Share the signs your place of employment is going under

by Unicornio999

38 Comments

  1. JustAnAverageGuy

    “We’re switching to monthly payroll”

    but my personal favorite:

    IRS walks in: “We’re here under court order to seize all on-hand cash in the building.”

    That last guy hadn’t paid taxes in like 5 years I guess. Including payroll taxes. Wtf.

  2. rroyce81

    They start cutting their hours of operation and raise the cost of the food.

  3. Quercus408

    Unless I get commission for every customer I bring through the door, thats not ever happening.

  4. CoppertopTX

    That’s when you slot “Dance Band on the Titanic” by Harry Chapin into the kitchen music rotation after you secure a new gig, on your way out.

  5. SilkwormAbraxas

    I went to a bar and they said “Something’s wrong with the taps so I can’t pour you anything but I have canned beers.” After we got our drinks I turned to my boyfriend and predicted “they can’t pay their regular beverage supplier, they’ll be closed soon.”

    Smash cut, 1 month later: Bar Closed.

  6. CanadianDragonGuy

    The fuck is that, Letterkenny Ontario?

  7. LMAO this might be the bleakest one I’ve ever seen.

    but also, the debit/credit machines go down… and just never come back on.

  8. BodybuilderDue4035

    When I started in the industry I worked in a bunch of mom and pop places where they paid cash, when shit started to go south you notice how the cash would have less 20 dollar bills and more singles or even change .

  9. Mezcal_Madness

    Ugh I had bosses do that. I told them no, I’m not using my personal life to promote their business, outside of friends knowing where I worked. It was never well received. Now, if they had offered to pay me for marketing, that would have been a different story.

  10. raisin22

    This reminds me of that one time where I was supposed to write a glowing review.

  11. SainT2385

    They start begging influencers to come eat for free for advertising

  12. Ecstatic_Schedule_48

    We had negative sales one day ( cost of employee meals exceeded the sales of the day)

  13. j-endsville

    Woof. I ain’t advertising shit. I don’t even wear my work shirts unless I’m on the clock.

  14. mostly_sarcastic

    “What’s our marketing budget for the year?”

    “What’s the commission rate for completed sales?”

    “Is my position becoming salary-based or will I receive overtime for hours worked outside business hours?”

  15. Civilian216

    > “You’re all going to be garnishing and traying your own orders from now on”

    When Expo is too expensive, you’re not having a good time.

  16. StevenAssantisFoot

    They stop getting linen service, towel rationing, the owners taking shit home to launder themselves, they start using those green disposable-reusable schmattes. 

  17. WakingOwl1

    When we went from being closed one day a week to being closed two -then three.

  18. Active_Hippo

    The kind high performers are leaving. They carry the place on their shoulders and support their coworkers. Even worse if they start complaining about favouritism before they leave
    Barely any information from management, so gossip spreads like wild fire.

  19. bman23433

    I worked at a place that had a similar request about Google reviews. After I left, they asked all FOH to push at their tables for 5 star google reviews and they would get a shift drink of the customer did.

  20. rudebutts

    Getting asked by a kitchen guy if I knew when the beer license was getting renewed

  21. Trekgiant8018

    The death knell of every restaurant is a frantic, multi post per day social media blast.

  22. We got an email from the investment company that our 401k match is ending at the end of the year. The owner quickly sent out an email saying they were “reevaluating benefits” to try to calm everyone down.
    Less than a week after that, he’s cutting hours and changed the clock-in policy. We used to have a +/-10 minutes to clock in/out. We can now only clock in exactly at scheduled time, and cannot clock out late at all.

    He’s trying to get us to start opening procedures an hour later because “running the HVAC for one person for an hour isn’t cost effective.”

    He’s pinching pennies on food costs, we now have maybe 7 different suppliers instead of 3 (Sysco, GFS, & a produce guy) and are getting very low quality product. I can’t believe I actually miss Sysco stuff…

    He also earlier this year moved everybody to tipped minimum wage and is pooling tips between everyone.

  23. reducing hours was the first sign I saw at our place.

    then having vendors stand around and wait for payment before unloading delivery

    owner would also go to the abc store and I’m pretty sure he was reloading the bar with cheap stuff

  24. AppleSauceSwaddles

    New GM was hired at one of the places I worked at and she laid off half the staff who have been working for years just to replace them with her own personal harem

  25. We’re all basically holding customers at gunpoint to give us good reviews. And the fake robotic nice thing is on a whole new level. The customers don’t seem weirded out by it (mostly).

    Thank absolute FUCK that I don’t work FOH. I’d quit.

  26. ChefCharmaine

    Aside from the obvious late/bounced paychecks:

    📛 Vendor accounts on hold…every week.

    📛 Owners canceling orders (by the case)…to go the store to buy product (by the piece).

    📛 Salaried employees suddenly paying more in “taxes”, even though tax laws have not changed.

    📛 Benefit plans are canceled.

    📛 Owners go AWOL.

    📛 The landlord suddenly reappears to do early morning walkthroughs…but not with the owners.

  27. Particular-Zone7288

    First they stop maintenance of the machines,

    Then food quality starts dropping,

    Then the labour budget gets “tightened”

    Then stuff stops getting replaced, plates, cutlery etc

    The moment they start shaving opening hours then it’s usually game over

  28. rIceCream_King

    •late on checks.
    •unpaid vendor invoices exceeding $20,000
    •opened another location attempted to recoup
    •avoiding what used to be plenty of overtime pay

  29. Place im at now is a dying a slowwww death. Signs started showing a couple months ago when they cut hours of operations and fired the whole breakfast crew, and the pastry chef (me) and the banquet chef basically had take over the line and start making breakfast orders for the cafe on the property.

    Then we started getting cut off from vendors and are constantly out of essential ingredients (couldn’t source dark chocolate from anywhere for about a month until they finally cut a check to one of our vendors).

    The most recent bill they skipped on is the linen company, so we’ve been bringing aprons and towels from home for the past 3 weeks.

    Honestly the only reason this place is still open is because this property is managed by a huge hotel chain and they have to have food options for their highest tier customers per their policy (entitled to free breaksfast, room service, among other things). The writing on the wall has been there for a whileeee but I get good benifits so I’m just gonna keep showing up till they start having payroll problems lol

  30. I’ll be sure to spread the word to people I don’t give a shit about on a platform I haven’t used in 13 years

  31. dreamshards8

    Well, we just gutted all of our pastry department and began outsourcing over half of our desserts.

  32. A great social media presence will not fix:

    Tired menu items

    Dingy decor

    Unhappy employees

    Slow service

    Expensive items that do not deliver value

    Lack of cleanliness

    Frozen, not fresh offerings