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Nigmaetcetera posted:Lol profit, I’m a billionaire in this scenario! I want to lose money and make friends so I can be popular for once! Oh yeah sorry, that was kind of dumb for me to quote your post lol but my basic point was how terrible owning a restaurant really seems to be
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Feb 27, 2023 23:28
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haljordan posted:Oh yeah sorry, that was kind of dumb for me to quote your post lol but my basic point was how terrible owning a restaurant really seems to be Yeah I’m pretty sure the NFL has a class available for retiring players about managing their fortune. It’s literally called “Don’t Buy A Bar”.
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Feb 27, 2023 23:30
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Nigmaetcetera posted:Yeah I’m pretty sure the NFL has a class available for retiring players about managing their fortune. It’s literally called “Don’t Buy A Bar”. Oh man ESPN has this big series of sports documentaries called 30 for 30 and one is literally called "Broke". The number of ways pro athletes literally throw their money directly into a fire would ASTOUND you. Calling cards were a big one for a lot of guys in the 90s, but yeah bars/restaurants were number one with a bullet.
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Feb 27, 2023 23:32
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My neighbor is a good friend of mine and he owns one pretty successful dive bar and grill and a pretty regular bar, both in some of the most expensive commercial real estate in town. He always seems to be completely stress-free, even when things are loving up. I need to get some stories out of him, he somehow makes it look like just normal work. Must have some really solid people working for him and treats them right.
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Feb 27, 2023 23:36
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Nigmaetcetera posted:Yeah I’m pretty sure the NFL has a class available for retiring players about managing their fortune. It’s literally called “Don’t Buy A Bar”. I think MLB does this for rookies (some of them get HUGE signing bonuses). Lesson #1: Don't buy, startup, or otherwise invest in a restaurant. Lesson #2: No. Really. Seriously. Don't. Invest. In. A. Restaurant.
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Feb 27, 2023 23:42
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Jose Oquendo posted:I think MLB does this for rookies (some of them get HUGE signing bonuses). Lesson #3: Hey, wanna invest in this restaurant? YOU IDIOT, THAT WAS A TEST.
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Feb 27, 2023 23:44
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I've cut or burned myself in just about every way that you can in kitchen environments. - My first job at a summer camp, we had to put in some volunteer hours in the kitchen. Chef was showing me how to clean the automated meat slicer and he hadn't walked away for a minute when I slipped and jammed my thumb into the blade. Cleaved my thumbnail right in half. - Cleaning a push-through tomato slicer and the same thing happened except no fingernail, just four razor-sharp perfectly-parallel cuts to my thumb. - Sliced my index finger almost down to the bone with a loving bread knife while trying to cut the dry crispy skin of a slab of cooked pork belly. - Slipped while grill-bricking a white-hot flattop grill, palmed it and ended up with multiple blisters on my fingers and palm, the largest was the size of a golf ball. I still have a picture of this somewhere if anyone is curious. Oddly enough, the two injuries I managed to avoid entirely were large oil burns (despite how cavalier I was with the hot fryer oil, for example standing on one foot to kick the back door open with the giant pot in my hands), and sugar burns (we made our own caramel corn at one place and I got quite good at the process of making the caramel, I never got more than a tiny little fleck of the stuff on my skin). One of the places I worked was very much the wild west until it got bought by corporate interests and most of the fun evaporated. Drinking on shift, smoking under the hood vents after close, and lots of pranks. One particular prank could qualify as a horror story: As I mentioned above one of the things we cooked was a massive piece of pork belly for these slider sandwiches. Sometimes you'd have to cut the nipples out of the pork belly, and one coworker couldn't even be in the room while that was happening, it grossed him out so much. So one day a couple of us collected a bunch of the pig nipples, vac-packed them, and framed them as a gift to him.
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Feb 27, 2023 23:55
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Mister Speaker posted:I've cut or burned myself in just about every way that you can in kitchen environments. im down with seeing it. melted sugar is kitchen napalm...same with roux
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Feb 28, 2023 00:41
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If you've never made a fried nipple salad and presented it to the waitstaff as a new special then buddy you ain't livin'.
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Feb 28, 2023 01:32
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ManBoyChef posted:A heroin habit would have been more productive because at least he would have had a few more interesting stories to tell instead of the same story that happens to 80% of restaurant owners. "Y'see son, your old man has shot a loads of candy into his veins over the years. And....uhhhhh, shot some loads into Candy as well. So you...might have a half-sibling somewhere? Anyways what was I talking about? Oh yeah, and that's why we're moving into a motel after the bank finishes repoing our house!"
