Restaurant manager humiliates employee by printing complaint email sent by customer after food takes too long: ‘Feels incredibly dumb to blame me for ticket times being slow’

Author image for Melissa Knudson
Melissa Knudson • Writer
Oct 22, 2026 4:00 PM EDT

How does a manager properly correct an employee's behavior? Not like this, that's for sure. 

A restaurant manager's job has a long list of tasks in the description. Making sure there's enough staff to handle customers, helping the place run smoothly, and handling any complaints or situations that might come up on a normal day of work. This means things can get awkward when an employee does something out of line, and the manager has to tell them to fix whatever problem generated the situation. 

On this matter, there are many ways to correct an employee's actions. A private discussion, an email, a written warning, or, in the worst cases, a momentary suspension. I have not been to management school, but I don't think printing a giant email with an employee's picture on it and marking every mistake with a Sharpie for everyone to see is part of the crash course. I feel like there are better approaches here, especially when the infraction in question is also the responsibility of the manager. 

That is exactly what this restaurant manager decided to do. An employee clashes with a customer after food took a little longer than expected. As it turns out, due to scheduling patches, for which the restaurant manager is responsible, this employee had to cover several tasks at once. That's when this super hangry man furiously claims that the food has taken too long and takes a picture of the employee without their knowledge. This picture was sent attached to a complaint email to the store. Instead of talking to the employee and clearing this mishap up, the restaurant manager decided to print the email in a giant format and place it for everyone to see. Also, she marked every visible mistake made by the employee in the picture with Sharpie. May I highlight the fact that not a single word had been exchanged with this employee at this point.

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  • Tired fast food restaurant employee
    via Getty Images ( Via nicoletaionescu )

    Tired fast food restaurant employee.

    Image depicted solely for explanatory purposes.

  • Customer attached a photo of me to a complaint email, manager hung it in the kitchen instead of talking to me. Is this unprofessional or is it just me?

    So I work in a fast food restaurant and I am kinda ped about this situation with the general manager. I work the evening shift (from lunchtime to closing around. 11), and my GM is rarely around past 4, so we don't interact a whole lot. Last
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  • night we were super short staffed, on account of the GM scheduling barely enough people and one of those people not showing up for his shift. It was
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  • around 9:00 at this point and my one coworker who was working the drive through window was on break, so it was just me up front. Due to the
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  • aforementioned short staffing, I was doing drive through, bagging orders, making drinks, helping my one coworker who was in the kitchen by himself, and various other minor tasks.
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  • So while I'm by myself up front, about 9-10 decently sized orders come in at once, including both Doordash/Uber Eats as well as drive through, so I'm pretty swamped and am rushing around trying to do things in the order they came in. At one point, I'm
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  • Fast food restaurant employee
    via Getty Images Signature ( Via YinYang )

    Fast food restaurant employee.

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • making drinks for a Doordash order when a customer comes in and yells at me to get my attention. I should mention
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  • at this point that I'm have one headphone in as I'm working, which has never been an issue before and lots of my coworkers do it as well, all with no comment from the GM. So I take out
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  • my headphone to go talk to this guy, and he says he'd been sitting at the drive through window for 5 minutes and no one has come to the window, so he came inside. Now, I know
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  • this is an exaggeration because it had only been about 3 minutes since I handed the last person their order, but I apologize and say I'm working as fast as I can and I'd have his food to him as soon as it was ready. He continues to
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  • talk about how I should have said something to him about the food taking a long time and yadda yadda, I go back to continue what I was doing. While I have my back
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  • to him, he apparently walks back behind the counter to take a photo of me with a headphone in bagging an order, and goes back to wait for his food at the counter (which takes just around 2 minutes).
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  • Anyhow, sometime between when I clocked in today and when the GM left at 4, she had printed the email she received from him with the photo of me blown up to about 3 feet tall
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  • Employee getting costumer's order at fast food restaurant
    via Getty Images Signature ( Via YinYang )

    Employee getting costumer's order at fast food restaurant. 

    Scene is illustrative and does not depict actual individuals or events.

  • and taped it to the wall above the area where we clock in and had marked it up with giant circles and comments in sharpie, and then left without saying anything to me. The email
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  • read (verbatim): "Just wanted to let you know what was going on I own a business and would hate to see this drive thru times are horible and you have workers who seem like they
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  • don't wanna be there and have an Airpod in thought I'd let you know hope you get the problem taken care of!", and the comments written on the photo say "
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  • (OP) AIRPODS UNACCEPTABLE", "FLOOR TRASH UNACCEPTABLE" (with 4 fries on the ground by the fryers circled), and "DRIVE THRU 11TH PLACE UNACCEPTABLE"
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  • Is it just me or does it seem like this is the least professional way to handle this kind of situation? Also,
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  • Angry restaurant manager
    via pixelshot

    Angry restaurant manager. 

    Individual pictured is a model used for illustrative purposes.

  • it feels incredibly dumb to blame me for ticket times being slow when there are people no call no showing to their shift and the GM's not scheduling enough people. Just wanted to get some thoughts from others who may have similar experiences.
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  • loosielucy222 Sounds like the perfect time to update your resume. That is astonishingly disgusting behavior from an owner.
    via loosielucy222
  • HotSalt3 There's two types of managers. Umbrella managers and funnel managers. The umbrella managers are those who will shelter you from the storm, gather their team together, and build them up.
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  • Funnel managers on the other hand just take whatever they're given, praise, criticism, feedback, and dump it directly on their team without much if any filter. Your GM seems to be the worst version of the second type.
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  • Wildeyewilly On the same photo I'd be writing in my own comments like "improper staffing for evening dinner shift, UNACCEPTABLE"
    via Wildeyewilly
  • "General Manager not in house during heaviest times of operation. INEXCUSABLE"
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  • "1 Employee to cover drive thru, counter, packing, and cooking, UNREASONABLE"
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  • I don’t think I need to say this is crazy. Nothing further away from leadership here than to humiliate an employee who was just trying to do their job under the conditions given. They were understaffed and overwhelmed with work. A friendly conversation would’ve been enough to get him to prioritise some orders rather than others. Thankfully she’s working at this store and not at a school, because that would’ve rooted some weird high school trauma. Yet, we gotta give it to the restaurant manager; she does know how to create some unnecessary work drama, and she is definitely very creative. 

    On the other hand, the angry customer also jumped a few steps. Taking a picture and sending a wordy email over a 2-minute food delay seems a little extreme, but then again, I also get weird when I’m hungry. The real lesson here is that hangry people get a little unhinged. Next time, let's give him a couple nuggets while he waits. And let’s cancel his data plan before every meal, just in case. I appreciate the effort in adding a visual aid to your complaint email, but it was really not necessary. In conclusion, everyone needs to calm down a little, have some fries, and stop having creative ideas at work.

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