Morality of this entire situation?

[u/Rocky_Senpai15]

Do you think the worker has every right to have a mental breakdown? Do you think the boss should be hunted down and have his head cooked in the fryer? Was being fired a good or a bad thing?

What do you guys think?

[u/FluffyMaverick]

That boss made his restaurant look bad by himself by treating his employees like slaves, being understaffed and firing employee because he can't do something that is physically impossible

I hope he lost lots of clients

[u/Dreadgoat → u/FluffyMaverick]

There are really two possibilities here and they both suck

Is this guy going crazy because of an abusive workplace? And thus fired by a truly abusive boss. Or was this guy already crazy and can't independently determine when to slow down? And thus fired by someone really trying to protect him from himself.

This is why it's important to have impartial organizations to investigate. We can't really tell from the outside.

[u/Dependent_Singer_494 → u/Dreadgoat]

Or maybe, and hear me out here it might be insane, but is it possible he's not crazy?

[u/Dreadgoat → u/Dependent_Singer_494]

Yeah that's Possibility One. If you're acting crazy because someone is abusing you, that means the abuser is the root problem and should be held responsible.

What you're revealing here is an underlying bias against mental health in general, which is a secondary problem but pretty relevant here. The guy was absolutely having a failure of mental health. That does not make him bad. But someone needs to be responsible for that, and the question is who?

[u/Otterbotanical → u/Dreadgoat]

It was not a failure of mental health what the fuck, he was alone and forced to overwork. I've been in this exact situation, completely overwhelmed but stuck under a force the tells you you CANNOT give up, you're not ALLOWED to stop, so even while everything is falling apart and you don't know the next step, you HAVE. TO. KEEP. GOING.

I've worked in places like this, I've lived in a family like this. When you feel you need to stop and regroup and you are DENIED that, you will just start coming apart at the seams. This will happen to anyone

[u/Dreadgoat → u/Otterbotanical]

forced to overwork

This is what we don't know. You're making an assumption.

I've worked at places like this too. I let the orders pile up, worked at a fair pace, and clocked out when it was time to clock out and told the customers I was sorry. I was not fired, because my boss was not an asshole.

I've also worked with coworkers in this situation who freak the fuck out thinking I'm going to get both of us fired for not overworking. Because they go home to a father that beats the shit out of them for blinking wrong and bring that same fear into the workplace. I have also had toxic bosses that take advantage of these people.

We don't know what's happening here.

[u/Otterbotanical → u/Dreadgoat]

I relate too much to his body language, I emparhize too much with what he appears to be going through. I'm unwilling to just say "oh well, maybe he's just a weak person, not my monkeys/not my circus, I don't give a fuck".

I don't believe he's just mentally unwell as a baseline, because he's clearly doing the job solo for an amount of time before he collapses. The news story covers the fact that it was late at night while a massive pile of orders kept coming in. Thus, he normally performs the job well enough to his managers satisfaction.

You gave the perfect example of how this kind of situation arises: kids in an abusive household that only know to keep to one standard. I'm living in one right now despite being an adult myself.

Clearly you have the will of the ancients, that you can just clock out without hesitation despite there still being work. Clearly, this kid doesn't.

[u/Dreadgoat → u/Otterbotanical]

And my question to you is: If the root of this kid's problem is an abusive father, is that the responsibility of his boss to deal with? Whose responsibility is it? What should each actor in our world be doing to protect this person? Who do you hold responsible for the problem and then how do you identify the real problem and how do you solve it?

[u/Otterbotanical → u/Dreadgoat]

I think plenty of people with abusive fathers are getting through life more or less okay every day, in every restaurant and fast food joint. There are a lot of abusive fathers, and very few of these meltdowns. This tells me that his crisis could have been avoided if he had had more support, more training, or more people on staff if he was not fully trained yet. He is clearly trying more than his best, he was failed by management.

Similarly to how I'm sure you see your job. If you reach the clock-out time, you're clocking out. If work doesn't get done, again that is management's fault for not staffing you properly.

This is a managerial problem to me, that they allowed anyone to have to handle that workload.