the whole story is too long, so I'll give you the cliff notes. I made an awesome dessert special today. The staff loved it, bosses wife (co owner) loved it and by the end of the night I'd sold a crap load and the customers loved it.
But before that, Boss man has been walking around for days looking like someone stole his Christmas puppy. Today he was extra droopy. Barely looks up when I say "good afternoon" when I walk in the kitchen. That's nothing new as he really dislikes me. I made some mini cream puffs, without getting detailed I'll just say that they can be touchy and may not do what you want for various reasons. Mine were a bit moist in the middle and need literally 3 min more in the oven. Boss man see this and flips. Starts screaming his head off calls them sh&@ and starts throwing my sheet pan. He's very close to me now so I can smell the booze and see the sweat pouring off of his face. The whole staff stops what they are doing and are frozen.
This is far from the first drunken tantrum we've seen. So I go into detach mode and walk away. When I return he's gone. I start making another batch of puffs. The place is dead silent and tense. Some of the servers come in the kitchen and hug me and say "why always you?"
Personally he has no respect for women and I'm the only woman in the kitchen, so that's part of it.
Later boss wife comes in the kitchen and nudges me and says "don't take it personally. Some days he just can't keep his demons under control and they get off the leash. He was yelling at me and was already mad, then he stared in on you and went back to yelling at me. You just kind of got sandwiched in. Just walk it off"
one of the other chefs chimed in , "why should WE walk it off?" There was no answer to that. So I said "K, he's been drinking. You can smell it. Every time he acts like this he's tanked. He's got to get help. You know that." She just nodded and admitted its been rough for her lately, but he's got this whole "macho, Italian guy thing going on." Don't ya love the cultural excuse? Our handy man Sean likes to play the Irish card. My dad was just a good ol boy who loved his bourbon. Please. But I digress.
I said to her " I'm tired of being the sacrificial lamb around here! He doesn't talk to anybody in the kitchen like he talks to me." She says its just because I'm the first here and so I get first sucker punch. Well, I'm done. Have been for awhile but this just put the cherry on the cake. To top it off, he comes back later and with a bag of puffs that he had a guy at one of his other restaurants (owns 5) make and starts yelling for me to get the vanilla ice cream. He makes a little ice cream sandwich with chocolate sauce grabs a bunch of spoons throws them on the table and yells at us "try this! You tell me what's good and what's sh@$& around here!" And storms out. He comes back to find not one person had eaten his puff. He says "nobody's going to try it? Pathetic!" And leaves. No one had the stomach. I just chucked it in the trash.
I work tomorrow and I'm off Sunday/Monday. I will spend every waking moment looking for a new job anywhere else doing anything. There are lots of hotels and I can probably get a house keeping job to hold me over until I find another restaurant. My friend has a food truck and I can do that even if it's only for the summer. I'm done, done, done!
