Teen dishwasher maliciously complies with clueless boss's new rule, boss apologizes to teen: 'I actually really appreciated his reaction that day'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jan 26, 2026 3:00 PM EST

A retail boss apologizing to his employees isn't an everyday occurrence, and it really stuck in this worker's mind! 

Retail managers can either be your best friend or your worst nightmare, and you don't really get a say in the matter! You just have to show up for your shift and find out how your day's going to go. You might get there and see the BFF manager is there, and then you can relax and get ready to have a good time for the next 8 hours. Sure, they'll still have to tell you what to do and all that, but you'll probably have some great conversations and goof off a lot too. 

But then there's the other side of the coin, which is when the manager you can't stand walks in. Then, you're going to be doing every kind of cleaning known to mankind. You're going to be working until the very end of your shift, and maybe some overtime, too. Some managers are very unhelpful — they'll ignore you when a customer is flipping out, if you're in the weeds they're nowhere to be found, and worst of all, they're probably hanging out with their bestie in the back office while you do 3x the work. 

This person had the often-stressful job of working at a coffee shop. They also were the dishwasher. Although I've never worked in a restaurant, I've heard that this is one of the least favorite jobs for an employee to do, since it's nonstop, leaves you soaked in water, and can really hurt your hands if you have to do it for a long time. Working as a dishwasher at the seaside, possibly at a tourist destination? should net this person some kind of Purple Heart. 

As they shared in this excellent story below, they were trying to keep things running smoothly one day, when in came the new boss. He thought he knew best, and directed this dishwasher to divert from their normal flow and do what he said instead. Well… that went downhill fast, and lessons were learned! Managers have all the power, but the real skillsets belong to employees who are doing their best to run the place each and every day. 

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  • 01
    Barista in apron and blue shirt smiles and clasps hands in front of coffee on counter while looking at man in blue shirt on his phone
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

