Dad Gave Our Family Business To My Lazy Brother Instead Of Me, A Month Later...

dad gave our family business to my lazy brother instead of me a month later he almost unived a customer with allergies and now dad's begging me to come back and fix everything so a little over a month ago I 28f threw my Dad a retirement party he was retiring from the position of the manager of our family restaurant after running it for almost his entire life but now he's almost 62 and he told us that he was too tired to carry on now and wanted the business to go to the new generation I very foolishly

had assumed that he met me since I had given the past 5 years of my life to this restaurant my family owns an Italian restaurant chain and we also operate in two other locations across the city one is run by my uncle and the other is managed by my uncle's daughter however the band that we run is the most popular one and my father is the rightful owner my uncle is not actually my dad's biological brother for context this all started when my grandfather started his first restaurant and that's where the business originated from our

location is actually the original location of the restaurant that my grandfather opened up with my grandmother and ran for several years until my father took over from them and then he expanded the business and opened up two new restaurants in different locations that's where my uncle came in he quit his job and started the other restaurant when we opened up his daughter started managing that so the business has always stayed within the family and when my Dad announced his retirement a couple of weeks before I threw the party I obviously expected him to hand it

over to me my uncle was not a contender to inherit the business because he was also around the same age as my father maybe a couple of years younger and was planning to retire in a couple of years anyway and his daughter had been running the new location for Just 2 years when we started it which is a lot less experience than I have since I've been committed to this restaurant for the past 5 years ever since I was 23 I quit my corporate job to work with my father because one day I hop to

inherit the family business and take it to new heights of success I just assumed that it would be me since I was the strongest Contender to inherit the business my uncle was retiring around the same time as my father and my cousin was too young and inexperienced to handle everything on her own so I just knew that it would be me my father never said it to me outright and it was pretty stupid of me not to demand it in right or something but I guess it was just known that I was going to inherit

it however my father threw me a curveball at the very last moment on the day of his retirement party by announcing that it would be my bratty brother who would be inheriting the business I have two siblings an older brother and a younger one my older brother Charles 34m has no interest in the restaurant business and chose the medical way he's a surgeon my younger brother Derek 26m has no interest in anything at all and does nothing all day he is a good for nothing Brad and nobody in the family likes him I don't have

a problem with the fact that he does nothing all day and has no talents but I definitely have a problem with his attitude he has achieved nothing in his life and yet he acts like he's the best and deserves every good thing that happens to him it's mostly my parents encouraging this behavior in any time that Charles and I try to say something about it they shut us down by telling us that he needs this sort of positive encouragement so that he actually decides to explore his career options and ends up as something not just

a freeloader who ends up relying on his parents for the rest of his life he graduated from Community College a couple of years ago and since then he has been fired from at least at least five jobs he can just never make it stick because he has a massive attitude problem I don't know what it is or why he thinks that way but he thinks that he is on the same level as God himself and nobody can question him we have to put up with it because we are his family but in the real world

nobody would put up with this kind of behavior and least of all his employers so it's no surprise that he has been fired from every job that he has within a couple of months he's not very skilled at anything and even the job that he did it before this it was my father who got him those positions through his connections so he really can't do anything for himself he's just a massive screw-up and he doesn't even know what he wants to do with his life for the past couple of years after he got fired from

his last job two years ago he had just been sitting at home and leeching off of his parents and the worst part is that he doesn't even seem to feel bad or ashamed of it and it's just super frustrating because our parents don't say anything to him either and are just letting him live like this instead of doing something about it it's unfair as well because when it came to us they were constantly pushing us to do better and not to sound ungrateful about it since Charles and I are doing pretty well in our lives

but it just sucks to see them be so from Derek so anyway he's a really spoiled brat and I don't like him at all we were all great friends when we were kids but since high school things have been really different and I don't get along with Dereck in the slightest he also has no experience in the business or how things even operate here so it came as a huge shock to everybody when my Dad announced that he was going to inherit the business my father had announced that he was going to retire a couple

of months before I threw the party everybody knew about it all the employees and everybody in the family as well and I as somebody who had been working in the restaurant as my father's right-hand man or maybe woman in my case obviously expected that I would be taking over after he retired we never had a proper conversation about it which is something that I really regret I had just taken it for granted and maybe that's what led to my undoing although a couple of applications he had mentioned certain things about how when he had retired

