I Don't Care What You Say...I'm Not Bringing My Dead Dog To Work
And other tales of ridiculously tyrannical bosses
(Olive Garden- About as authentically Italian as my Czech-German grandmother.)
I’ve never been very good at working underneath people, especially those who literally wanted me underneath them. Yeah, I know; shit happens, and not just to women, but I’ll save that story for another time.
This time, I have a story involving dead dogs, totaled cars, lazy whiners, and workers coughing who-knows-what into people’s salads.
I know; kinda makes me want to stay home and make a couple of PB&Js. But, at least that way, I know what’s going into it.
During my last year in college, I worked in a trendy restaurant in downtown St. Paul. Our schtick was that the bar and every table had peanuts in the shell in a large bowl. People would eat them and throw the shells on the floor, at which point their bowls would be refilled- lather, rinse, repeat. It was a bunch of lawsuits looking for a place to happen, and it was something of a miracle that no one ever slipped and broke their neck or anything else.
I started busing tables and moved up to waiting tables after a couple of months. During that year, I saw what I thought was the absolute worst of humanity. There were the managers who propositioned the female servers and penalized the ones who wouldn’t put out for them…which was everyone. We had a sizeable LGBTQ clientele, which wasn’t a problem, except that customers frequently propositioned me. And don’t get me started on the bartenders, who were the horniest things on two legs I’d EVER seen.
The only way I could get through my shifts was by getting stoned with two friends who were gay and happened to have some of the best weed that could be found in Minnesota in the early 80s…which wasn’t saying much. Still, that gave me enough of a I-don’t-give-a-fuck to keep from drop-kicking one of the managers or a customer across the restaurant.
One night, one of the male assistant managers locked me in his office and told me in very explicit terms what he wanted to do to me (my naivete was such that my first thought was, “Isn’t that going to hurt?”) It was all I could do to break free and get out of his office. I couldn’t say anything because I desperately needed the job to make rent and tuition…and he knew it.
I went upstairs, grabbed my gay friend, Tom, and we stepped out into the alley behind the restaurant so I could calm down. He pulled out a joint, and I think I smoked almost all of it myself. I don’t remember anything of the night after that, which is probably a good thing because even then, assault with a deadly weapon was a felony in Minnesota.
So when I saw this story, I felt that I could somehow relate. Even though it wasn’t my story, I could relate to it.
Why? Because putting an immature, unqualified, pinhead control freak into a management position never ends well.
Attention ALL Team Members:
Our call offs are occurring at a staggering rate. From now on, if you call off, you might as well go out and look for another job. We are no longer tolerating ANY excuse for calling off. If you're sick, you need to come prove it to us. If your dog died, you need to bring him in and prove it to us. If its a "family emergency" and you can't say, too bad. Go work somewhere else. If you only want morning shifts, too bad go work at a bank. If anyone from here on out calls out more than ONCE in the next 30 days you will not have a job. Do you know in my 11.5 years at Darden how many days I called off? Zero. I came in sick. I got in a wreck literally on my to work one time, airbags went off and my car was totaled, but you know what, I made it to work, ON TIME! There are no more excuses. Us, collectively as a management team have had enough. If you don't want to work here, don't. It's as simple as that. If you're here and want to work, then work. No more complainging [sic] about not being cut or not being able to leave early. You're in the restaurant business. Do you think I want to be here until midnight on Friday and Saturday? No. I'd much rather be at home with my husband and dog, going to the movies or seeing family. But I don't, I'm dedicated to being here. As should you. No more excuses or complaints.
I hope you choose to continue to work here and I think we (management) make it as easy as we can on ya'll. Thank you for your time and thank you to those who come in every day on time and work hard. I wish there were more like you.
OK, y’all…if you work for anyone who among ANY of their rules says, “If your dog died, you need to bring him in and prove it to us,” RUN…as fast and as far as you can. Things can only get worse, and trust me, they will- and sooner than you think.
I don’t care who I work for or how important my job may be. If my dog dies, I’m not hauling their carcass to work and dumping it on my boss’s desk. That betrays a world-class lack of trust you shouldn’t want any part of.
And yet, Matt Walsh, that Conservative defender of the oligarch class and his self-interest, fails to see anything wrong with this policy. Shocked, I am shocked that he would feel this way.
Granted, restaurant jobs aren’t meant to be forever careers, but that isn’t a license to treat employees like crap. I’m sick and tired of listening to people complaining about how “no one wants to work anymore” without considering the perspective of those they expect to work for them. Do they provide them with a living wage? Decent working conditions? Reasonable hours? Do they try to accommodate reasonable requests for time off? Do they take into consideration that employees have lives outside of the job?
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Businesses can't get employees who will show up to work. The work ethic that my generation had somehow died in the past 20 years.</p>— Beth Donovan (@AngoraGoatLady) <a href="
I’m sorry, Ms. Donovan, but that’s a load of Grade-A, top-shelf, USDA Prime bullshit. While it’s true that today’s twenty-somethings may approach work differently, most business owners don’t approach them any differently.
If you want to attract good people, you have to make it worth their while. They’re not going to come and beat down your door. If you pay minimum wage, you’ll get what you pay for. If you pay well, create an excellent working atmosphere, value your employees, and make them feel as if they’re essential to your company's mission, you’ll attract better-quality employees.
The idea that you have to run something akin to a slave ship and force employees to bring in the dead dogs as proof that their dog DID pass on is offensive. What intelligent, capable person possessed of even the barest shred of self-esteem would want to work in that kind of sweatshop?
People want to work; they don’t want to do meaningless work for low pay and no chance of advancement or improvement. So if you provide good people with good pay, good working conditions, and proper training, and treat them like you give a damn, odds are you’ll have a stable workforce and a successful business.
That shouldn’t be rocket science, but too many business owners just don’t get it. They don’t understand that labor is a commodity, just like the products and services they sell. No one should expect workers to undervalue and undersell their product- their labor- just because the business owner doesn’t want to pay fair market value.
No, we’ve come down on the side of business for far too long. It’s time to recognize that workers have the right to properly value and demand compensation for their labor. Not only that, they have to right to expect a decent working environment, a reasonable shot at advancement, and the right to be treated as if they’re more than just a cog in a machine.
“People don’t want to work anymore?” How about creating an environment that makes people want to work for you? No one owes you their labor. You owe it to workers to make it worthwhile to come to work for you and provide you with their labor.
All this time, we’ve had it backasswards because we’ve allowed the oligarch class to set the agenda and control the narrative. It’s time we took power back and put it where it belongs.
I read somewhere (I want to say Thomas Merton, don't ask how I ended up in one of his books because I don't remember) made the distinction between "work" and mere "labor." The first is, as you say, something most people want to do; people want to engage their energies in meaningful and constructive activities. Labor, however, is what most of us get stuck with: rote, vacuous, mechanical, and benumbing.