Just FYI, the owners of the Green Lady Lounge / Black Dolphin / June’s Night Club/Uptown Arts Bar are extremely callous, unprofessional, and downright terrible when it comes to the handling of their employees. I want to spread awareness about how they run their business because a lot of people actually do care about supporting companies that are good and fair to their staff. I’ve supported myself in this industry for 19 years. I’ve worked at renowned cocktail bars that have been in national magazines. I’ve won cocktail competitions and have won vacations to visit multiple distilleries because of my bartending abilities. I’ve been a bar manager before, and I can tell you, the way they run that place isn’t right and it certainly isn’t normal. And the way they handle their staff is reprehensible.

I worked at the Green Lady Lounge AND Black Dolphin and I was ultimately fired after my dad and grandmother died, unexpectedly, on the same day, and the way the owners and admin/non-manager handled the situation was completely unacceptable.

Screenshots on Facebook: Chelsea Z Leigh

Before any of this happened, I had no disciplinary issues and was a good employee with 19 years of industry experience. This bar has NO manager, no onsite leadership, and the owners are NEVER present. ALL communication is done ONLY through text. The only administrative contact, Jen Wismeier, leaves at 5 pm and is not a manager. There is no barback, no busser, no management or leadership—just A LOT of bartenders and servers (who work for tips and don’t even make minimum wage) one or two dishwashers, and one door person. That’s it. Apparently they used to have managers until around 5 years ago… I wonder if Covid had anything to do with that…

One day, before work, my Dad called and told me that my grandmother became suddenly ill, I informed Jen. She encouraged me to go be with my family in Louisiana, nearly 1,000 miles away. A few days later, on what was supposed to be our last day there, my father died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Later that same day, I watched my grandmother take her final breath. Our trip was extended for funerals and arrangements. My grandma was cremated, so her funeral was able to be 2 weeks later to accommodate my mom’s other family members. So I returned to Kansas City in between and even worked two shifts before going back to Louisiana for the second service. I stayed in communication with Jen the entire time, and both she and the owner assured me that my job would be waiting for me when I returned!

Screenshots on Facebook: Chelsea Z Leigh

After my second return to Kansas City, Jen sent out the weekly schedule—without me on it. It was clear she did not yet know I had been fired. So she stopped responding after that (she probably felt bad about it, and was hoping I’d go away on my own….) I then asked about the schedule multiple times in the group chat. She did not respond, and I remained in the chat for three more weeks, even as they trained a new bartender. For three weeks I asked about the schedule and received no explanation or communication Finally, after my third attempt, Jen messaged me and told me that I was fired. This was three weeks after I had fully returned home, four weeks after my last shift, and six weeks after the tragedy. 

Screenshots on Facebook: Chelsea Z Leigh

I want to be clear: this is not simply about being fired after a traumatic event—though they did not have a valid reason at all. It is about HOW they fired me: by ghosting me for weeks, leaving me in the group chat, offering no communication, and withholding information that I desperately needed. I was financially devastated after missing work and traveling for reasons completely outside my control. If they had informed me immediately of my termination, I could have started looking for another job ASAP, and none of this would have become public. Their handling of the situation—not the firing itself—is what made this story worth exposing.

Screenshots on Facebook: Chelsea Z Leigh

The screenshots that are on a separate post that include 100% of our communication EVER (during the last 6 months of my employment) show that they had no intention of firing me before this because I was a good employee with no other issues. I never even had any drama with anyone the entire time I worked there. Because the owners are absent (I would not recognize them if I saw them) and the bar has no management structure (if you go in there and ask for a manager, you’re going to talk to the closing bartender) the employees receive no support, and situations like this can happen without oversight or accountability. I believe that because they never physically saw me, they didn’t view me as a person—and it became easier for them to treat me as disposable.

