Hello Reddit,
To keep the story relevant, I am a 21m who works at a popular restaurant in the little town I go to college to. I have a bit of a smaller figure and have a bit of a feminine voice.
Flash forward four hours into my shift, it’s been a good shift until around 9:30pm. When I see a line of people begin showing up. (We close at 10pm) :/ but the eight of us in the shop pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and prepared to serve the 40-50 people coming in.
Things were going smooth, I was running orders out while my manager was scooping custard, my other coworker upfront was at the cash register. It gets to the inside orders and I go and carry over order 70 and 71 to the group of these boys that recently just came from the showchoir rush.
I smile as I approach the back table, I’m tired from my shift but hey it’s almost done. As I walk up to the table, here’s how the interaction goes.
“Here’s your guys custard.” I say, sliding the custard on the table to two guys who raised their hands as I approached.
“Thanks kitten.” One replies (he’s a show choir boy) as he gets a few laughs from the idiots in the crowd. Immediately my face flushes red, I mean that’s just not appropriate. I’m just trying to do my job you know. So that’s exactly what I say.
“Come on guys, let’s be appropriate.” I say, half laughing it off but clearly I was embarrassed. I prepare to walk away before I get another snark response.
“Good kitten.” I hear the same dude yell. At this point I’m getting pissed and I can’t explain it to you guys. But I just could feel the homophobia coming off these guys; this wasn’t just about a little joke. This was personal.
“I can go get my manager for you guys if that works.” I rebuttal with a frown. Pointing towards the front of the restaurant. These other dudes at the table are just laughing and playing along like nothing is wrong. Like this is casual for them which I find insane.
“Yes Mam!” Another says. Saluting me. At that point I was feeling super disrespected, and the way I grew up was when you’re continually disrespected you need to teach someone a lesson.
Unfortunately I’m a broke college student so I wasn’t prepared to lose my job over these fugly little show choir boys.
I could feel tears swelling in my eyes and truthfully I don’t know if this message to them was effective but I tried.
“Are you guys serious? Do you not have jobs yourselves? How would you feel if someone came into your place of employment, 30 fucking minutes before close like some dumbass clown and decided to harass a worker. Who BY THE WAY.” (I REALLY enunciated the btw, looking at their chocolate custards.) “Works with your food. So can we please be more respectful.”
I didn’t bother to wait. I was embarrassed and the adrenaline was racing through me enough. That’s mainly the gist of what I said however I did use a lot of swear words. So many infact that I now have a meeting with my manager tomorrow to go over the situation and how we could’ve handled it better. (One of them complained if you can believe it)
I’m scared to lose my job guys. I even held back, I was so close to getting physical but I really cant lose my job. I just got an apartment and I start school next fall.
TLDR; Funny douchebag showchoir guys come into the restaurant before close; call me names like “kitten” and other icky shit; and being overall rude. I gave them what I thought was a proper scolding and now I might get in trouble for it at work.
Comments
First off, this situation should not have happened and those boys are jerks. Second, I don’t see the homophobic part? Calling a girl a ‘kitten’ to try to fool around and be funny to the redt kf the group is dumb, but that’s it, I guess?
I don’t think you’re gonna lose the job, but your manager is right, you could have handled it differently. Jerks happen and waiters are easy tsrgets.
Firm, dismissove but no swearing would have gotten your point across much better.
Ask your manager if you got his support if anything like this happens again and you don’t feem comfortable serving a group like this again.
The answer will tell you if you should be looking for another job or not.
You did what you felt you had to do in light of being disrespected, knowing it might only worsen. Trying to make light of it initially didn’t work. You did not ask for or want this scenario. In hindsight, it perhaps could have been handled better, but it could have gotten much worse if you had not reacted. It was a difficult situation; you were tired, and everyone was busy coping with late customers. I do not think turning customers away initially would have been an option, nor would bothering your manager to explain the situation have been appreciated. “Caught between a rock and a hard place.” 🤷♂️ If I were your manager, I would at least try to understand and maybe promote you or try to support you, or suggest an alternative way to cope with this, like banning these people from visiting again. 👍🏻
It was a show choir…