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‘Laughing through his anger’: Restaurant host gets written up for ‘abandoning’ post to aid with a car crash, convinces manager to fire him, celebrates

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  • "I was written up for 'abandoning pos'"

    To clarify my title, I am not in the military. This takes place when I was 20, working summer jobs while living with my parents to pay for college.
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  • I was already working full time as a waiter at a very fun restaurant that I really enjoyed, but I wanted to make a little extra money, so I got a job as a host at another restaurant, lets call it "Sapphire Wednesdays." I knew immediately that the place was mismanaged (mostly cued in by the manager having a beer at 2pm on a Tuesday during my interview,) but my responsibilities as a host were very easy: seat customers, inform servers, sweep the floor near the front.
  • I had already been working in restaurants since I was 16, so my training was over in about an hour.
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  • About a week after I was hired, sometime after lunch but before dinner rush, there was a car accident in front of the store.
  • A car was sideswiped by a semi and run into a telephone pole on a busy suburban road.
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  • I told a server to call 911 and sprinted out and across the parking lot to check on the car.
  • Thankfully, the woman in the car was shaken but fine, the truck driver was out of his truck and on the phone with 911, and other drivers had stopped as well, a very nice moment of humanity from folks on their way home from work.
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  • I decided that everything was being handled as best as possible, so I went back into the restaurant.
  • I walk back in to find the manager standing at the empty host stand in front of a nearly empty dining room asking "where did you go?" "There was an accident, I went out to make sure everyone was ok" Manager asks "why did you feel the need to do that?" Idk because I'm a human???
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  • After a brief back and forth, the manager says he HAS to write me up for "abandoning post." I was too confused and angry to argue, so I told him that was fine.
  • He then reminded me that "one more write up within my first month means I'd be fired." I went home and explained all this to my dad, who was laughing through his anger, and suggested I quit and just focus on the other job.
  • I decided he was right, but hatched a plan: rather than quit, I showed up an hour late to my next shift that the same manager worked.
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  • This happened to be friday night during dinner, and i was the only host scheduled. The manger was furious that he had to get out of the office and do actual work, so when I walked in he saw me and immediately began berating me.
  • I asked if I was going to get written up for this, to which he replied (in front of a crowd of customers, I might add) "You bet your a you're getting written up!!" "OH NO, I guess I'm fired then!
  • See ya!" I went home and drank whiskey and smoked a cigar with my dad on the back porch to celebrate.

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