lucky faf declared , that bowling was trash <| sep |> Your wife should consider working somewhere else . It doesn ' t really matter if the owner of one ' s place of employment is crazy . It matters if one ' s employer has motivations that are at least significantly in line with our own . Notionally , help is valuable . If you walk into my shop and actually help me in a valuable way , it would be a good exchange for me to pay you for your time at a value that is less than would charge for the benefit for your help . I have worked at a couple places where my manager asked me to clean up my bar and clock out shift was getting slow which kind of sucks because it puts the uncertainty of my shift upon me . It would result in an awkward half an hour of piddling around with me waiting for staff dinner , but they ' d NEVER ask me to do work in that time . Eventually I ' d get really itchy and I ' d start doing things of my own volition like taking apart the soda fountain to do some deep cleaning to remove biofilm or something else . I can ' t sit idle doing fuckall waiting for dinner and I was in a strange situation where it was better for me to do that than figure my own dinner out . I get it , they wanted to limit the costs attributed to my existence . At least they had some understanding of how I ' d feel being expected to work for free and would take mitigated advantage of my inability to do nothing waiting for dinner . I ' m not a bartender anymore , but at my last place my favorite I managed to ingratiate myself to the owner by catching a rampant liquor thief which gained me the trust to send accountable beers back to the kitchen . Kitchen would be happy to send me easy food so I could eat discretely and not have to hang around for staff meal , and I was sanctioned to send them a reasonable number of accounted for beers as we approached closing time which was a great place to be . The owner was happy because I caught a liquor thief who was wrecking the bar inventory count from before I was hired . Kitchen was happy because booze became open to them in a reasonable accountable way . Instead of them trying to steal bottles when they were burned out , I ' d get a polite ask from the sous and I ' d ring in and order of beers in coffee mugs which would go to the kitchen . I poured them into coffee mugs because they worked in an open kitchen and I didn ' t think it ' d look good for the customers . I was happy because kitchen was happy to kick me a nice discrete meal so I didn ' t have to always schlep around picking nothing out of the soda fountain with a toothpick because I deep cleaned it two days in a row . I was lucky to have found a place where I could reconcile my interests with my coworkers and employer . If you can do that , it ' s a great thing . Ultimately if your employer disrespects your value and takes it for granted you have a situation that is likely to get worse . In the situation you are describing , your employer should have asked your wife if she would like to be clocked in to help .