‘They expect us to do it in one hour’: Employee abandoned by coworkers is left to close restaurant alone

Restaurant work isn’t for the faint of heart, especially if it’s a short-staff situation. One woman found herself in the thick of this very thing when she shared a video on TikTok of her unnamed restaurant’s kitchen literally overflowing with dirty dishes, and her being the only one to clean it up… in one hour.

The caption in the video says “Who is doing the job of 3 people and only getting paid for the job of 1?” “Not me!” she titled the video, with the hash “idontgetpaidenough.” Do any of us? Well, besides Bob Iger, I guess.

“So tonight,” she says as she surveys the damage, a closer “called in sick and they never scheduled us with a dishwasher.” It really does look like a kitchen from a movie about a teen summer camp.

There are dishes that I don’t even think I’ve seen before. Metal and aluminum overflowing from every crevice in this poor kitchen. It’s enough to make you want to take a bath and get cleaned up.

“You know what’s funny is they expect me, the grill closer, to be the one who does all these dishes. But where’s the dishwasher? Where’s the pre grill closer?” she asks as she points out more and more dirty dishes.

“Oh yeah, they expect us to do it in one hour? Not to mention I have to make all the sandwiches for the store until it closes. By myself. Who’s doing this?”

It’s hard not to feel bad for this person. It’s also hard to not think about how a restaurant company expects its employees to basically be indentured servants for very low wages. Adding injury to insult, grill cooks traditionally don’t get health care or benefits.

If anything, this video is a nice microcosm of how labor works in the United States in general; underpaid workers are expected to do the brunt of the work of a corporation and be happy to do so. We treat workers like crap. Even actors. We even treat actors terribly. By “we,” I mean corporations, not the royal we.

The commenters on this one are on her side, too. “I would just keep doing my job at my pace and clock out on time. not my fault,” one said.

“Baby, I’d walk right out that door and never look back! That kind of stress isn’t needed in life!,” said another. Who wouldn’t want to flip their boss the proverbial bird and leave? Unfortunately, most of us — closer to all of us — have to work to pay for things. We got bills to pay!

Didn’t mean for this to turn into some dystopian view on humanity, but it’s pretty clear how things work in this world. Happy Wednesday, everyone.