I started working as a host at a fancy restaurant right after I graduated college. The money was really good but the owner/manager was the absolute worst. Verbally abusive, made unwanted sexual advances at under-age staff, dude still cyber-shames any Yelp user that gives his place a less that amazing review. I managed to stay off his radar by being 1. Fairly competent at my job and 2. Not a naive high school girl who is super cute but hasn't quite realized it yet.

So his terrible behavior didn't effect me (although I still had a ton of contempt for the dude because of his aforementioned awfulness) until I found out that one of my very close friends from college had died and I was trying to get a few days off to drive to Denver to be with his family and attend his funeral. Manager asshole expressed some pretty insincere sympathy and told me I was still responsible for getting my shifts covered myself as I hadn't asked for the time off far enough in advance, because you know, I should have planned for the suicide of one of my best friends.

I mention all of this only to set the stage. The night I got back from Denver I had to work. We weren't terribly busy and I was not in a great headspace, which manager asshole was well aware of. A very nice elderly couple came in to eat and I sat them in the wrong section, basically I skipped a server in rotation, and since we were so slow some of the wait staff hadn't even had a table this evening. Once I realized my mistake I went over to the couple I had just sat and asked them to move, which they were only too happy to do.

Manager asshole saw all of this and freaked out, incredulous that I had made the minor error. He said something along the lines of, and I'll paraphrase here as it was over a year ago, "These last few days you've been acting like you don't care about your job, once you get back from vacation" (he used the word vacation!) "you need to come apologize to me and explain how you're going to improve"

And so I ran to the break room, grabbed my coat and then on my way out yelled at him, in front of a handful of employees/customers that he was right, I didn't give a fuck about this job, and then I proceeded to, and I actually don't feel great about this part, knock over a potted orchid in a ceramic pot which shattered on the lobby floor.

A few days after I got back from the funeral I got a call that I had been hired at this non-profit I really wanted to work for, and I have been with this organization ever since.