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Feb 28, 2023 01:36
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rndmnmbr posted:It's honestly pretty typical, though. Deluded idiot bored with his life and who likes to cook naively thinks running a restaurant will give him the lifestyle he dreams of, walks into the industry with nothing resembling a business plan or solid financial backing, ignores every red flag presented to him, quickly gets eaten alive by the reality that running a restaurant is a shitload of money and work that rarely pays off in the long term, burns the rest of his life to the ground because he can't admit he hosed up and GTFO.
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Feb 28, 2023 01:48
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I've been in restaurants for over 10 years from mom and pop, sit down, and fast food (in that order). Stories: College Italian restaurant (sit-down): Mother's Day. I'm a saute chef, which is the fastest-paced and most stressful position in the kitchen. I walk in at 2 pm and am scheduled to close. The store opened at 11 and the sous chef already has a 1000-yard stare. I go to clock in but before I can punch in my employee id, the kitchen manager walks over to me, noticeably haggard, and says, "FooF, I like you so I'm going to give you a choice. I can kick in you the nuts as hard as I can and send you home or... you can work your shift. Personally, I'd take the kick to the nuts because it will be less painful." He wasn't wrong. We didn't have monitors or anything so it's all short-order calls. On a busy Friday, I'd average about 120 dishes an hour. It was close to 300/hour that day for 6 solid hours. At 7 pm, we ran out of sliced chicken (we had prepped 6x normal) which 86d half the saute menu. At 8 pm, we ran out of steaks, with fish following soon after. At 9 pm, we learned that we were out of virtually every appetizer and dessert. The only thing we could serve after 8:30 were basic salads, plain pasta dishes and pizzas. Servers were at their wit's end and table after table got up when their favorite items weren't available. The GM of the restaurant refused to close the doors because he was an idiot. The assistant GM got into an argument with him at the expo station (we had an open kitchen so this was in full view of customers) saying it was asinine to even let people in the door at this point. GM had us par-bake chicken at 9:30 to serve the 8 remaining guests we got from 9:30 to close. He also oversaw the cleaning of the kitchen and was a notoriously awful judge of what is clean or not (i.e. white glove treatment). We didn't get out until 2 a.m. I should have taken the kick to the nuts. Fast Food: Surprisingly nothing too terrible. I remember our truck not showing up until 11:30 am and blocking the drive thru during a Friday lunch rush. Our owner was so pissed he called the distributor and ensured that driver be fired after he made it back to the warehouse. Chicken juice eventually turns into something resembling a fruit roll-upif you leave it in the fridge long enough. I was eventually kitchen director and one time during a busy lunch shift, one of our younger/newer employees did a "quick drop" of the pressure friers without turning the coils off. As soon as he opened the lid, it ignited. I saw the flash from my station off to the right and everyone was just staring at the open flames coming out of the frier. Since I was the only one that apparently had common sense, I ran over and slammed the lid down on the fire, extinguishing it. The coils were shot, which meant we were down a frier and replacing them would cost about $1000 due to parts and labor. New employee literally cried so I had to take him to the office and tell him to collect himself and then get back to work. The legend of me putting out the fire became a game of telephone and by the end of a few weeks, night shifters thought I had stuck my hand in the flames without flinching and was 
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Feb 28, 2023 03:09
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I worked on super yachts towards the end of my tenure as a chef and it was honestly awesome. People are generally in a good mood whilst drinking on boats. The skipper was sometimes a bit precious but so long as I kept him fed he'd leave me alone. I scored a lot of free champagne and even got a couple of free private cruises. The hours were poo poo but I also got quite a bit of creative license with menus. Made a lot of friends through that gig.
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Feb 28, 2023 03:55
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I learned that restaurant work may not pay especially well, but working AND being the primary cocaine dealer for the employees in a large, high class hotel restaurant is extremely lucrative The staff couldn't get enough of it and they always had hundreds of dollars in small bills after every shift. Restaurant workers are bananas for cocaine
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Feb 28, 2023 04:03
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Nigmaetcetera posted:I would only open a restaurant if I won $1,000,000,000 in the powerball drawing. I would operate it at a loss giving away cocktails until the day I died. Congratulations on your future episode of Bar Rescue.
