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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ecplectico on 2025-02-25 17:52:17+00:00.
I worked as a line cook at a prime rib/steakhouse restaurant. We also sold marinated chicken breasts. The breasts were submerged in the marinade in a short bin. We’d make the marinade in the bin and dump in a several dozen frozen breasts, put them in the walk-in refrigerator under the previous day’s bin containing unsold breasts from the night before.
Out of the blue one day, the manager says I have to start inventorying the unsold breasts at the end of the night. Closing the line down after working over a hot grill is tiring enough. The additional job of going into the walk-in, which was very cold, and fishing through the near-freezing opaque marinade for these limp breasts was a pain in the ass that I did not appreciate.
After doing it a few days and hating it immensely, I started putting fake numbers down on the inventory sheet. I still had to count them, because I couldn’t just say that there were 14 breasts when there might actually be 32. That would be so obvious that it would get me in trouble.
Instead, I’d take one or two off the real number one night, use the real number the next, then subtract one, then subtract two and so on.
That made the manager have to recount them in the morning.
It didn’t take long for the manager to call me into the office to complain. I just told him that I was doing the best I could fishing the things out of the dark marinade in the poorly lit walk-in, but that’d I’d continue to do my best. I was the best line cook he had, and I always worked hard, so he believed me.
Of course, I continued to miscount.
After a week or so of that, he told me that I didn’t have to count them anymore.