What a Horrible Place to Work (Finale)

Tags

blog, blogging, chuy, humor, life, memories, work

The morning of my 26^th birthday I was ecstatic to have an entire day without work or school.  Around 10am I got a text from Erin saying:

Turn on the news!

What channel?

Any channel.

I ran to the set and began riffling through the stations to find one that was covering the news.

At first I had no idea what was going on, clip after clip after clip of Chuy’s restaurants in three states appeared rapid fire across the screen; the anchor talking about something unrelated to the photos, and my phone started blowing up. 

Maria is in jail.

They took Jose.

 Juan didn’t come into work today; do you know how to get a hold of his wife Imelda?   

On and on for about half an hour.  People I had grown so close to and I had no idea, no idea that most of them were not in the states legally. 

I watched as ICE swarmed a Chuy’s and ran in like the bomb squad, returning later with people in handcuffs and /or stacks of papers.  It wasn’t something one could prepare for, it wasn’t something I expected.  I knew that Chuy’s was in trouble, a few weeks prior Mary gave a stack the size of a shoebox, worth of bills to our district manager.  I assumed we would be closed due to breech of rental agreement, not for this…..

 

The owner Mark, was a grumpy paraplegic (I suppose rightly so since he was confined to a wheelchair);  I didn’t have to deal with him much, as he really didn’t care to come in, which was fine by me I heard he was a sexist, racist, ass whip and I didn’t need to deal with that nonsense.  Apparently he used to speak to our non-English speaking staff in a tone that made it sound like what he was saying was kind, but the words he was using were completely derogatory and inappropriate.  I know if I was on shift when what was told to me happened between him and staff, I wouldn’t have been silent about it.  I already had a speech written in my head, I knew the speech would get me fired, but if what I had been told was true it wasn’t a place I wanted to work at anyway. 

 

Allegedly the reason there were so many people that spoke Spanish fluently, was because they were hired to work illegally.  They were being paid under the table, and very very little.  Not only was he a horrible guy that (allegedly) cheated the government out of God knows how much in taxes, but he wasn’t paying those who really truly earned their money anything remotely close to minimum wage. 

 

The only thing I can say for sure is that our Chuy’s doors closed the morning of my birthday, and I was called two days later to come in for my shift.  As it was explained to me that the staff would be working for tips alone, all the cooks had either been deported or were held up in their homes, so we would have to ring people up, cook, make drinks, and clean all at the same time.  That in itself sounded like a nightmare, but then I asked about regular pay.  I never got money on my paycheck… it all went to the government, but that means I paid my taxes and I was told that I would not be getting a paycheck (stub) at all for work I provided going forward.  “Until you can give me documentation that I am and have been actively paying my taxes, I will not be coming in.”

“We have to do this for Mark; he needs all the money he can get to hire a good lawyer.”

“You must be joking, he made his bed…” Basically, I told them to take their job and shove it. 

 

 

Erin and I spent the next week reeling about the place we had once worked, how stupid they were to think they wouldn’t be in trouble for paying people under the table, after the major boss had been arrested.  We talked about the abuse, the lack of direction, the crazy pothead guy that took hours and hours to count down the drawers so that he didn’t have to do any of the closing duties and suddenly it clicked… she was the only reason I stayed as long as I did.  She is the only person that I have ever worked with that I still remain in contact with.  We have both lost jobs since then, just not as epically as that one.

 

Again, just because something is highly sought after, does not make it a great place to be.

What a Horrible Place to Work (Part I)

Tags

chuy, elite one, humor, life, memories, new jobs, work, yardhouse

In the 11 years that I have been in the working industry, I have held many jobs. Very few of them I loved, in fact most of them I hated, but one of the worst was Chuy’s Mesquite Broiler.

 

Mike and I lost our jobs at the same time when our work burnt down in October of 2010. We were both pretty frantic to find new jobs since our income went from tolerable to nonexistent on both ends. Mike found work at the Yardhouse (which he ended up hating too, but that is a totally different story), I found myself at a divey restaurant/bar called Chuy’s.

Chuy’s was pretty elite, one had to know somebody that was somebody in order to work there. I learned the hard way, just because something is highly sought after, does not make it a great place to be.

Training was ridiculous and far longer than it should have been; those who didn’t take a test covering exactly what were in our dishes (our sloppy, greasy, bean filled dishes) earned half tips. That aspect was pretty fair, if you don’t know the menu you shouldn’t be tipped out completely, but they made me wait and wait to take the test. Finally my boss came to me and yelled “ARE YOU GONNA ASK ME TO TAKE THE TEST OR WHAT?” I didn’t realize it was something I had to ask for, and to make matters worse when all was said and done I was the first person to have taken it that soon. How long are you not tipping people properly? A month? (I think my time frame was something like a week, but I knew the menu after a day and I busted my ass, as I have done every job, ever).

Anyway the test was a joke; my favorite question “Who owns Chuy’s?” Which was never told to me and was also never on the menu, not to mention having nothing to do with the food.
I had to look it up and the answer I provided was wrong. Sarah, a girl whose name you will learn by the time this post, laughed at my answer like I was a half retarded child and she was the school bully. Mike was livid, he had entered the establishment some time before my test was graded (for an end of work cocktail), and I thought he was going to rip her head off… just for making me feel small.

Things were never wonderful at Chuy’s, it was a lot of backbreaking work… cleaning, scrubbing, serving, serving, talking, bitching, serving, cleaning that went above and beyond any job I had ever had before. I was once taken into the walk-in (where drinks are stored) and told to scrub the floors clean. It would have been fine if the floor hadn’t looked like it had never been cleaned before. It was so bad that my pants filled up with a dark brown liquid that to this day I have no idea what it was. We were told to get on ladders and clean the trinket filled trellis, while there were customers in the restaurant, and that we could not go home until it was done. As I perched precariously on the ladder high above people’s heads a man came in and bumped the ladder. It swayed back and forth and a coworker ran over to make sure I didn’t fall. I have never been the suing type, but in that moment I was going to sue everyone. I couldn’t believe they had put my safety at risk to cut corners and save a few bucks on a cleaning crew. The fact that we did it during office hours only exacerbated the situation, as many customers complained about the kitty sized dust balls we kept throwing on the floor. I don’t blame them, I was mortified doing it.

Being paid peanuts and having to clean restrooms filled with other people’s bodily fluids (and pubes… seriously I have no idea what people are doing in bathrooms but gross) was degrading to say the least. We were given Windex to scrub down the toilets, windows, floors, doors, on and on, I stopped using our restrooms. Windex does not disinfect, especially .99 cent store Windex.