he wanted me to do certain things so I just took it as a sign that since he was telling me what he wanted me to do after he had retired he would obviously leave me in charge it just never would have ever occurred to me that maybe he would not leave the business to me because I trusted my father he had never given me any reasons not to maybe he did treat Derrick differently but that did not mean that he treated me badly and was always very loving and respectful towards me both as a daughter

and an employee anyway when he announced it I decided that I was going to throw him a party and it didn't even occur to me that he had not announced his successor would be since I knew that it would be me so on the day of the party when he decided to announce that he would be allowing Derek to take over I was in shock not just me I think everybody was present at the party right from all the employees to my mother herself everybody was in shock everybody had believed that I would inherit it

since for 5 years I had been slogging at the restaurant and trying to make sure that everything was perfect and after 5 years it was Derek who was going to take over the business none of it made sense to me and it was not until my father pulled Derek to his side and Derek very smugly announced that he accepted his new position that it finally sunk in and I literally stormed out of the restaurant I was in tears and I was obviously very devastated a couple of minutes later my father followed me out and he

tried to explain to me that he had his reasons for making this very difficult decision I was very upset but I still decided to hear him out and his reasons were just as stupid and unreasonable as his decision he told me the day that his decision had been influenced by the fact that Derek was actually good for nothing and he knew it in the past 2 years while drik had been sitting at home he had tried really hard to get him to go out and look for a job and do something with his life but

he just took everything really casually so now he thought that maybe putting him in a spot where he absolutely had to be responsible like managing the restaurants would force him to step up and become a better worker since now he would be working to sustain his own life and family business at his previous jobs he was working for somebody else and he didn't really have a stake in it so maybe that's why his heart was not in it but now since this would be his own business he would have a more of a stake in

it and maybe that would motivate him to be a better worker and if not it would at least just get him out of the house my father told me that he still wanted me to be at the restaurant and for Derek exactly what I used to do for him and be there for him at all times he told me that I would be the real boss he was just going to be the nominal head and maybe that would encourage him to do better that was incredibly insulting to me because he expected me to act like

his assistant and Shadow him all the time knowing that I was fully capable of doing a much better job than him I am not my brother's babysitter I am my own person and I think I've worked hard enough by then to earn the position that he had just given away to Derek I was still very upset and even after the explanation I was not swayed I told my dad that he could either take his words back and give me the job that he had just given away to Derek or he would lose me forever and

I was serious about it I had given him an ultimatum and after that unfortunately we got into a really bad fight and he told me that I was being unreasonable and selfish I was not thinking about my brother's future and I told him that he was being the same way and not even thinking about my future so that's how we ended up fighting and I cut him off after that because I had nothing left to say to him because he had refused to take the job away from Derek and give it to the person who

rightfully deserved that position me and I was really insulted so I made up my mind that I was not going to go back there again the day after the retirement party was pretty much the last day that I spent at the restaurant because after that it's been one month and I still haven't returned to that place because it's still I have kept in touch with my mother and Charles though I don't ask about the restaurant and they don't tell me about it even though I know that they know how it has been doing but they

are aware of the fact that it's a sore point for me right now and I don't want to discuss it so up until a couple of days ago I had no idea everything was going at the restaurant I had stopped speaking to my father after that fight and I don't talk to Derek anyway so that was not something that had changed I had also started applying to other jobs after I quit working at the restaurant I did get paid for working there just like any other employee and I had some savings to fall back on

for the time being and I had figured that until I could find something that I wanted to do I would just live off of my savings I had planned to go on a trip next week but I don't know about that anymore because I might have to go back to the restaurant that's because my brother messed up in a colossal way just like I had known he would the guy knew nothing about how to run a restaurant and I don't know why but my dad had thought that it would be a good idea to let

him do whatever he wanted without supervision just to show him how much he trusted him to instill a sense of faith and belief in him so he does not feel underconfidence because obviously my brother's feelings are more important than the family business and more practical things not only had Derk taken a bunch of irresponsible and stupid financial decisions ever since he started but he had also started skimping out on certain ingredients and now they were in a lot of trouble because he had screwed up and had been caught so we also catered to vegans and

have a separate vegan menu for them we make sure not to handle that kind of food with non-vegan products in the kitchen due to ethical reasons and have a separate area for vegan food not only did Derek shut the area down altogether to save space in the kitchen but he also started adulterating vegan products to cut costs there it was only a matter of time before he got caught and a couple of days ago that fin happened he had instructed the old employees to use regular dairy milk as far as they could to avoid using

