One of the best parts about being a salaried employee is that you don't get called in for random shifts on the weekend. At least I don't, but y'all stay safe out there. There's nothing worse than preparing for a nice long day of doing nothing than receiving a call from your manager. When I worked at a dog bakery, I was always the person saying “yes” to picking up this one girls shifts. If it sounds like I was being a pushover, it's because I was a pushover. For me, it was hard to leave money on…

Businesses fundamentally misunderstand how the average person approaches reviewing something. Unless you are a “Local Guide” on Google Reviews, you are not going to leave a review for a service unless it's a 1-star or a 5-star experience.

There's evil, and then there's restaurants stealing tips from their employees. Restaurants already don't pay their workers enough to live on most of the time. Tips are usually the only way restaurant employees make above minimum wage, and when you take that away, they have next to no pay to take home. When restaurants do something this slimy, they try to hide it. Who could forget the Kitchen Nightmares episode where Gordon Ramsey exposes the restaurant owner who steals his servers' tips? The ow…

That is a lot of money

Working at a restauran t isn't for the faint of heart. For some reason, before I got my job at a Mediterranean restaurant on the Upper East Side, I thought I was a natural-born server. Describing food to people is basically my hobby, and if I could get paid for it? Dream gig. I was so, so wrong. Before reaching server status at this restaurant, I had to do some time as a backwaiter. Backwaiters are glorified busboys. They're integral to the operation, gracefully pouring water and pulling empty…

Letting regular people write restaurant reviews was largely a mistake. And I say this as a recovering Yelper. Before I started working in the restaurant industry, Yelp was an outlet for me. It allowed me to share my Very Important opinion with other citizens. I'd write paragraphs about a breakfast burrito, cringey raps about the best pizzeria near my office. And while I mostly wrote favorable reviews of establishments, occasionally I would go in on a spot that was disappointing in both the food…

Anyone who has worked as a waiter knows that people who don't tip are the worst. In the United States, many waiters only get paid $2 hourly and, therefore, only survive on tips. Some restaurants don't even pay their servers an hourly wage. This is basically common knowledge at this point, so for most people, not tipping is simply out of the question. But there are always those people who get angry for the insistence that they tip. I find that these come from two camps. The first camp is Boomers…

A Utah teenager recently went viral on Reddit for posting their schedule for their part-time job . They are expected to work 32 hours a week, including four 6-hour shifts directly after already going to school for 8 hours. I know there are probably a bunch of angry people reading this and thinking, “that's not very much work! If this teen would hike up their bootstraps, they would be able to work these hours and finish their homework with no issues.” In some cases, they might be right. When I w…

As a business owner, coming up with a solid name for your establishment is pretty damn important. You don't want to be serving burgers as a restaurant called “MacDonalds,” and you probably want to avoid something as basic as “Burger.” You can choose to reference what you're selling, or go by the name of a family member. Some hip spots will take the name of the business that failed at the same location (probably due to gentrification) or some twee combination of animal and tool, like “Stag and S…

So many bosses want excessive access to their employees in manners that cross some boundaries. On the first day of my first restaurant job, I asked one of the assistant managers if I could leave at 9 PM since, on the schedule, my shift ended at 9 PM. He laughed at me, said, “it's good you didn't ask that when the manager was around,” and we continued working. At the time, I felt like such an idiot because I had never had a job before, so I assumed all jobs were like that. Now I just realize thi…

Terminal Main Character Syndrome

How bad can it be?

Tipping culture in America is pretty straightforward. If you're eating at a sit-down restaurant, it's expected that you tip your waiter 20% of the cost of your meal in total. This system is in place because paying servers far less than the minimum wage is legal and common, with restaurant owners assuming most of their income will be supplied by tips. Tipped employees in some U.S. states can make as little as $2.13 per hour , which is why it's so important to tip them 20%. Many Europeans visitin…

One of life's greatest pleasures is being able to complain about a job you hate . If I wasn't able to tell my close friends and family about the annoying customers and often more annoying coworkers at my customer service jobs, then I don't know how I would be able to survive. Even when things weren't so bad at work, it's fun to share work stories. When I worked at a dog bakery, a customer told me she owned a dog funeral parlor. I was so taken aback that all I could say was, “I'm sorry" To that,…

I've never quit a job . Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I can endure a situation far longer than is healthy for me. Lord knows I've spent years in relationships that didn't serve me. I slogged through the toxicity because change is scary. I once stayed at a job for seven years even though they only gave me a single raise, and forced me to work in a non-heated, building with no electricity in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. I want to be more like the people who throw in the t…

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