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Feb 28, 2023 04:31
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Poohs Packin posted:I worked on super yachts towards the end of my tenure as a chef and it was honestly awesome. People are generally in a good mood whilst drinking on boats. We had a boat based survey amongst some remote islands in the tropics. Since it was oil and gas they had money out the wazoo and hired a chef from some 5 star Michelin fancy pants restaurant who had a nervous breakdown and fled up north. Every day while we were sweating in the jungle a bunch of the Aboriginal boat workers would go off in a dingy and come back with a mound of sea creatures. The chef would get excited about all the fresh mystery fish and start yelling at anyone in the vicinity 'Hey you got a squid and some prawns? You want laksa or fried calamari or what? Is that a shark? gently caress I'll cook a shark you want fried Shark?! What the gently caress is that thing is it poisonous? Can you get me a snake?' loving great food. E: sorry, there wasn't a horror part to that story. Outrail fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Feb 28, 2023 |
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Feb 28, 2023 04:34
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Jose Oquendo posted:I think MLB does this for rookies (some of them get HUGE signing bonuses). On the other hand, I hear it can be pretty lucrative if you just buy out a pre-existing group of fast food franchises? Like a bunch of dominos or something
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Feb 28, 2023 04:40
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Poohs Packin posted:If you've never made a fried nipple salad and presented it to the waitstaff as a new special then buddy you ain't livin'. Never got that joy, even in culinary arts school. I do remember us baking cookies one year for a school Halloween event. the guys decorating them were supposed to draw pumpkin faces on them. Instead they wrote "Bite Me" and "Eat Me" on 8 of the 12 trays of cookies before the chef caught them. Our school would attend the Taste of Blue Water event where all the chefs in the thumb region of Michigan would compete. We weren't allowed to compete, but would bring food to demo. Chef decided I should be one of the guys that took part. "Meatballs" Oh come one, give me a challenge that impresses people! "You can make a marinade for them freelance" Oh? Awesome! Dumbass me being 16 at the time, I didn't write any of the marinade down, just mixed a bunch of stuff together till I got the right taste. It earned a special mention since we couldn't be outright awarded. Nightmare comes in when the chef asked me to give him the recipe so he could archive it in the files. I jotted down what I could from memory, but I know I hosed it up. Also remember making soup for St. Patrick's day. "do something green. Here, cream of celery" Spent a couple hours making it. "It needs to be greener" But it's a cream, it can't be any greener "Find a way, be inventive" *heads to the dry storage and grabs a bottle of green food coloring* Bam! *in the style of Steven He* "What da HELL! Are you stupid?!" You wanted greener "I meant adding more celery or some sort of green garnish" Well YOU should have specified. poo poo sold out in an hour the next day. Ah, I was feelin' pretty smug after that one I miss that class, love cooking from scratch and being creative
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Feb 28, 2023 04:50
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Bismack Billabongo posted:The ice machine broke and was not replaced for two months by corporate. The GM at the time would cruise around down before he was due in every day buying every bag of ice he could find at the local gas stations and liquor stores, to the point that some of them banned him from buying their stuff. The Coke slushie machine would keep breaking for all sorts of reasons, with the CCA repair guy constantly saying the machine needed to be outright replaced, not just because everything on it is slowly failing but it's getting constantly harder to get the parts in for that model. We'd constantly be in trouble from the AM that the slushie machine was broken during the middle of summer, not that we do anything more about it than report it to the AM and Repairs and hope they bothered to organize someone to come around to fix it. After about the 6th time the repair guy had a yelling match with the AM and someone higher up on the phone, after the 8th repair that month the machine mysteriously magic smoked itself they had no choice but to replace it with a new model. The 'new' model that every other store already had for years on end. For about 6 months the Subway's front counter unit wasn't refrigerated. Couldn't get the parts to fix it due to covid we were told. It was kept cool by just using bagged ice from the gas station side for over six months until FINALLY, they got a 11 year overdue refurb.
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Feb 28, 2023 05:54
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ManBoyChef posted:when I was working as a line cook I saw a highly learning disabled woman drop a chicken wing into the oil of the fryer instead of the basket and reach into the oil to grab it. Ambulance had to be called. It was gnarly. I really hope she got some sort of workman's comp. We all hated working with her because she was so inept, but we were all pulling for her because she had such a difficult life. Literally noone advocated for her but us in her life. Dunno why I feel like I could imagine this perfectly in my head but yeah. That’s incredibly sad. Hope she’s on some state program or something.
