Pizza place tricked teen into working 6 am shifts every weekend. His 'petty revenge' shut the place down

Teenagers are always looking into neighborhood pizza joints and city plazas to drum up some pocket money. Reddit user u/Drafixo was doing the same when they were welcomed into a Canadian pizzeria. The author, who spoke exclusively to Scoop Upworthy about the incident, asked to be identified by the initials DF. The owners promised some "kitchen" work, and the teenager (along with a friend) got started. Little did they know that the "college kids" in management would try to assert dominance — and fail miserably. Sharing the story in a Reddit post from December 16, DF recounted this tale of "petty revenge" from their childhood days.

When u/Drafixo was 15, they were working at a popular pizza joint in Canada. "It was run and managed by a couple of college kids who thought they were big stuff running a pizza joint," they wrote. DF was accustomed to working weeknights, as they thoroughly enjoyed their free time on weekends to pursue teenage hobbies. One day, however, a supervisor stepped up and asked them to fill in for one single weekend, which they begrudgingly obliged to. "I said fine, I'd learn, but I don't want to do it every weekend. I was a kid," they wrote. The dough-making process was a "nonstop 6 hours" activity, and if it didn't turn out perfect and fresh, that day's business was done for. "On occasion, you could use day-old dough in a pinch, but it did not hold up, and the pizza typically came out very flat," they shared.

As promised, they showed up at 6 a.m., but one weekend turned into two, then four, and on it went until one day, DF had had enough. When they went up to the boss, "She laughed. Said too bad. They all thought it was hilarious, the group of them. All servers in their 20's, we were the joke of the pizza joint. They knew we needed jobs and wouldn't quit," they wrote, but fate was about to turn their day around. DF later told Scoop Upworthy that there was never any follow-up from management after that confrontation, and no one checked in with him or his coworker Scott afterward. As they received a call from their parents about a new job opening at another store, they planned their most fun morning yet.

On the upcoming Saturday morning, DF showed up and "drank chocolate milk and hung out in the booths of the restaurant, twirling my thumbs." When their boss arrived, the 15-year-old was standing straight, apron and nametag in hand, announcing, "I quit." The boss only laughed and said, "Whatever, we were going to fire you anyway." She mockingly wondered aloud why they had even bothered to come in, and how it would've been a better power tactic to stay home and leave them without any dough for the day. That's when the realization kicked in. "I laughed and said, 'Nah, I hung out all morning and made no dough, so you still need to pay me for my shift. Later.' The look on her face was gold," they wrote.

Asked whether management ever contacted them afterward, DF said, "There was never a follow-up." DF even got their friend, Scott, involved, so the pizzeria faced the same issue the very next day, leaving management in a tight bind. DF later told Scoop, "I bumped into one of the managers later in life and had a good laugh about it and they actually apologized to me about how she treated me and believe it or not, we ended up going out a few times." As for whether anything changed at the pizzeria, they said, "I have no idea if anything ever changed there. It eventually closed in the next few years and turned into a Glasses store."

According to LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence survey, encompassing 6,400 U.S. employees, conducted from June to July 2024, researchers found 69% of workers would leave their job if they had a bad manager. It also found that Millennials and Gen Z are most likely to uphold this "need," polling highest at 77% and 75% respectively. This corresponds with data from almost 10 years ago, when a Gallup survey showed that 50% of employees quit in order to escape a bad boss.

After leaving the pizzeria, DF said, "My time at the arena was great. We had a lot of fun and we're respected and treated well. Our bosses and managers were very good people. We were treated fairly and well across the board. Made for a great high school job." Asked about the worst manager, he added, "If I ran into her today I'd imagine she'd laugh it off or be extremely bitter about it. I wouldn't care either way as she was not the kind of person I would hang around with." Soon after the Reddit post went viral, many users shared their thoughts. u/delulu4drama wrote, "Here's my apron. Might want to put that on. Kneading LOTS of dough is in your future. BYE." u/Red-Salute commented, "Hats off, dude. Also, looks like your petty ex-boss already downvoted this, so I'll vote it back up."

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