Community Outraged At Buca di Beppo Restaurant Manager's Firing?
Reports that community of Chandler, AZ is outraged at the firing of Buca Di Beppo manager Joe Busone have been popping up in our inbox. The Arizona Republic says that when he was let go, seven servers also walked out -- in the middle of dinner.
Busone, 53, had been the manager at Buca Di Beppo at Ray and Priest roads for eight years, and he had built a reputation as someone generous to community groups and loved by his staff.
Greg Geryak, who owns an insurance agency in Ahwatukee, had organized an annual dinner for the Ahwatukee Kiwanis Club at the restaurant. Forty people showed up for the 6 o'clock reservation.
Shortly after, Geryak said, "Joe saw me, gave me a hug and walked out the door. Five minutes later, I heard he was fired. Then . . . the three guys that were going to take care of my party walked out."
The group received their dinner, at a reduced rate, but Geryak said it wasn't up to Buca standards. The salad was soggy, drinks were slow in arriving and Geryak had to get up to refill water glasses himself. Desserts were so slow that a number of the group had left by the time they arrived.
Geryak was so incensed at Busone's firing that he wrote an e-mail to Planet Hollywood, which recently bought the Buca chain.
The paper also interviewed some of the employees who quit when their manager was fired. They compared him to a father, and said "He always took a special interest in everyone. It was not really working for a boss, it was working with him."
We received an email from a 13-year-old boy who says that with his parents permission, he wrote to Planet Hollywood and asked that Joe be rehired and whoever fired him be fired instead.
The Republic says that the manager refuses to say why he was fired, Planet Hollywood will not return their phone calls, and the comments on the article are full of various conspiracy theories. It's all very mysterious.
Workers walk out after Buca di Beppo manager fired [Arizona Republic]
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Comments:
When the manager of a restaurant is let go (especially one that seemingly took interest in the employees and such), probably for cost or other seemingly pointless grounds by the new owners in the middle of a shift, I can't say I find any problem with the staff walking out. The owners showed no loyalty to the staff, so why not just give them the finger and go and let them try to run a restaurant?
wow never eating at bucca di beppo's again. Not nessarily because of this but because planet hollywood now owns them. I've only ate at a planet hollywood once and it was just about the most overpriced and ho-hum dining experience of my life.
Nice to see the display of solidarity. I expect that another restaurant in the area is about to get a boost.
What's mysterious is why people consider bucca di peppo a good restaurant. It is all about quantity over quality. The place is gross.
Everyone has their own preferences on food.
I gotta respect those servers who walked out though. Takes some serious balls, and commitment to walk out on a job (any job) in these times when another person gets fired.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the manager was a quality dude. But does the Arizona Republic really have nothing else to write about?
Without knowing why he was fired, we can't really make an informed opinion about this. Maybe this is total bullshit. Or maybe he deserved it. The only thing that I know for sure is that I'm not going to worry about some guy getting fired at a restaurant on the other side of the country from me.
@The_IT_Crone: Agreed. Our family went to Bucco di Beppo a few years back to see what all the fuss was about (this location in Chandler, in fact). Although we did have great service, the food was less than spectacular. There are far too many good family-owned Italian restaurants in town to spend our dine-out dollars at a place like this.
That said, to each their own--maybe people enjoy it for the family-style dining experience.
Aren't the corporate stooges supposed to wait until the shift is over before firing someone???
Let's put some perspective on this. Forget that he was supposedly Second Jesus. Forget that, for all we know, he got fired for grinding up roadkill to season the porchetta. Think this instead:
The dismissal might have chased away for good some loyal customers as well.
"People do business with people they like and trust..."
The badge of trust doesn't extend through the trademark, Planet Hollywood goons. You better have had good reason to fire him, and you better let people know it, or you won't get your $28 million worth.
You don't have to wait for the start (or end) of a shift just to let someone go. At the office hear it's known that if you get called into a conference room late on a Thursday, odds are you won't be coming back.
Thursdays - who knew?
It says a lot about a manager when the staff has so much loyalty for them that they [the staff] would walk out on a shift and share the same fate. Given the situation with the economy, I wish them all the best of luck in finding new jobs. Hopefully the servers were college students that were working for some spending money and could afford to walk out.
Every restaurant where I ever worked, the only reason people got fired was because they were skimming the till.
Finding out that Planet Hollywood now owns Buca di Beppo just completely destroyed the image I had of that place.
I should ring up a friend of mine who is a bartender at the one in DC and see if he has seen any changes since they were bought out.
@FatLynn: Yeah, you're probably right. To me, it seems to carry all the earmarks of a firing due to a failed drug test.
A hard-working, well-liked employee suddenly fired, with a lack of information regarding the circumstances. The dude probably smokes a little grass on his nights off, and was subjected to unconstitutional (but, somehow, legal) search. I feel for him.
Like everyone else said, it would be nice to know why he was fired. He may have deserved it, who knows.
Something similar to this happened at my last job and it came down to money. The firings were a power play by someone else with equal influence in the company, plain and simple. She thought she could do things better and cheaper. She failed miserably at both and alienated the loyal customers in the process.
This could be a completely different scenario, but right now the restaurant business is even tougher than usual. He may have been spending too much keeping customers happy or choosing quality over low food costs. Seems pretty likely.