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Feb 28, 2023 07:16
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I've run into a fair few unfortunates in kitchens. Watched a lady almost cut her own fingers off while nodding on methadone prepping veggies. I put her on peeling onions so she could finish the shift and still get paid. Had a line cook who was a paranoid schizophrenic. We had a staff party coming up and he'd convinced himself he was going to be sacrificed if he didn't stab our boss. So all week people are coming up to him saying poo poo like "Sunday night is gonna be EPIC!" and he thought they were mocking him when really they were just pumped for the party. Thankfully he disclosed these beliefs to our boss who took him to hospital immediately. Had a pretty talented line cook with a serious drinking and drug problem who totally flipped the switch and decided he hated me during knock off's. He threatened to fight me and then drove home wasted and started texting one of our servers (who's number he pulled off the staff list) pictures of all the cocaine he was doing. Edit: she was a smoking hot blonde with huge boobs that he had never spoken to before lmao He ended up attacking his neighbours security cameras with a stick, which were put up because of him. He was arrested and then came in the next day with two black eyes like nothing happened lmao. I let someone else do the firing. I sincerely hope they all got help.
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Feb 28, 2023 09:51
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fuckingtest posted:Is this...Is this a confession? Are you ok? Yes, and thanks for your concern, that was 35+ years ago. Funny what sticks.
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Feb 28, 2023 13:19
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fuckingtest posted:Greatest part of the job was opening with two employees and the other doesn't show up so you are stuck prepping everything and then the delivery truck shows up and you're hosed because you have a kitchen area full of carts of bread and frozen meat and you need to start the fries oh god PTSD is kicking in... Oh gently caress yeah, I was unpopular at 16 y.o. so I got Open shift on days like NYD and other days no-one wanted. So much character building about caring less and less.
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Feb 28, 2023 13:53
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One more Sandwich shop story. We had a walk in freezer, but due to space issues, it was at the end of the strip mall the shop I worked in was. So every morning when I opened up, I'd have to grab a cart and hoof it down the alley to this room on the side of the building which used to be an electrical room or something that had been modified into a walk-in-freezer. I'd grab the ingredients and head back to the shop. Well this "mall" had some interesting shops. starting from the freezer: (Big antiques store, Karate Studio, Health Food Store, Barber Shop, Sewing machine store, Shoe Store, Insurance agent, dentist, Bakery, and Finally sandwich shop) So the barber shop was run by a really nice older Italian guy who sounded like he stepped right out of Goodfellas. I'll call him Tony. Tony was colorful to say the least. He had known the old owner of the sub shop and waxed poetic about coming there when it was new. He would often say things like "Before I went away" and "while I was gone..." and we all knew what that meant. So Tony was a bit of a mystery though, he seemed nice enough, but kind of "out of place" where I lived, like he should be in New York City or Miami Beach with the other wiseguys. The regulars who came in for coffee every morning would whisper about him but quiet down when came in. Also, Tony would come by with other guys randomly. I remember once he brought in this very tiny, very old Italian man, with a six-foot-five Samoan dude walking alongside them, ordered him some food, and then said something to my manager before he walked away back to his barber shop. That Samoan guy would look at every one of us with a death stare. It was the most uncomfortable 30 minutes of dining I'd ever seen in the shop. I asked the manager what Tony said to him, and he replied "He said be good to him, he tips real good." The tip was $40 on a $25 meal. So yeah Tony seemed to be ex-mob or something. Getting back to the walk-in-freezer. One morning, I opened up early and did my usual walk to the freezer. I collect my stuff, lock the door and just as I turn the corner into the alley, I see a car that seemed to be idling in the alley begin to drive away. I think nothing of it and head back to the sandwich shop. Around 8 AM, the guy from the sewing machine shop walks in looking a little pale. I tell him, "You look like you need a coffee!" He kinda just sits down, and stares across the room. "You didn't hear?" he says. I look at him blankly. "Hear what?" I ask. "Tony's dead." "Tony, who?" It hadn't dawned on me yet that he meant the guy who ran the Barber shop. "Someone came into the barber shop this morning and shot Tony four times." The guy who runs the karate studio saw his rear door open and found him. I all of sudden felt really cold, like someone had poured a bucket of ice water on me. "Was it a robbery?" I stupidly asked. He just stared at me like "are you that loving stupid?" That was a slow and somber day for us. So yeah, the guy who ran the barber shop was apparently a wiseguy or something and I could have gotten whacked for witnessing a murder had I been a little faster or slower. I can even picture the scene in my head of a 19 year old me getting headshotted by a dude in an alley. That car in the alleyway must have been the gunman. EDIT: holy poo poo, I actually found the article about the hit fuckingtest fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Feb 28, 2023 |
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Feb 28, 2023 13:59
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Yikes. Looks like he used his shop as a way to meet with clients before he got caught.
