during the day but to sit around in his office. After about 2 months "somebody" slipped this info to the GM. After that chef had to work in the kitchen and his 9 to 5 changed, he had to do
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  • breakfastshifts as he failed to do line cook work, he was stuck 30 years back when sticking everything in jelly was a trend. Soon after this corporate got wind of this great
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  • innovation and asked our chef to document this all and send this over to them. When I left the company due to other reasons, corporate were contemplating cutting the
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  • head chef's position and making the F&B manager responsible for the kitchen. TLDR: was accused of slacking, automated the entire head chef's position so he slacked.
    via IAmWeasel93

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boss workplace-stories employee fired manager job malicious compliance tales-from-the-workplace reddit story ceo chef overworked-employees workplace Reddit company funny
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