Unprofessional Exits: Some Deserve the Blacklist

[MercenaryChef]

normally when i post anything about work it is about how much i love what i do and i am giddy bragging about some cool something we are making.

in march i took over as the chef du cuisine. for the lay person that means i am literally chef of the food. the menus fall under my guidance, the development of food is my gig. the executive chef had final say on things,but he leaves me to my skills and desires almost entirely.

beneath me are three sous chefs. first i had to hire one to replace me. that was not too hard. i found a great candidate.

but, then out of nowhere one of the sous chefs i worked with for over a year started having all kinds of health problems. his doctor said he had stress induced ibs. work was so hard that he pooped all the time. funny when it is put like that. he took a few weeks off to try to get himself right. he returned for four hours and quit. he quit right before mother's day (the biggest restaurant day of the year.) he was never so sick as to not be partying all the time, interestingly enough.

needless to say i was not pleased.

it took me almost three months to find his replacement. during that time myself and my two sous chefs worked a lot of 6 day weeks. the kitchen never skipped a beat. it was anything but fun.

new sous chef was on board. i was nurturing of him. i listened to his ideas. i really wanted him to feel part of the team. the cooks respected him. things were feeling really good.

sunday and monday were the first two days off i had in months. sunday morning said sous chef sends me a book of a text message indicating he has been offered a chef position very close to his home and would be taking it. i totally understood. it was not a great position to be in for me, but i got where he was coming from. i did not text him back. it was my day off. no real need to. i would see him tuesday and we would discuss his exit strategy...or so i thought.

tuesday i open the kitchen. he is to be in at noon as the closing chef. around 1:00pm i get a text telling me he is just not ever coming back in. that evening i went down to our changing room and discovered his keys, and saw his knives and shoes were gone. he came in during lunch, grabbed his shit and vanished like a coward.

so here i am again down a sous chef. a busy fall is before me and more six day weeks are in store for myself and my two remaining sous chefs.

i am a vengeful bastard and should their names come across me they will not be getting favorable references. may they never find work within 100 miles of my kitchen ever again.

sometimes a chef just needs to vent and rant.

[Inigima]

Sucks man.

My food and bev experience is limited, but nowhere else have I seen the levels of unprofessionalism that I saw there. We routinely had waitstaff just no-show when they were ready to go.

I must admit in the interest of disclosure that I did not serve a full two weeks' notice at the last place i bartended, though I would have liked to. My new job, in the field I actually wanted to be in, needed me to start sooner. But I still appraised the GM of my intentions and we worked it out.

[Usrnmhsnomning]

Dunno how much this really fits in, but as a bachelor of education student its interesting to say the least to watch who does and doesn't drop out as each semester and practicum experience in a school goes on. To speak of pretty much the opposite of what you're talking about, I can't believe some of the people that are still in this course. One girl in particular I know for certain pays someone else to do assignments for her. A few of us have discussed going to the HOD about it but no-one wants to be that whistleblower.

On the flipside, I've had seen some people get booted off the course for verbally abusing kids, and other people who would make great teachers drop out because they dislike the teachers or schools they work with. Sad to see potential ruined because they can't handle 3 weeks in an environment they don't agree with.

[Gertrude]

My food and bev experience is limited, but nowhere else have I seen the levels of unprofessionalism that I saw there. We routinely had waitstaff just no-show when they were ready to go.

Pretty much my experience too. I've never worked in a restaurant that had an executive chef, so I don't know how to compare that to the smaller outfits I've worked in as far as professionalism. We did have a shift where 4 servers came in on the weekend and then walked out just as it was getting busy. They were going to quit anyway and made a huge deal of it. It fucked the rest of us over until we figured out how to readjust and then we all banked hard that night. Their effort was successful for all of 15 minutes, but the hatred engendered lasted a while longer.

I kind of thought this thread might be about Anthony Wiener.

[DanteGabriel]

That's shitty, MC, sorry for you and your crew. But it was an artful rant.

[Ramsay B.]

Yup, that's some selfish bullshit right there. People should always give their 2 weeks in a job like yours. He knew what he would be doing to you and the other chefs and did it anyways...dick move.

[Xray the Enforcer]

That sucks, MC. In retrospect (because I have made the exact same mistake), it might have been germane to respond to the texts with "thank you. let's talk on Tuesday." (no, one shouldn't have to do this. but, what can I say? humans are weird -- and his behavior sounds like he was punishing you for not responding to the text). But that shitty cut-and-run act is just cowardly. Or immature butthurt. Or both. Ugh.

