This is absolutely a rant, but I also want to know what more experienced people in my situation would do. My options are essentially learn a little korean or quit and find another job which would ostensibly be easier at this current time.

I picked up my 1st serving job at a small casual korean joint in a touristy spot. Most the other workers are korean and only speak korean (some BOH aren't but they don't speak much english either) which, cool, I had no issues doing BOH in the last korean place I worked. I figured I'd just treat them like normal and that there'd be some expected communication difficulties but I could make up for them with context and maybe a little translated help.

So. Modifications. A lot of people ask for stuff and the doable ones I obviously put down. I asked what to do to notify the chefs of the modifications & manager says "go tell them".

Therein lies the issue. I interrupt their work and waste precious minutes of their time AS THE ORDERS ARE COMING IN trying to get them to understand what I'm saying...and they ultimately don't. never once. Every single time I 1. waste their time 2. get sent around to 5 different people who are obviously getting frustrated (and understandably so) before 3. getting sent back to my manager who 4. sends me back to them again and this continues in a loop until one of the 3 other very busy FOH people who can translate a little intervenes and translates for me.

Every time I ask for a better solution I'm given none. Manager just says "they just have to get used to you". ??????????????????????????????????????????????. 0 progress on that front. I then figure out I can punch in modifications in the order and they PRINT AS KOREAN AND ENGLISH (I previously asked if they did and he, for some fucking reason, lied and said they didn't. ?) Plus, the customers see the modifications, and get reassurance that their order is correct. Now I know I'm obviously disobeying my lord and boss by doing something he says not to do, but the magic was: it worked! The only time it did not work was when I put too many down because there was no option for "no vegetables" so I just manually put in every vegetable which confused a chef. But other times, no egg, no egg. Extra crispy, extra crispy. No shellfish, allergy, they get it. I even went to check the first few times with the chefs to see if they understood and if it worked for them and they reacted as if it obviously did ("I know") and shooed me away. Cool.

I get his pov. If I mess up the order/they get confused in the printed receipt they'll put out the wrong food while if I do my little charades parade someone can come beforehand and fix it before the wrong order gets made. Note the food is not expensive to make labor aside and is imo marked up. I'm not wasting steaks and salmons when I fuck up. They use instant ramen noodles for the ramen. I don't even care if it's put on my tab.

Anyways, I ask him about it while punching in an order (he just came in and woke up from a nap so he's in a bad mood) just in case to check if it's fine with him, he says no it's not, and he goes "what is fucking wrong with you", I try to argue my case, pulls me to the storeroom while two parties of 6 and 8 are coming in (and btw, while I'm trying to relay said order to them verbally cause he told me to, which meant I had to go back to them a fun total of 4 times to say the same exact thing), and yells at me for 15 mins. Even when I say okay, you're right, I'll never do it again, he rehashes his explanation for the 80th time and continues yelling at me replete with the few fun personal insults. Sure. I don't feel hurt, but I don't care the disrespect and the fact he's wasting so much of my time and making my job harder. He cites he's told me 4 times not to. I say his "system" just isn't working, no matter how many times he tells me to "just do it". I end up raising my voice at him. Wrong of me, I know, but I do not direct any insults towards him and don't really yell, I just talked louder and more clearly than I usually do. I don't get fired because I'm the only pos who wants to work for this shithole and he calms down after he has his post-nap tantrum and we go back out on the floor.

This is the first time I've ever been yelled at by an employer. I'm honestly a doormat, I admit to that, usually if seniors tell me to do stuff that makes no sense and sucks, I just do it as long as it's not ethically bad and nobody gets hurt. I figure people have their reasons, maybe I'm not seeing something that I'd see with more experience here, and it's usually faster for me to just do shit instead of arguing. I do this for a ton of other ways this place is run, which is hellishly compared to the last restaurant I worked. The only reason I did not this time was because it frankly did not work ever, at all, in the slightest, and nothing was getting done and frustrated everyone involved. Usually, people don't have a fucking issue with me and leave me be, and have even commended me on figuring out how to better do my work and getting it done. I try to keep my head down and keep busy and not get in anyone's way.

Now I don't mind learning a little korean. A phrase like "no egg" should be fairly simple, and I'm aware I'm working at a korean place; I should expect to do as they do. I don't have the pov of "this is america" that my boss has. Hell, if they asked me to beforehand, I wouldn't have minded, I learned the korean names for the menu. The thing is, I don't really know if I should even go that far for this place. I know it's a little touchy of me, but after the insults, I did consider just walking out. I have savings, 4 other restaurants on the 3-block stretch are hiring and have been for weeks, there have been other moments that I regretted taking this job (and somehow, none of them were customers). They don't feed their workers (he chewed out the dishie because a chef made food for him- lol) so I pretty much can't know anything about what's in their food (except from first glance) or how it tastes. We don't get breaks; I'm fine, I'm young and work only 5 hours compared to my old 12 hour weekends, but it's enough that I get shit for not doing something even when I've run out of doable tasks (and then get shit for sweeping the floor in my spare time because "someone else does it" Though I also get shit for not doing some jobs that other people do. It's not clear which ones, and it changes every day! So I just do them all and drop it when people tell me to or something higher priority comes up. That about sums up the function of this place). We pool tips (im fine with this) but he cut my tip in half for the 1st week because I was "training" (I agreed to it, my state pays servers min wage and I thought it was fair.) I don't mind the other workers too much and many of them are sweet people, even the chefs who get snippy with me are just doing their best; I did not walk out because I felt ditching them on a saturday night would be a dick move. On top of all of this shit, a weird customer, last remaining one of the night whom everyone was keeping an eye on, followed me out of the store and they didn't even so much as shoot me a text to alert me some dude was following me home when they know I walk home alone. I didn't blame them at the time, maybe they didn't see. But now, I'm just annoyed.

The short of it is that I sort of hate this place! The pay is good, and I don't want to quit after only a month and a half, but the way things are run is getting on my nerves and I no longer really care about having goodwill towards my boss. But I'm wondering if I'm just being thinskinned and that this is just how all FOH jobs are. I never wanted to do service, I previously avoided every service job despite people urging me to take them for the tips because I knew I'd hate it. I have pretty bad mental bandwidth for verbally talking to people even if I'm okay at it, but I thought I could handle it and pay the bills; the customers are surprisingly usually fine compared to my coworkers, I legitimately don't care if people are a bit rude or demanding and am fine at being polite and level regardless. More than a few are even very fun and kind. But maybe not. I don't know. What would you do?