A good manager knows when to ask their team for their opinion and will listen to what they have to say. There’s nothing like getting an expert’s take on things, no matter whether they’re a server, an accountant, a dishwasher, or a busser who might clear hundreds of dishes each night.

Redditor u/balles_de_acier, who used to work as a busboy at a hotel coffee shop back when he was a teenager, shared an intriguing drama on the r/MaliciousCompliance online group. He revealed how one night went disastrously wrong when he was asked to work the evening shift “in the dish pit,” the same night that a massive banquet was supposed to happen. Scroll down for the full story and to see how the internet reacted to it.

It’s frustrating when your manager doesn’t listen to your expertise, no matter if you’re serving customers or bussing tables

Image credits: drazenphoto (not the actual photo)

A former busser shared how he was asked to was dishes on an evening shift. However, things got out of control when he couldn’t work overtime

Image credits: JulieAlexK (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Wicki58 (not the actual photo)

Image credits: insidecreativehouse (not the actual photo)

Surprisingly, what happened ended up changing the policy at work when it came to bussing tables

Image credits: stevanovicigor (not the actual photo)

Image credits: balles_de_acier

The incident revealed that the system that had previously been in place didn’t work

The former busboy explained how he and his managers agreed that he’d end work at exactly 11 PM on the dot. He had a bus to catch to get home, after all. Oh, he left work as agreed that night, but the entire arrangement led to pandemonium.

The OP’s then-superiors didn’t heed his warning that he should be bussing tables in the morning, so that the dishes don’t build up later on in the day. However, he was ignored. What added to the chaos was the fact that the staff working the banquet didn’t begin wheeling down the dish carts until there was only an hour left until the OP had to leave.

So combine the fact that there’s only a single dishwasher with the fact that some staff members weren’t doing their duties and you have a recipe for disaster. There’s no other word for a situation where someone ends up quitting and new explicit rules for bussing tables have to get added so there isn’t a repeat of that night.

Image credits: Kampus Production (not the actual photo)

One way to motivate staff to go above and beyond is to provide them with meaning and involve them in making decisions

Clearly, management messed up that night. Not only did they ignore their coworkers’ thoughts on handling the situation, they also failed to, well, manage and motivate some of their staff to do their jobs properly.

Harvard Business Review notes that motivating your staff can take different forms. Such as providing them with challenging tasks, recognizing their achievements, giving them additional responsibility and the ability to do meaningful things, and involving them in the decision-making process.

In other words, you want your employees to feel like they’re valued and that they’re important to the organization.

Image credits: Ksenia Chernaya (not the actual photo)

Good supervision and fair pay also helps everyone act as a team

Other, more straightforward ways to motivate workers includes giving them fair pay, status and security, as well as providing good working conditions, having clear company policy, and ensuring quality supervision.

If you have all of these factors down, odds are that your staff members should feel sufficiently good about their jobs to not procrastinate while on the job, say, when there are dish carts that need to get to the kitchen.

Good management would also recognize that they might need more dishwashers when there’s a banquet happening. Being perceptive and reactive are good traits to have for a leader. On the flip side, nobody likes a boss who’s disrespectful, has a negative attitude, and is lazy. These are the top traits of a bad manager, according to a 2020 survey conducted by Glassdoor.

Image credits: Anastasia Ilina-Makarova (not the actual photo)

Here’s how the internet reacted to the viral workplace drama

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