the higher priced soy milk which is so incredibly dangerous that idiot had forgotten that some people are not just vegan for the sake of it some people are actually allergic to Dairy you guys must have guessed what happened by now and unfortunately somebody ordered a milk-based dessert but they specifically asked for soy milk or any other milk alternative to be used instead of regular Dairy now had it been one of our usual employees who had made the desert they would have ignored what Derek had told them to do and would have used what the customer

had asked for but unfortunately Derek had hired a new and inexperienced guy and had given him strict and Specific Instructions to rat out anybody in the kitchen who was not adhering to his instructions he's probably not as stupid as he looks because he had figured out that the employees had been ignoring his instructions because of how quickly they were running out of alternative ingredients and wanted somebody to spy for him which is why he hired the new guy now this decided to ignore what the customer had asked for and used regular dairy milk for the

dessert and did a pretty bad job of it as well things went South pretty quickly and the customer had a really bad allergic attack attack and is now threatening to sue the restaurant I know all of this because a couple of days ago on the day of the incident my dad called me up in the evening and told me all about it I could tell that he was panicking and he told me that he had fired Derrik immediately since he had no idea what he had been up to behind his back and now he wanted

me to come back and rejoin him he was offering me the position that I had wanted it was just bizarre that now he wanted me to come back since my brother had screwed up in what I had predicted would happen had finally happened I was still pretty sore and upset from the events of one month ago so on the phone I decided to have a great laugh at their situation and I told him that I was not coming back under any circumstances and that if he actually and really wanted me to come back I wanted

a public apology in front of all the restaurant employees and the family just like he had insulted me on the day of the retirement party and I wanted him to announce that he had fired dererk and acknowledge his mistakes then give me the position I don't think I'm asking for too much because what happened the day at the party but simply not acceptable for me I was very hurt by his actions and I am just asking him to fix the situation since now it is he who needs me but my mom thinks that it's a

little much and even my father told me that he was not doing any of that on the phone call he told me that this business is just as much mine as it was his and he might have made a mistake but what I was asking of him was insane and humiliating Ida for demanding a public apology from my father if he wants me to rejoin the family business after he picked my brother to inherit the business over me update one hey I would like to start off by thanking everybody who has taken the time to

comment on my original post and leave me words of advice and support it really means a lot to me that you guys care about this situation so thank you so much for that now coming to to what I have decided that I'm going to do I took a few days to think about what I want to do when I have decided that I'm going to go back to the business it was not an easy decision to make because I would have to put my pride aside but at the end of the day I have given

5 years of my life to that place and no matter what happens I cannot change the fact that I really want to be the one who takes his business forward and I would really want somebody to carry the business on instead of just shutting it down since I know that my dad will not be around forever Charles has no interest in it like I had already mentioned earlier and Dereck is obviously not capable or competent enough to handle anything let alone handling a business like that so it has to be me it just does I

have also spoken to my uncle and my cousin from the other two branches and they also believe that I should come back because this is what is rightfully mine and if my father is asking me to come back I need to just forget about all the problems that I have had with him in the past and returned because this restaurant is my passion and I don't want to watch it fail it's as simple as that honestly I would have liked it if my father had apologize to me publicly but I don't want to create a

whole song and dance and gloat about my success and how right I was about Derek because it's not going to bring me any amount of Joy compared to the joy that the success of our restaurant will bring me I have to pick my battles and I have decided that this time I'm going to let things go it's for my own good so I spoke to my dad this morning and it was a very formal and CT conversation we have decided that we are going to put our differences from the past aside we are going to

discuss all of that later but right now our top priority is to handle the crisis at hand we have arranged for a meeting with our lawyers and the displeased customer from the incident so we can negotiate and come to a settlement out of court since she has been posting about us on social media relentlessly so far we have been lucky because she has not managed to gain a lot of traction but that won't be the case for long and we have to squash this before it gets too big update too so I met my father

in person after a really long time yesterday we were meeting before our meeting with the customer and we discussing everything with our lawyer one final time before the meeting it was weird to see him in person after so long because before this I had seen him almost every single day for 5 years and I didn't realize how much I missed him until I finally saw him in person we did not speak much to each other because most of the talking was being done by our lawyer and we had to pay attention to that since this

was important but I could tell that there were a lot of things that we had to discuss and right now was not the right time but we had to talk about things eventually he hasn't really apologized to me properly yet and neither has he brought up anything about the incident from one month ago but things were really cordial and civil between us and this is our first inperson interaction after our big fight one month ago so I was expecting things to be a little weird they were not though I'm thankful for that after our meeting

was over he asked me to come home so I could see my mom as well since it's been a really long time since I met her as well and I had stopped visiting home after the retirement party I had to say no because I had a prior engagement since I had been invited to a friend's engagement party last evening so I had to decline my dad's invitation to come home interestingly I had asked him yesterday if I would find Derrick at home or not and my dad told me that I would not I know that