[ThinkerX]

I was in that situation a few times in my pizza hauling days. Used to be two drivers, me and another guy, split the days of the week between us. Worked good for years until he found another job. Next few drivers...a couple vanished on like their second or third day. Another found a quasi legit excuse to miss every third or fourth shift. That didn't bother me too much at first: I had a pile of bills from building the house and needed the money. After the third month it got annoying. For a year I was THE driver.

Lots of similiar stories among the servers and cooks. A lot of the cooks in particular were marking time between far higher paying jobs in the oil fields, and the minute word came through they were hired in the oil fields, they'd quit. And a lot of the servers were single mothers, with sick kids and health issues of their own.

[Aemon Stark]

Arguably it would have been better to respond to the texts, but the flipside is that you are under no obligation to deal with work stuff on the weekend. And quitting via text has all the grace and consideration of breaking up over text. At least make an actual phone call.

(And as a physician, I'm not going to write notes for time off unless someone is sick enough to be admitted to hospital.)

I experienced some unprofessional behaviour Monday from the chief resident on the service I'm rotating on. She had been on call Sunday night and gotten called around 2am to see a consult in emerg. We take call from home on this service, so she would have had to come in to see the patient. She thought it could wait, though, and wanted the patient just to go to clinic within the next day or so. Apparently the family was very anxious, though, and the emerg staff called back to ask her to come in. This was around 2:30. Instead she asked the patient be held overnight (and occupy a bed in emerg) to be seen by us (the day team) in the morning. While it's a pain to come in overnight, it's also hugely annoying and inconsiderate to leave work from the night that could be readily dealt with in advance. The same goes for failing to deal with stuff during the day and leaving them for the on-call resident.

In the end, I did see the patient Monday morning, and we eventually sent him home, though not before getting cardiology to see him. He ended up being more complex than immediately apparent.

[Yagathai]

It's a function of tipping culture, man. It breeds instability into the human resource situation in restaurant settings.

[MercenaryChef]

Yagathai,

Chefs don't get tips. I think it is more about the types of people who gravitate to the business.

[all swedes are racist]

Chef, I had guy walk out in the middle of a busy summer Saturday shift. He had recently started a second part time job for some supplemental income, so he was basically like "fuck you, I dont need this shit."

Three days later, he was was fired from that job.

Two months after that, he applied to a different location at our company (the manager being good friends with many at our store, being previously employedhere) needless to say, he didnt get the job.

I can only hope the job karma gods look down on you with the same favor

[karaddin]

My exit from my place of employment in the US was unprofessional. My marriage broke down, I had zero support in the US and an at will employment contract. I flew back to Australia the next day. I felt bad about it, and went into the office to hand over swipe card etc, talked to HR...unfortunately my boss was out of town so I wasn't able to speak to him. I may have done things differently if my work hadn't told me in advance I would be paid 30% more than I was paid eventually, and didn't give me a contract where they could fire me without any notice as well, but at the end of the day I was not a functional human being and I needed to get home to my parents. I wouldn't have been capable of working that week, nor would I have had a place to stay.

[Yagathai]

Yagathai,

Chefs don't get tips. I think it is more about the types of people who gravitate to the business.

... yes, I know. I've been working in the industry since I was 19 (and anyway in some places back of house get tipped out by the servers). But it's because BoH don't get tips that contributes to the transitory, mercenary nature of restaurant work. It's worse with servers, but it infects the industry at all levels.

[MercenaryChef]

Yagathai,

I like what you have to say. When someone is very good at what they do in my business (cooking) you can always get employment no matter how many You have previously fucked over. These two sous chef don't fall into that category. I know a few really good chefs who quit ir are fired constantly because they are near insane. .. but they are so good they always get another gig.

Despite my moniker I am not that mercenary. Yeah, I needed paid. But, I don't run and leap at money. I look for a balance of cash, freedom, quality and potential success when picking my jobs.

Tonight I put together some very nice things for my new menu. it put me in a happy place. Fuck whomever doesn't want to be part of what I have going on.

[drawkcabi]

MC, sorry for the situation with your sous chefs, it truly sucks when this shit happens.

