I used to work at a fast food restaurant my friend owned back in the 90s and the phone would ring and if my friend was busy he’d tell me to go in the bathroom and answer the phone and pretend to be a pizza place so he didn’t have to make pizzas.

It was a fast food burger joint and my friend owned 3 of them. It was a pretty by the numbers fast food place. Burgers, sandwiches, fries, milkshakes, and pizzas. The entire menu was probably around 50 plus items, but when my friend gave me my yearly review he noticed that I only ordered the cheeseburger every single time I was able to eat lunch for free at work. He asked me if it was too expensive to eat there and if I could get a discount. I told him that the cheeseburgers were just delicious and I got it with the perfect toppings. <br><br>Fast forward a couple more years and my friend is my manager at a different time of the year and he’s really busy and stressed out. He’s running everything and is having a really hard time with it. I assume he was having an affair at the time but he was really stressed out and his head was elsewhere.<br><br>I can’t remember the exact reason but he was having a hard time juggling everything. Maybe we were short staffed or one of our major suppliers didn’t send us stuff in time but it was bad. I told him he should just let Pizzas go. I told him he was loosing money on every pizza that went out and if he started selling them at market price we wouldn’t sell a single one. He could also buy them frozen and they were a dime a dozen and no one would be the wiser. As long as he had pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese he could get a bucket of it made for him and use that and people would never notice. Or he could just buy Stouffer’s and burn them to shit and people would still buy them. He was aghast I was making such a suggestion and since i was the assistant manager he leaned on me pretty heavily.<br><br>Suddenly every hour he was calling me over to run something by me. If he decided to make a change to the restaurant I was the one that had to go to the print shop. We had just gotten a new computer in the back and was learning how to use it. It was a bit of a tinkerers dream, but for a business it was a bit of a headache.<br><br>Before the day was over he had me doing all sorts of things I had never done before. The last straw came one morning when I came in to work. I was the third person in the restaurant and they were my friend, a cook who was the younger cousin of one of the managers, and the other manager at the time. When I came in my friend greeted me and immediately started giving a list of things for me to do. <br><br>None of them had anything to do with running the restaurant. I was going to the bank to make a withdrawal. I was going to a restaurant up the street and getting a case of their steak sauce and making sure they were selling it to me for a dollar. I was going to the mall to see if a certain video game had come in or not. I was going to the pita place down the street and seeing if they had any openings and if he was a good fit for them. In one day i was going to be a banker, sauce taste tester, video game shopper, and head hunter. <br><br>I don’t know how he thought I was going to accomplish everything he asked me to do but as he was giving me my list I got my things and I walked out of the restaurant. I never went back. I never even called to quit. I showed up at his house the following weekend and I let him have it. I reminded him of my original suggestion and he didn’t like it then but now he really hated it. I told him to send me my check in the mail or I was going to the labor board.<br><br>About two weeks later I got my check in the mail. It was probably double what it should have been because he figured I was going to the labor board wither way so he wanted to give me a good taste of his money.<br><br>I learned a lot about my friend that day. The first was that he was a very lazy man. The second was that he hated me very much and the last was that I was very lazy. I hadn’t realized it until that day but I was very lazy and I realized I needed to push myself more. I have gotten far in life and I feel like I am living the way I am supposed to live. <br><br>But as for my friend he is not doing well. He is still running his restaurants and now he owns most of a fast food franchise in my state. He has enough money but he doesn’t spend it on anything he likes. He is not a good boss and his restaurants are the worst in the company. His restaurants have been in every top ten worst lists in the state. He has been in the top five and has been number one. I feel like I haven’t seen him in years but I have seen a few of his restaurants. I have never been in them but I have never seen them busy.<br><br>edit: Wow this blew up! I never get many post on any of my other things so I went to bed last night and got no love. I woke up this morning and had 4k upvoted so I am really happy for that. Thank you so much to everyone who has upvoted me. I appreciate it very much. When I wrote this I didn’t think it was a big deal but it is definitely my highest post on reddit.<br><br>For those of you that are asking for an update on my friend Mike, I don’t have much. I am not in regular contact with him but I still run into him from time to time. I saw him at a baseball game and we were sitting a few rows away from each other. I didn’t realize he was there until he started yelling for me to come down. I thought he was being sarcastic but when I got there he was genuinely happy to see me. I am not really sure what he does with his time but the last time I saw him he told me his son plays baseball and he goes to every game. <br><br>As for the restaurants I have been in them twice and both were over ten years ago. They are dirtier now than they were when I worked there. They have been in the news quite a bit over the years but nothing too major. I remember a few years ago there was a big problem with their grease traps. They had no permits for them and they were so clogged that they were dumping them in the storm drains. It was a very big deal in town hall for a few meetings but nothing ever came of it. <br><br>I don’t know how many of his restaurants are still operational but the last time I drove past his original one it was closed. It was still his but it looked abandoned for years. I don’t know if it was closed down by the government or if he closed it down himself. He has opened up a few other restaurants over the years but none of them have ever lasted long. There is one that he still has where he serves chicken tenders and cheese steak sandwiches. He has had it for a few years now but the last time I drove past the sign said closed until further notice. I’m not really sure what to make of it since he just left all of the other signs up.<br><br>Over the years I have talked to many people that have worked for him since I left and everyone has the same stories to tell. He is not a nice man and everyone seems to think he’s a bit of a neanderthal. I don’t really like to gossip but it’s hard not to when people tell you horrible things about someone you used to know. <br><br>I have also learned a lot through Freedom of Information requests. He has been sued numerous times over the years. Most of them seem to be over sexual harassment but a few of them is for racist comments. One in particular caught my eye when a former manager got pregnant and she had to take a month off. When she came back she was demoted to line staff and was eventually fired. He was sued for millions in that one and I’m not really sure what happened with it. I would think a racist sexist piece of shit like him would get in a lot of trouble but his restaurants are all still up and running.<br><br>A lot has happened since then but we all move on with out lives. Like I said I appreciate all of the support and thank you all for reading my story.