This is a months-long fuck up that came to a head today.
Six months ago, I started working at The Restaurant. The Restaurant is a small, family-owned place with like ten employees, myself included, and has a very laid back vibe. The owner, who I'll call Matt, has always been chill and honestly I've interacted with him only second to last of all the employees.
When I started, I worked the evening shift and was trained by the evening shift waiter, who I'll call Erin. Erin... didn't care a lot about his job. He had been planning on quitting for some time before I started, and re-declared his hatred for The Restaurant and everyone in it nearly every day until he finally did quit. As such, he was very flippant with a lot of things, and didn't put too much effort into anything unless he absolutely had to.
One of the things Erin taught me about were the discounts. Employees get a free meal a shift, military discount, etc- as well as the family discounts. A hefty discount, that one. He never explicitly told me exactly who counts as "family," but when I would take home some food for my own family, he applied the family discount to it. Now, my family loves to eat. They love the food from the restaurant. Slowly, I got into the habit of bringing home food almost at least once a week, possible with a combination of my employee meal and the family discount.
Some small part of me felt like it was wrong. Every time I bought food, something in me asked "are you sure you can be doing this?" And I always ignored it. But my family pressured me to bring them food and were offended if I didn't offer, and that spoke louder than that small part of me. The tenseness of my home life- which would take a long stand-alone post to explain- wasn't worth making worse by not bringing home some stupid food when they asked.
It's worth mentioning- the owners sibling, who also works at the restaurant, has applied the family discount to my to go order one time, and comped the entire order another time. So my belief that I could use the discount wasn't entirely built on shaky foundations.
Yesterday, I took home a bag of food. It was a particularly slow day, and my to go order was one of the only ones the entire shift. My orders are pretty similar each time, and I'm sure the owner, Matt, who cooks in the evening, recognizes it. For some reason, he was prompted to look at my order yesterday. I watched him walk to the computer, walk back, walk to the computer again and leave in a significantly more irritated mood than he'd been in earlier. When I went back to the computer, my order ticket was on the counter and the transaction had been pulled up- my added discounts highlighted in red. For context, what would have been a $45 order was only $11.
My heart sank. I knew immediately that I shouldn't have been using the discount this entire time. I fully planned on coming in to work today apologizing.
Matt beat me to it. He told me in essence today that he wants me to pay him back for everything I've used the discount on, and he offered to just take a little out of my checks until I pay it off. For some reason, I was thinking I would owe maybe $300-$400, so I told him I'd rather just pay it all off at once so we're square. Matt it notoriously frugal, and owing him money is the last position I want to be in.
Tonight, I did the math of what I might actually owe him. It could be anywhere from $1000-$2800, depending on how accurate my memory is. I am such an idiot.
Now, tomorrow, I have to go swallow my pride and apologize again and tell Matt I actually can't pay it all off at once, because I barely have $500 for my bills this month.
I should have never assumed I could use the family discount, and now I have to (literally) pay for it.
TL;DR: I've been using a discount I shouldn't have to buy food for the last six months, and now I owe the restaurant over $1000.
#EDIT:
Okay yikes lol, I literally posted this and went to sleep and honestly was probably going to delete this today but, Reddit. Just wanted to clear up a couple of things I've seen repeated in the comments.
For one, I'm not going to quit my job. I like the people I work with, I know the job, and I make enough to support my family and elderly grandparents. Also, been there and done that- I actually intended to quit a little while ago, gave my two weeks and everything, but at the last second I got cold feet and decided to stay. I realized all of the above, and I am grateful for having a pretty good job when I would otherwise be stocking shelves at Walmart or making Panda Express. Not that they're bad jobs, but the pay disparity is there.
Secondly, I feel the owner has every right to be mad. Like I said, this is a small family owned place. Over a grand is not exactly pocket money for a small business.
I fully intent to pay it back, just not in the lump sum I originally told him haha. I'm going to let him keep my checks until they're paid off.
#EDIT 2:
The owner doesn't want me to pay him back at all, he says it was an honest mistake and we're good. Thank god- I still offered to pay but honestly I had no idea how I was going to make it work without being late on rent next month.
#EDIT 3:
I'll go through and respond to specific comments later, I'm at work lol. Thank you to everyone responding, I posted this so everyone can confirm that I'm an idiot asshole, not for advice, but I appreciate those taking the time to give me advice nonetheless.