I have dozens of stories from my parents' restaurant like that. We had one chef after working for us for over 10 years just up and decided he was going to retire. No notice, no warning. He was scheduled to come in to work and never showed up, when we called him that's when he informed us he was retired.

Another time we had a guy working for us, he was about 19. He wanted to be a professional chef and was using us for a springboard to get experience before he went to the C.I.A. (Culinary Institute of America - I know MC knows what C.I.A. I am talking about, but I clarify in case of any who didn't). We wrote up references for him and everything.

Anyhow, homecoming season comes along and it's always a headache scheduling wise for us because we had so many teenagers working for us and they all put in to be off. We always worked shorthanded and we'd always be crazy busy. So anyway, this C.I.A. wannabe guy, all ready graduated from HS, never put in a note he wanted homecoming off, our policy is to get all notes for days off requests in no later than one week before the schedule is made. He must have had a date still in HS or something. He just calls up and quits the night of homecoming leaving us extremely shorthanded.

Another time we had a cook who kept begging us for more hours. We kept told him be patient, we had some key staff taking off for over a month during the summer, he'd get all the hours he needed. So time comes when he's got the hours he requested, a week into his new heavy schedule he just walks out. When he comes in to pick up his last paycheck and we asked why'd he quit, he said it was because he felt he wasn't being appreciated enough. We always gave our employees "good job!" remarks and "you did great" when they performed, but some just seem to want their hand held every step of the way saying how much we appreciate them and how much of a privilege it is to pay you to be here.

We've had employees stage walk outs a couple times.

Thing I hated most about all this, is I was there and I felt all this resentment from the employees who were close in age when I was a teenager because I was the boss' kid. But I was the one that always had to fill in when someone didn't show up, quit, or called in sick, because I held some of the responsibility with the family business. There were times I had to work 7 days a week for over a month before I got a day off because of employee shortages. Yet I was the brat son of the boss to so many of them :rolleyes:

At least the older employees thought I was ok.

[Greywolf2375]

Wow, sorry to hear you're dealing with that.

2 different things popped into my head when reading this:

1) we had a person on my team right from the very beginning of when she was hired display every bad habit possible towards work - during our training sessions she was doing her homework or just surfing the net. Then when we got into the real day to day it was more obvious she wanted nothing to do with the work, but wanted the title. When we finally got tired of her coming in at 10 and leaving by 2 and notified her manager, she amazingly had to be out on short term disability because of her lapband surgery/fathers shoulder surgery/depression/fathers hip surgery/divorce/random other reasons.

It was pretty obvious she was full of shit and proud of it since - for two of her reasons - she was sposed to be in Florida helping her dad yet was posting on FB about being in places in W Mass. After 6 months (yes, she somehow was able to get this BS extended to 6 months STD coverage somehow yet two of my teammates who gave birth after she was out came back before she did), she came back in the office, sat down at her desk, texted some people, did some FB stuff and then told our manager "I'm resigning" and walked out. And the icing on the cake - she asked all of us including the managers she screwed over both to be references for new jobs she would go for as well as (after not getting a new job) to put her forward for internal positions.

2. A while back we had a discussion that centered around a company that released people without prior notice - they came in to work and same day were sent home. The uproar on the board was that it wasn't fair to the employee that they could just do that and that the employee couldn't since it would be a black mark against them. Isn't this exactly what we was being cried for - the employee doing what is best for them? I'm sympathetic since it puts someone we know in a bind, but it seems like we're being kinda hypocritical since it now impacts one of our own rather than a nameless, faceless other..

[Myrddin]

That's pretty shitty of the guy to resign by text, MC. I worked as a waiter for 8 years. While not in the kitchen, I know how hard you guys work back there.

I'd chalk up his actions to immaturity (regardless of his age). If he sees texting as a valid medium to tender a resignation, he probably interpreted the silence as you being royally pissed or something. So, he takes the non-confrontational way out and sneaks in for his stuff.

Out of curiosity's sake, what was the new menu you came up with? :thumbsup: (imagine that emote guy holding a knife and fork)

[kairparavel]

The issue is lack of professionalism. The text and hide instead of face to face conversation. Notice would be nice too, yes.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

I do wonder how many employees at the restaurant - servers, line cooks, busboys, waiters, etc. are given "two weeks notice" before being fired. I would imagine not many.

Sounds like someone was just returning the favor.