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

  • 02
    My first job when I was a teen was as a dishwasher in a coffee shop that was just open a month in my seaside town. The owners had just left other jobs with a bit of cash and set up the place thinking it'd be easy money ticking over in the background of their retirements.
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 03
    Problem of course was they didn't want to work in it, but also didn't want to hire an experienced manager to run it either. As you can assume, problems ensued from the get go. My MC was late on in the summer. My job was to clear and clean all the tables, wash and dry all the dishes and make sure the floor was spotless. The problem of course was that that takes at
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 04
    least 2 people to do on a calm day, never mind busy weekends in the midst of summer holidays and as the boss didn't work there, he assumed I could do it all by myself. Now I didn't have any frame of reference for how hard a job actually should be so for the entire summer I had been busting my ass doing all this and barely making it work. I had adopted so many shortcuts that the dishwasher never actually got used as the baristas were telling
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 05
    me to hand wash stuff as they needed to serve it. We barely had enough cups to have the place full of coffee guzzlers and have some dirty to wash in the kitchen. So that meant I was in the kitchen most of the time scrubbing, and barely having enough time to run out and lift dirty trays, but I still managed to do both. (Looking back now I actually had to physically run around the cafe at times make it all work, wtf) Of course the boss would walk in
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 06
    randomly in the day and I'd get a telling off for the floor being dirty, or a tray on a table. Didn't matter if the tray had been there 10 seconds, it was my fault. Now I had dealt with this all so far, sucked it up and just pushed on thinking I must have just been slow.That was until the busiest day of the year, when we have a show in town. The place was full and with town so busy, people didn't even mind standing with no
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 07
    seats to have a drink. The boss gets called in as we are swamped and not coping (no cups, long queue of angry customers, people sitting at dirty tables). When he walks in he immediately points at every table with an empty cup on it and then says there is no cutlery, only to further add that the floor is a disgrace. I brick it and run out to the floor to clean and ask him to cover the dish washing for a minute (I had been stuck hand washing dishes
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 08
    just so that baristas had something to put coffee in). He's appalled, but complies. It's only when I get back I see he's obviously never worked back here before. He's actually spent the entire time I'm on the floor just packing a handful of dishes onto a dishwasher tray. The problem being that it takes ages to pack and wash and he hasn't cleared any space for my new dishes to be placed. I shit myself and ask him to help move stuff so
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 09
    I can set the new tray down. He flips it as if he's shocked I can't wash dishes in my own hands (bear in mind I've a tray of maybe 8 cups, teapots, icecream cones etc). He gets a space and the baristas start asking for cups. I start hand washing one to hand over and he scowls at me. "Everything must go through the dishwasher.", and then he walks off to mingle at front of house again.
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 10
    Alright mate. If you want it that way, then have it that way. I start packing up the dishwasher and try to organise the stacks of trays. Not 2 minutes go by before 4 baristas are screaming for cups and teapots. I just have to tell them bosses new rules.
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 11
    Boss now flies in and whips open the dishwasher before it's done telling me to start handwashing again. I start handwashing and he immediately follows with, "There are tables out there with dishes." I had been pretty frightened of him to now, but having seen him start to lose his cool a little, it dawned on me that I was being overworked, and this guy didn't even know it yet. So instead of making any point or argument I
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 12
    realise the bast way to let him know is by showing him. I leave to get a full tray form out front. It takes a while to stack a few tables trays together, and while I was doing that he was sweating in the back following baristas cleaning orders, hand doing. dishes as they were needed. Of course when I get back, there is again nowhere to put the trays and he's now scowling at everyone as if we had
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 13
    constructed the building ourselves. Again when I say nowhere to put trays, I am including the floor, where trays were already stacked. He then runs out when I get the trays unpacked into some stacks of dishes and he's back to the front of house.
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 14
    I have then to start cutlery, anyone that's worked in a restaurant or cafe knows the bane of cutlery. I'm nearly done scrubbing cutlery clean when Boss reappears and without looking pours coffee and tea onto my cleaned cutlery in the sink. At this point I can see he's defeated. He knows how precious my time is suddenly and he knows he's just fucked me over by doing that. His eyes are
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 15
    just wide with an aura of fuck. He walks back out, still holding the now empty mugs and leaves me to start the cutlery anew. Maybe a minute goes by when he walks back in and just asks me to tell him how I do my job. FUCKING FINALLY!!
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 16
    I wash and talk, telling him all the little tricks and tips for making sure shit is still moving out the front. I can tell now from his face as I relay how this place actually works that he genuinely didn't know. I can see somewhere in his head he's just realised how he must have been treating myself and other younger staff all summer to this point. He's sort of looking a bit broken. 15 minutes into working at his own cafe and he's broken.
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 17
    The rest of the shift he had his wife come down and the three of us worked the full shift to close. At the end of the day he actually apologised for making me work like that and he'd always have staff on the accommodate busy shifts. I actually went to work for him every summer after that until
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 18
    I left college. I actually really appreciated his reaction to that day and always did a little extra than I needed to and in return he always paid me a little better for the extra work. TL;DR:Boss overworks me to death only to have to do the job one day with me and realise what he's been doing.
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 19
    Edit 2: Great to see so many people talking about their horrific service jobs in the comments. We all share each other's pain; let's heal together. Also I see some outrage about hand washing in the comments and I understand that, but 16 year old me in my first job did whatever 20 something year old employees asked. I still made sure I was using piping hot water and soap, and after this instance nothing was served without being
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 20
    machine washed as we had staff to make sure everything ran smoothly. Also a few people calling BS as no disposable cups in a cafe, but for a bit of context this cafe is a way out from town by a beach (cold climate, not tropical).
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 21
    People come to get out of the cold, not grab a coffee on their way to work, so Boss didn't think to spend money on stock that he didn't need all too often (First month, he soon learned to keep better stock).
    via u/Redditor1239
  • 22

    Commenters flocked in to share their own takes and stories

    cdubbs28t Glad he realized that, but it always blows my mind to hear about a manager/owner running a place they have no idea how to run or what it takes.
    via u/cdubbs28t
  • 23
    pleasecometalkto... It's so hard to admit you fucked up to employees, kudos to him for acknowledging the impact on his staff and the business.
    via u/pleasecometalktome
  • 24
    footworshipper Dude, it is crazy how management overlooks the importance of dishwashers in any food/restaurant type setting. My first job was as a dishwasher in high school, and I was called in one day after the scheduled dishwasher and one of the cooks got into a fight in the kitchen and they were both terminated.
    via u/footworshipper
  • 25
    I got there about an hour later, and both of the managers (they were a husband and wife, that's how the company did things) were besides themselves that one person could do the job that two people (them) were currently failing to do. Like, I walked in and it took me less than 30 minutes to clear everything they hadn't been able to wash and sort and
    via u/footworshipper
  • 26
    pretty much set them straight. Although, the best manager I ever worked for there came up to me one night and asked me which job I felt was the most difficult in the place. They had maintenance workers, housekeepers, cleaning staff, managers, chefs, etc. I said chefs, since they had to make good food 3 times a
    via u/footworshipper
  • 27
    day for 100+ people who were all old and cranky. His response, "Our dishwashers. You guys don't get the credit you deserve. We had to do the job for one shift to get a feel for it, just in case, and it is a 4-8 hour sprint with few breaks inbetween." I miss that job sometimes, hahaha
    via u/footworshipper
  • 28
    Barista in apron smiles at customer in blue shirt on phone in coffee shop setting
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

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

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coffee shop boss malicious compliance teenagers dishes
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