Riding on That Short Bus…

So I was sitting here trying to get my staffing a couple of nights ago when one of my managers called me. I guess when he called the store whoever it was that answered the phone was not supposed to be working and he thought they sounded drunk. He went ahead and drove on in to his store to see what was up.

To make a long story short the guy that occasionally works as a relief manager for me had shown up and sent one of the waitresses home (he doesn’t have any kind of authority for that sort of stuff) and was clocked in and working as her AND had made her pay him $20 to work in her place. Nobody called the manager or me to let us know what was going on.

The guy must have been messed up on pain pills or something. Apparently he kept wandering around asking ‘what did I do, what did I do?’ when the manager asked him to leave. He refused to get out of the restaurant so my manager called the law on him and they ran him off the property.

According to the guy he had a series of mini-strokes and ended up going to the emergency room. I tend to trust people when they tell me stuff but I told him he would need to bring me the paperwork from the hospital. Aside from his behavior is the fact that he never should have been working anyway, particularly under someone else’s name. It’s illegal in addition to being against our company policies.

Needless to say one of the waitresses was fired for theft during that time and I have pulled the guy off of that store’s schedule until he can bring me the medical paperwork proving what he says. Even then he may not be working back in that store which is going to seriously curtail his hours and the days he can work. I don’t know what the fuck got in his head to make him think it was a good idea. The only reason he hasn’t been terminated yet is that he has been with us 25+ years and is a pretty good employee. I will end up having to make sure I document all of it though, including a written warning, just to cover my ass.

This seems to have been the longest week in history. I ended up working seven days and Christmas was a 20 hour day for me. I am still pretty stressed out and just want to sleep for a week. I’m off today and my next two days off are something like January 8th and 9th. I may try and get another day off between now and then but it’s not likely. All of us have to work the 31st and 1st and then I have my three managers off two days apiece before I am taking any time off. I just didn’t feel like it would be right for me to take time off and rest up prior to my employees.

I do get a vacation soon though, mid-February. I will take at least two days off during that time where I do NO work. No paid postings, no working on web sites, no fucking restaurants. My last complete day off with neither things was most likely back in October when I spent the weekend in Helen.

I think I am going to clean up and go hit the coffee shop with my brother for a couple of hours, then I will get back online later today. I have several different projects I am working on and need to get at least some stuff finished.