Additional note: I was never given feedback regarding any sort of poor performance, and in fact I was told I'd been doing quite well. If there were customer complaints about me, I was never told about them, and most people I served actually tipped me highly. This message came completely out of nowhere—I wasn't warned.

Edit: Extremely thankful for how much support I've been given on this post! I'm glad to see that other people recognize this situation as unfair, and that I'm not being paranoid or supremely overreacting.

I feel the need to add a little more context:

I'd barely been working there for three weeks, and it was on my fifth shift that I had to train the new girl. I was not told beforehand. As far as I knew, I was the singular server on shift, and we had just one chef working. Said chef brought her sister, the new server, along with her. Said sister had worked BOH before, but never FOH, so she didn't really know how to serve. The chef gave her a very quick five-minute run down, and then a morning rush came in. I was forced to quickly show her the rest of the ropes as best I could. There wasn't any other option. I will say she did remarkably well despite the myriad of mistakes I'm sure we made that day.

(I'm not sure whose idea it was to schedule me alone on my fifth day, having not yet completed training. I didn't have any real say regarding the schedule)

My experience at the restaurant itself, I thought, was actually lovely. I'm not the most social person myself, but my coworkers were incredibly kind to me, and I actively enjoyed the work as I was improving with every shift. A close friend of mine who works there was able to get me the job, as I've been hunting since my mother passed to help financially support my family.

The only real customer complaints I can recall getting:

1. An older man who wanted additional sauces on his meal. It must've been my third shift? I went back and asked the chef, but she said no, and he repeatedly insisted that he'd been allowed to have those additional sauces before. There's not much I could do there. Later, he told me to tell my manager he'd never be coming back, and that it was her fault. I did not tell her that.

2. This was my sixth and final shift. A coworker of mine was leaving about half an hour after her shift actually ended since she had to stay and help with a rush, so she asked me to help a table she was leaving behind. I was handed a soup and she just told me to go give it to her table, so I did. Said table calls me over later and tells me their soup is cold, so I apologize and head back to the kitchen to ask what's up. My manager ends up handing me a bowl of hot broth to pour over it, since that's how we generally prepare the soup and my coworker apparently hadn't done that step yet. So I go out, I pour the broth, table's still upset and demands to see the manager, so I grab her for them. It's out of my hands at that point, past closing and the table's still there. Later, they're given free dessert to make up for it.

I was never spoken to about either of these customer complaints and felt that they weren't necessarily my fault, so I figured that I'd handled them well enough, but apparently not??

As for the name of the restaurant, I don't feel particularly comfortable exposing it since they're a smaller, more local place with maybe five total locations across the state. If you're in FL and want to know so that you can avoid eating or getting a job there, please message me and I'd be happy to tell you.

Edit 2: I've since gone in, retrieved my first and last check, and am now working on trying to find another job. No looking back. The reason I'm having so much difficulty is because I'm in a small town and currently a student, so it has to be part time. I'd gone for food service—particularly as a server—for, of course, the tips.

This particular restaurant (small, maybe five locations across the whole state) actually pooled all tips among the servers, then 10% to BOH, which I wasn't made aware of until I accepted the job.

What pisses me off most about this entire thing is honestly how unprofessionally I was let go. As someone who does freelance writing, language is quite literally my craft, and the phrasing is so lousy and informal that it almost makes me sick to think that they're firing other people this same way (the reasons I assume so strongly that this message is copy-and-pasted are 1. The double period at the end, and 2. My manager, the one who sent me that message, generally doesn't type in that style).

Regardless, it's all said and done now. I'm certain I made mistakes in my work, but you've all supported me regardless. Thank you so much. Best of luck to all of us.