Stubborn FOH manager's entitlement gets everyone in the kitchen to quit, the last pastry chef to leave dishes out the pettiest revenge: 'I don't listen to her non-existent authority.'

Author image for Elna McHilderson
Elna McHilderson • Managing Editor
May 9, 2025 9:00 AM EDT

Anybody who has ever worked in the service industry knows how important it is to have a good team. If even one coworker is simply the worst, then the whole place will come crumbling down. That goes for front-of-house (FOH), back-of-house (BOH), and management. You could have the best servers in the world, but if your host is incompetent, then they're going to have a hard time doing their job well. You could have the best chef in the world, but if his sous chef has no idea what they're doing, the food will stay mediocre. You could have the best staff in the entire place, but if the manager is entitled and micromanages, then everyone is going to quit. 

 

And, would you look at that, that's exactly what happened here. The FOH manager thought she had reign over everyone, including BOH… 

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  • Until the restaurant started opening 7 days a week again. Suddenly, someone else had to run my station when I wasn't there. Guess who? Janine.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • Cheezburger Image 10502432512
    via Unsplash+ (and Alexey Demidov)

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

  • "Maybe don't be nasty to employees you don't have authority over"

    I was working as a garde manger/pastry chef and wanted to change restaurants to shake things up. I ended up at an Italian place in town that seemed like a nice enough place. I didn't try it first, and I now regret that. Now, it's important to understand the weird structure of this particular restaurant.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • The owner was in his seventies and barely ran anything (We'll call him Tom). He just wanted to run his app station and pay someone else to be head chef. That chef is my mentor (We'll call him Otto)
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  • Then there was a sous chef (Keith) and the FOH manager (Janine). Janine had been working line cook shifts in the back due to short-staffing and felt that made her our boss even though she had literally O authority over the line cooks, let alone the chefs.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • Now this restaurant, to put it nicely, has seen better days. Not kitchen nightmares material but definitely going underwater due to their rapidly aging fanbase. Chef Otto was brought in originally as a consultant to revamp the menu and overhaul procedures.
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  • He did. Then Janine nagged Tom until he slowly made Otto change it back. Here's the thing, J HATES change. "We've been doing it this way for 20 years!" Yeah, and you're in the red. Clearly, things need to change.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • After a few months, Chef Otto got fed up and moved to another restaurant 40 miles away. Unfortunately, I couldn't follow at the time because of a family situation. We remained in touch, him teaching me a lot of things just through conversations.
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  • They brought in a new Executive Chef (Dud) to take over. Janine helped choose this guy. Why did she want him? Because he was a burnt out doormat that would do whatever she wanted. Sous Chef Keith and I tried desperately to convince them to stop using recipes that PHYSICALLY, SCIENTIFICALLY DID NOT WORK.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • But Janine's bitxhing continued, her famous mantra, "It's fine, we've done it for X number of years" slowly driving me mad. Janine is not just stubborn, she's an active buy that did not like it when people told her no. Tom hasn't had passion for much probably since the 70s so it was easy for her to buy him and get whatever she wanted.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • Eventually, Keith also got fed up and bounced, leaving me alone to deal with Janine and her beaten down lackeys. Now, the important thing is that, weirdly, Tom actually really liked me. He liked that I was excited by food and wanted to make everything beautiful. This meant he gave me free reign. My station was my kingdom.
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  • Janine took this as her opportunity to try and push me around, even though she'd been told repeatedly that she was not my boss and couldn't tell me to do jack. She'd rearrange my entire, very large station and prep area for the 1 day a week she watched it, then complain when I fixed it.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • Cheezburger Image 10502471424
    via Unsplash+ (and Melanie Lim)

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

  • Now, I'm a fan of "do what you've gotta do" to make a station work for you. Especially since she's very tall with back pain, I didn't mind her setting it up how she needed for service, I just wanted her to put it back when she left. It's just basic respect. If it's not your station, PUT IT BACK.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • This war went on for months, Tom trying to have a backbone with her because he didn't want me to leave. Near the end of my stay, he brought in an ACF certified master chef and his apprentice to try again at revamping the menu.
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  • Since this entitled manager thought she could control the entire staff, even those not under her management, she ended up clearing out the kitchen staff. The last original pastry chef to quit made sure to leave that manager in the most distress possible.

  • The master chef (Andy) did an exquisite job at modernizing and improving procedures. (Let's just say that a lot of the methods we used for Janine's precious recipes were... ineffective at best) His apprentice (Nina) was a pastry chef who helped me revamp the entire dessert menu. Tom gave the two of us full control.
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  • They were beautiful, easy to plate quickly, and absolutely delicious. The only thing pre-made that we had was the gelato. Janine... Janine did not like this. AT ALL.
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  • She went into absolute OVERDRIVE. CONSTANTLY, making her old recipes when prepping, hiding ingredients, hiding equipment, the works. One thing that seriously got on mine and Nina's nerves was that she literally wouldn't garnish the plates. At all. She was just too lazy I guess, or maybe it was another middle finger.
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  • I had a kettle soup warmer to keep hot fudge warm during service because I'd go through a #10 can of the stuff every 2 days. She started hiding it. She's a tall woman, like 6'2" and I'm smaller like 5'4" so she'd hide it on top of things. Now, because I'm not a 3 year old I'd quickly find it and get it down.
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  • All the while, she was convinced that Nina was her new best friend, (She wasn't. Nina hated her as much as I did.) and would tell her where she hid things to gloat. Nina would obviously turn around and either tell me or just go get it.
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  • After all this, my final straw arrives. Tom gave me a budget to go and buy new plates for my new salads. The old salad plates were, admittedly, very pretty once but were very old and beat up. They needed to be replaced regardless.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • I picked out some new plates, they arrived, they're gorgeous, Tom likes them, even seems a little excited about something for once. I came back from my day off 2 weeks later to find all of the new plates in the basement, and all of the ratty, beat up plates they hadn't thrown out yet, back on the station.
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    via Unsplash+ (and Sayla Brown)

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

  • That was it. I don't know why that was my final straw, but it was. I called Chef Otto within 10 minutes of getting to work and asked if he had a spot for me. He asked what happened and I gave him the whole run down.
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  • He offered me more money and less responsibility so that I could focus more on learning the other kitchen roles that I'd never really gotten to explore. I put in my two weeks that day.
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  • Tom was not happy with Janine and, for once, actually put his foot down with her. She wasn't allowed near me my whole notice period. I think he was hoping I'd change my mind. Well, time for petty revenge.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • My final day comes, and Janine isn't there. I suddenly have a wicked idea that didn't actually hurt anything. I took all of the most vital, high traffic items and moved them all to the bottom most shelves and drawers. Now, this was a huge station, with drawer fridges and a Pepsi cooler, so you can imagine about how low those lowest
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • shelves and drawers were. Not just the coolers, either. I also did the equipment drawers, dry goods, freezers, you name it, and it got a makeover. I unfortunately didn't get to witness my artwork first hand, but I did hear about it later from the dish guy. He said that she spent days cursing, bending over,
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • and having to reorganize. I never heard boo about it from Tom because he was still mad at her for driving me out, so either he thought she deserved it or didn't believe her. Either way, imagining her spending days having to bend over every couple of minutes
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  • definitely scratched the itch of pure frustration that had built up over the 4 months after my chef left. I know this is awfully long for a petty revenge story, but this woman seriously made my job an irritating nightmare every. single. day.
    via BoneYardBirdy
  • This isn't even all of it. Not even scratching the surface. There are so many more stories. Anyone who's interested is welcome to ask.
    via BoneYardBirdy

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