Yeah, can you believe that?  Last night at work I was confronted by my boss and the manager who was working with me one night two weeks ago.  A friend came in with two of her friends to order dinner and drinks.  I served them and eventually brought them dessert: three pastries.  Before I could include the pastries on their bill on the register, I was distracted by something else and momentarily forgot about it.  The manager caught the mistake and brought it to my attention before they even paid their bill.  I acknowledged my oversight, the bill was eventually paid, and I thought nothing of the incident… until last night.

Ever since then, the manager on shift that night suspected I was planning on giving those pastries away to that group without ever charging them.  He brought it to my boss’s attention, who sat on it a good two weeks before bringing it to my attention last night.  What pisses me off the most is how the whole situation was handled.  I was immediately guilty.  Verbally I was lectured about stealing and how wrong it is but I was written up for an oversight/error on the register.  At least, I think that’s how it went down.  Honestly, I was in such a state of shock about being accused of any sort of intentional misconduct that I didn’t know what to think or say.  

After I had time to think about it, I was livid.  And I penned my resignation letter last night and delivered it to my boss this afternoon.  I spoke with her personally again about how the situation was handled and explained that I was leaving not due to being called on making a mistake–a mistake of the kind that happens frequently in this business due to distraction and oversight–but due to defamation of character.  I came highly recommended; I have never worked someplace before where a) a suspicion of this nature wasn’t immediately dealt with rather than sat on for two weeks, and b) I have never ever had my character or integrity called into question like this before.  In my letter I explained that my character and integrity are extremely important to me and I would not work in an environment where I felt like I would always be under suspicion.

My boss was congenial but maintained that she felt she was more than fair in how she handled this situation, given that she “was not the one who made the mistake here.”  I was livid.  But we were at an impasse: she doing what she felt she needed to do as someone who runs a business and, in my opinion, is clearly looking for people to be dishonest, and me who does make mistakes but is not dishonest.  Even rehashing the events of the last 24 hours here causes the anger at what I feel is an injust accusation rise in me like stomach bile.