Derrik is not living with him anymore and I was really curious to know where he was or how that happened but my dad did not offer any more information about it and made it obvious that he didn't want to discuss it so I did not push further and ask him anything else El about it I did speak to Charles about it and he told me that he had known that Derrik had moved out a couple of days after he was fired but he doesn't know if that was something that Derrik chose or if it was

something that my parents asked him to do so things are a little bit unclear on that front even now but I'm going to speak to my dad later about this and get to the bottom of what's going on the meeting itself went pretty well I had assumed that it was going to be really rough because of the circumstances it's a serious breach of a lot of ethical codes what happened was unacceptable and it never would have happened if my dad or I were in charge but the customer seemed pretty reasonable and told us that the

only reason she had threatened to Sue and was complaining about it so much on social media was that even after the incident had taken place instead of acknowledging the fact that they had been a mistake the manager had insisted that it was she had messed up and not specified that she had a dairy allergy and didn't even mention that she wanted soy milk to be used so the fact that the blame of the situation had been pinned on her then she knew fully well that it was not her fault that's what made her agitated we

realized how big of an idiot Derek was when we got to know about the entire situation since before this she had refused to entertain any discussions with us without her lawyer on her social media posts she had mentioned certain things about how the management of our restaurant had behaved with her but hadn't gone into much detail about it because she was scared of being sued right back for defamation since this situation was just her word against Derk and he had been in touch with her telling her that she had to take the post down and

claiming that she was lying and he would sue her which is why she hadn't gone into much detail in my dad and I had not been able to find out exactly what had happened the waiter who had taken down her order was obviously scared to lose his job so he had sided with Derek and I don't really blame him for it these are people who need their jobs and won't do anything to risk it even if it means having to occasionally cover up for their employers the new guy that Derrik had hired was obviously never

going to turn his back on Derek so he also insisted that the waiter had told him nothing about soy milk or any alternatives which is why he had used regular dairy milk and insisted that the customer was lying and making up stories to defame us probably in a bid to get some money out of this anyway we assured her that the person who was in charge had been fired and now we are the people who are handling this so we are going to make sure that nothing of this ever happens again we were able to

come to a settlement thank God for that and she promised us that she would take down her posts and let this one go we lost quite a lot of money in the process but at least the mess that Derek had created has been cleaned up now so my dad and I can breathe a sigh of relief update three hi it has been a month since I rejoined working at the restaurant and I have never been happier honestly it took me a month to realize just how miserable I had been when I was not working here

I know I have had my differences with my father in the past but this place I love it I want to take it to new heights and I'm going to do that as for my father we are also trying to work things out and we have made a lot of progress I have been in touch with my parents and we have decided that as a family we need to spend way more time together than we really do I talked things up with my dad a couple of weeks ago now that I was going to be

working at the restaurant again and he told me that he and my mother were really sorry about the way that they had been treating me in Charles they said that they always had known that was kind of the weakest link among all of us and they had just wanted to bring him up to a level where he could compete with us and not feel inferior but in doing so they had probably boosted his ego to a place of no return and now thought the world of himself without actually bothering to work on himself so the

day that my father fired him it hurt his pride and he decided to move out after that he cut everyone off and refused to speak to them but my dad had managed to speak to a few people and had found out that he was currently living with a friend and working at the local video game store so at least he's doing something and trying to get by on his own which is good for him my family including Charles and his wife get together for dinner every weekend and even Derek has been invited several times because

it would be rude to not do so but he has refused to respond but that's his personal choice it hardly matters to me since I have nothing to do with that guy I wish the best for him in the future but I don't want anything to do with him spending time with my family has been great for me and my father and I are finally getting back to a place of normaly and I love it life has been pretty great recently and I have no complaints I'm finally doing what I love and I am building

something that I believe in I don't think I could have asked for more and I'm finally back on good terms with my family I think that's pretty much all that a person needs to be happy