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Feb 28, 2023 15:09
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i have a lot of mcdonalds stories despite only working there 8 months lol. my very first shift, i had to at some point kneel down in the kitchen area to do... something? and as i was finishing up my whatever, one of the cooks comes up behind me and puts a box cutter to my throat, warning in my ear "don't move". i was an unphased 17 yo, so i just said back "okay". he laughed and said i was like a statue. apparently he did that to all new hires. 8 months. lol
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Feb 28, 2023 15:50
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GelatinSkeleton posted:I worked at Starbucks for years. We had an absolute douchebag customer come through who always ordered an iced caramel machiatto, stirred up. On his last day a coworker of mine took the guy's drink to the back and stirred it with his dick
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Feb 28, 2023 18:46
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This Is the Zodiac posted:See, this sort of thing I just don't get. Like, he may have thought he scored some kind of victory over that customer, but at the end of the day he's the one with his dick in a cup of ice-cold coffee. what part of the starbucks dick drinking dick juice is there not to get
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Feb 28, 2023 18:54
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In college my friend worked at a Taco Bell, and when someone mistakenly got 9 tacos instead of 10, their first reaction was to drive their car into the Taco Bell. Shut the place down for a few weeks to fix it
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Feb 28, 2023 18:58
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When I was in high school my main job was as a program vendor at Miller Park. Obviously issue of baseball season, there wasn't much work to be had there so I decided one winter to get a job at Steak Escape at the local mall. First day they did the usual training poo poo. At the end of the day, I was supposed to get my work clothes. Instead of a new, clean shirt, they found some old musty-rear end thing laying under one of the refrigerators and gave it to me. I'm sure if they could have found a hat the same way they would have. I'm glad I stole so much loving food from those cheap fucks in the short time I bothered to stay there.
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Feb 28, 2023 19:00
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Someone came on the bathroom wall in a pub I used to work at. When my supervisor cleaned it off, it took the top layer of paint off the wall.
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Feb 28, 2023 19:01
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Drinkslinger posted:Someone came on the bathroom wall in a pub I used to work at. That's how you know you're virile
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Feb 28, 2023 19:16
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TotalLossBrain posted:That's how you know it's al dente
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Feb 28, 2023 19:25
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starbucks in nyc was doing things like opening stores on all four corners of a busy street to prevent any competition, because people won’t cross the street for coffee they were also opening stores at a loss to put other businesses under, including the one I worked at that was right next to a really good sandwich and coffee type place someone through a brick through the starbucks window several times with notes that said “welcome to the neighborhood”
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Feb 28, 2023 19:26
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There was a small chain of bookstores with a coffee shop that tried that poo poo to muscle out my old boss. First they sent someone over to condescendingly offer him the job of manager of their coffee shop. Then they opened the book store part without the coffee shop because the person they did hire to manage it hosed something up (I don’t know what). Then they closed that store. All this in less than a year. The entire chain of bookstores went out of business in 2009.
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Feb 28, 2023 19:40
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When I was working as a sous chef in pittsburgh we used to have this dude that would come in we called sisqo because he had short white hair. He would always wear a grey suit and him and the owner and their friends would sit in the basement and sniff coke all day (which turned out to be our paychecks). One day they go across the street to the bar to get drinks. He leaves this bag he is always carrying around with him down in the basement and the owner had asked the other cook to clean the basement before he left. The other cook comes upstairs with a huge smile on his face and tells the owners daughter, me, and one of the owners friends that hangs around to come down in the basement and he has something funny to show us. We go down and he says, "U know this is sisqo's right?" as he points at the bag. He opens it up and its a bunch of sex toys, whips, masks and scat porn dvds (yes I am old). We all laughed our asses off. The fact this dude brought this bag everywhere he went....and did not have a car is insane.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:24
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fuckingtest posted:Tony  this is one of those stories that makes me glad my work history is boring as hell
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Feb 28, 2023 20:38
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I’ll probably end up remembering a lot of stories in this thread, going forward One of the worst co-worker stories involves a dude who was into micro-dosing himself with GHB (a popular date-rape drug) at work. According to him, taking the tiniest amount gives you an ecstasy-like high. One evening he misjudged the dose and ended up passing out in the accessible toilet, pants round his ankles, cock out and everything. Wanna know what he got fired for? Not doing his E-learning. He somehow survived the above incident with a verbal warning. EDIT: GHB and roofies are two different things Deathslinger fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Mar 6, 2023 |
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Mar 1, 2023 00:07
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Drinkslinger posted:
That's what they nailed Al Capone for
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Mar 1, 2023 00:24
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[quote="Drinkslinger" post="530146166"] Wanna know what he got fired for? Was gonna guess not doing his timesheet on time.
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Mar 1, 2023 00:33
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