Sometimes the most likable, friendly people are also the worst organized. I had a boss like that. He would bend over backwards to make people feel comfortable and treated everyone with respect. But he lost money everyday by wasting time and being disorganized. I'm not sayin' this guy is like that, but usually there are always two sides to every story. Bottom line: his employer cannot release the reason he was let go or he would have grounds to sue them. So conspire all you like, but expecting loyalty from the McDonalds of Italian food (especially now that it's owned by Planet Hollywood) is far-fetched.
I hope he lands a better job at a nicer restaurant.
@chrisjames: They can't. Privacy laws prevent them from sharing why he was fired. ESPECIALLY if it was wrongdoing on his part. He would sue their asses off.
@xip: Just a friendly observation here. Isn't taking the time to click through and comment about one's lack of interest a bit self-defeating?
Bah! Bucco's is known to capitulate to any kind of pressure from any direction. The restaurants had originally used Michelangelo's "David" as kind of the corporate mascot. However in Houston TX the downtown Bucco's was right next to a major televangelist church "Lakewood Church" and many church goers would go to Bucco's after church service and were offended by the anatomically correct "David" and forced the restaurant to cover all the penis' with little fig leafs.
Dear religious loonies: Art is not porn. That is all.
@axiomatic: That's especially strange since the statue of David is technically religious art itself! They must not have been the brightest bunch of religious loonies, I take it.
@axiomatic: Hah, yeah don't you hate that? Those same people who are incredibly ashamed of the natural human body probably also support the war in Iraq. Not trying to get political, just saying, people can really have screwed up priorities in the face of dogma.
@Colage: They made space 3 years ago by issuing a permanent weather report to all there readers. Now they have space for other stories, and when readers want to know what the weather will be like, they just look at the free sticker (to be placed on the window) that says "If window dry, weather will be sunny and hot. If window wet, you have moved."
We can't really know the circumstances behind the firing unless they make it known, but until they caught him in his office with a pocketful of stolen money, an armful of heroin needles, and a handful of underage prostitute, they probably should have thought twice. Quality managers are rare in any field, and in restaurants it's even harder because they tend to have more turnover in staff and longer hours and more fires to put out.
@Chris H: Listen, I've eaten alot of Chicken Marsalla in my days and I know that Buca's is not traditional or anything, but its candy like sauce is similar to heroin.
@xip: I agree. We have no idea why he was fired. Generally, I wouldn't expect somebody to be just "laid off" in the middle of a busy dinner shift.
The problem the church-goers had with the statue is where the Alfredo sauce was coming from...
@Colage: Do you read newspapers? Papers are filled with local crap like this. Ever read a food sections or a restaurant review. Reporting on a popular manager losing his job and the subsequent fallout is not surprising. People like to know what's going on in their community.
Well the same thing happened at Circut City and look how good it turned out for them...
@Rhayader: If restaurants randomly drug tested their employees they would have no work force. Service employees are only tested when they are hired and if they get hurt on the job.
@axiomatic: Ever heard "the customer is always right?" The restaurant could have kept the statue and lost customers. The dollar wins in that situation.
I guess they were too embarrassed by all the nude paintings to take an art history course? I'm what you might consider a "religious loony" myself...but even I understand and appreciate good nude art pieces. After all...nothing like honoring "the ultimate of God's creations" as the human body was thought of back then.
@abartlett: On the other hand, when the manager of a restaurant is let go in the middle of a shift, there were probably very good grounds for the firing.
Just walking out of your job because your boss got fired is kind of stupid if you have no idea he was fired, because it makes it look like you are complicit or that you know the reason. Well, if the reason was that he was doing something illegal you've just implicated yourself in the minds of the company.
I am more sad that Planet Hollywood bought Buca. Buca, at least the ones I have been to had better than average food for a chain restaurant. I have a feeling Planet Hollywood will run Buca into the ground.
@Chris H: +1
I went once when one opened close by. That was 6 years ago. It's 4 miles away, and I haven't been back.
Does it say anywhere why he was fired?
If not, then it is hard to comment on this story.
I mean maybe he was stealing from the register - or spitting on people's food.
Then again, maybe he looked at his supervisor wrong.
Without more information, there is no way to form an opinion about this story.
@Chris H:
The Buca here in Columbus, OH has amazing food, and I'm not even someone who likes Italian food in general.
@HIV 2 Elway Resurrected: yep the customer is always right even when they are wrong. My wife learned that one the hard way more than once when her manager bent over backwards to give people who where scamming their restaurant what they wanted while punishing the staff who was following policy.
My wife was physically assaulted by a customer and upper management wanted HER fired for telling them they missed their call after showing up a full hour after they gave "final call" on their seats. They got free food, free desert, and a written apology from Brinker corp. for throwing a beeper at my wifes face.
@HIV 2 Elway Resurrected: True. At the same time, almost any employment contract allows the employer to drug test at any time based on "cause". I've been with a couple companies that ostensibly only do pre-employment and accident testing, but still hold that trump clause allowing them to do whatever the hell they want. Drug testing sucks.
Of course we don't know that's what happened here, it just reminds me of other stories I have heard about terminations resulting from a positive drug test.
@Rhayader:
Me too! Man, too bad I've got a freezer full already... getting more would just be a waste.
@Canino: I disagree. If the employer reserves the right to fire me at any time and without notice. I also reserve the right to quit on them at anytime without prior notice. It's called "at will" employment, which means that either side can terminate at any time for any reason.
Implicated? They could implicate all they want, if they do it enough they may even have grounds for a lawsuit against the company. Why is it that standing up for a principle means you must be doing something wrong?
Well, they really can't say why he was fired. So while it sounds mysterious, it is probably not legal to air whatever his dirty laundry may be.