'We are still waiting’: Manager demands employees wait for her approval to start closing restaurant, leading manager to pay them overtime when she forgets to follow through

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Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Mar 12, 2025 1:00 PM EDT

No one likes to be told what they can or cannot do. We're adults, and the whole concept of being bossed around after the age of 18 gets real tired real fast. Yet, life always finds a way to throw someone at you who thinks they're the boss of you, and 90% of the time that someone is actually the boss of you.

Some bosses, good bosses, find ways to pass along their request without making it sound like a command. Other bosses, actually enjoy having that power over their employees, so they take advantage of it at whatever opportunity they get. 

Even though no one likes to be told what to do, the one satisfaction you can still get when that does inevitably happen, is when those demands end up completely backfiring and you get to see it all happen from the first row.

That is what happened in the story down below–when a manager allowed her power over her employees to get to her head, she ended up making demands she quickly regretted.

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

  • "Front of house manager makes mistake"

    Years ago I worked in a kitchen. Like in all kitchens, if it was a slow night we would start to break down early so we could leave right after closing. Now if a customer
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  • came in we would have to break back into what ever they ordered but it was worth it to get off early.
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  • One night this front of house manager got all py at us for some reason and wanted to throw her power around. She said "you can't start to close down until I tell you."
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  • So the next night me and three other cooks just stood there with stupid grins on our faces as the front of house was pretty much wrapped up and ready to go. The manager
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  • after about 30 minutes asks why we didn't start to break down and we responded "you told us we can't break down until you tell us to. We are still waiting."
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  • The look on her face when she realized that we were going to have to stay late and that they didn't want to pay over time? Priceless.
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  • Edit: I wanted to add that this manager actually became better over time. She was a house wife who got the job due to being bored at home. She was well educated (don't
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  • remember what her degrees were in) and I'm pretty sure she had worked as a FOH manager or lead many years before she worked with us. She came in arrogant,
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  • entitled, and demanded respect. When she realized that this wasn't house wives of Beverly Hills she actually changed her attitude and was a great FOH manager. A year
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  • after I left she also left but worked in the retail store as a department manager and was a genuinely nice person. Not sure where she is now but this story does have a happy ending.
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  • As soon as the demands left the manager's mouth, the employees knew they had an opportunity to teach their entitled manager a lesson, and boy are we glad they followed through.

    The best part is, that it seems like this one manager actually learned from her mistake, and using this experience to become a better boss, and salute her employees for making that happen.

     

  • Day nday esday esday rsday day rday day WEEKLY WEEKLY TIME SHEET TIME O R. HOURS OIT HOURS OVER TIME Week Start: Rate hour: per December Saturday, $70.00 13. Overt Day saturday Date 12/13/14 Time Out In Time Time In 2 Time Out 2 12/14/14
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  • CoderJoe1 Epic. Did she have to stay until you were finished?
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  • Cthulhusreef OP lol no. She was actually walking out when she noticed all standing at our stations not moving. It was the fact that we were going to be in trouble for getting over time pay which would then come back to bite her in the a which was the best revenge.
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  • nsmith0723 That is a delightful story. Why do the front of house managers hate us? We didn't do anything
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  • Cthulhusreef OP Honestly I had it about 50/50. I had some managers who were amazing.
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  • Redbear4691 This. I work in a bakery and I try to get everything cleaned and done by shift end. But the baker wants to take her la-di-dah time, looking at her phone every two
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  • minutes and doesn't hustle. Then she's mad when I can't sweep/mop cuz I'm busy helping the front of the house and other tasks.
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  • taloncard815 Revenge is a dish best served cold
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  • sgtedrock There's our conundrum! In this case, the grill and fryer had to be hot to serve the revenge.
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  • Cthulhusreef OP Well to be fair we wouldn't shut down the cooking areas. We would shut down one fryer and then wrap all the prep and get the stations cleaned up. But would reopen anything we wrapped if needed with no issues. We knew there would be a chance we had to reseal things and that was fine with us
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  • avid-learner-bot Wow, talk about a power trip. I bet the manager was expecting to boss everyone around, but those cooks really had her fooled. It's like she didn't realize they
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  • were just waiting for her permission to do their job. Next time, maybe she'll remember to check her watch before giving orders. I wonder if she ever learned that lesson
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  • Cthulhusreef OP We all hated her because she was really really out of touch with reality. She was a house wife who wanted a job. She drove luxury vehicles and had super expensive clothes. We worked in a restaurant that was inside a high end department store. We were suuuuper busy with any holiday
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  • shopping season and that first year she was on she was in the back shopping for cyber Monday deals while we were all getting slammed with customers. Can't even recall how many times she came out super happy about "I just bought a 90″ TV!" (This was about 14 years ago so that was really really pricy). "I just bought a new furniture set! Look!"
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  • She was just soooo tone deaf. I am glad to report. that she did get better and she was much more respected before I left. I still go back there at times and while she's no longer in the restaurant, she does work in the store and is a nice person.
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boss workplace-stories employee manager job tales-from-the-workplace reddit story petty revenge overworked-employees workplace overtime Reddit company funny
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