Screenshots on Facebook: Chelsea Z Leigh

To clarify the timeline: I was gone for ten days during the first trip; my dad and grandmother passed away on day five (which was supposed to be our last day there.) I returned to Kansas City and worked before leaving again for five days for my grandmother’s funeral—with permission. When I came back, they directly sent me a schedule without me on it and then ignored me for three weeks before finally firing me for no reason. Considering what happened, I was not gone long, and I followed all procedures, staying in constant communication. Their absence from their own business is what helped create this situation, and their reliance on text-only communication made it easier for me to expose them.

Screenshots on Facebook: Chelsea Z Leigh

I also posted screenshots showing what appears to be the bar owner anonymously responding to my comments and claiming the business operates on “paper-thin margins.” That claim is absurd. This bar regularly brings in $20,000–$25,000 in sales on busy weekends, and they are consistently one of the busiest places I’ve worked at in 19 years in the industry. They make enough money in three regularly busy nights to cover a manager’s salary for an entire year, yet they refuse to hire management, invest in proper training, or even show up to their own bar during operating hours. I literally would not recognize these people if I saw them!

The well vodka they use—Tavern Keep—costs $6 a bottle, and one bottle yields 22 shots. They sell those shots for $8–$9 each, making around $199 per bottle. That’s over 2,200% ROI, and that pattern holds across most of their menu because they rely on extremely cheap ingredients while charging premium prices. Despite how profitable they are, because they are so overstaffed, I usually made less than $200 a night, which is less than I made as a teenager working at IHOP in the 2007–2008 recession.

The music IS good. The staff works hard and is genuinely great, but there is zero training program, and no emphasis on quality or efficiency. Many inefficient habits among staff could be fixed easily with any real leadership, which could help them cut back on staff. They use pasteurized store-bought juices, the cheapest ingredients and liquors possible, and their recipes are mostly unbalanced or mediocre, and drinks were sent back on a regular basis. The cocktail menu is overpriced for the ingredients they use and and the menu is poorly designed and doesn’t follow any of the traditional guidelines you’d find if you were to look up how to build a diverse cocktail menu (i.e. they also serve too many drinks in unchilled coupes—which are difficult for inexperienced servers to carry with trays—and because no manager enforces standards, servers don’t carry trays even though everyone shares tips and there are no bussers) The popular “espresso” martinis are made with regular-strength Folger’s coffee (so they have to add cream because without it, the drink is translucent) they use cheap coffee liqueur, cheap vanilla vodka, and aren’t even served in chilled glasses or garnished because they do not care about quality, but they charge $14 for a drink that costs them around $1 to make. When I brought up putting the coffee in a different container so it would be easier to pour, Jen told me that they SHOULD do something like that because they sell an average of 170 espresso martinis a night, but it never happened, because she’s never there. I only physically saw her maybe 4-5 times during my entire tenure, and I would not recognize her if I saw her today. Nor would I recognize the owners who made my schedule (see facebook for proof about that because I ran into one of them recently!) 

They discourage upselling to premium liquor—something that would help staff earn more tips—just because the bar makes slightly less profit. They also don’t hold credit cards when customers open tabs, so drunk customers assume they’ve closed out, and they leave. They do not add 20% gratuity to walked tabs, even though there are dozens every night, sometimes 60–70. They used to add gratuity, but the owners said they were having too many walked tabs, so they stopped! With two floors where customers can roam freely and every employee sharing all tabs, it’s impossible for anyone to track who has paid. Yet the owners blamed staff and punished them because of it. They also contributed to the general inflation that we’re are all experiencing these days by doubling their cover charge while I worked there by going from charging $5 to $10 cover overnight.

We are completely 100% dependent on tips, my paychecks averaged $100 every two weeks because they pay above tipped minimum wage but below state minimum. They make millions per year yet care nothing about what their staff makes (screenshots include my nightly wages) There’s also no progressive discipline—no write-ups, no coaching—just immediate firing whenever something goes wrong, because they can’t be bothered to communicate with staff. 

Screenshots on Facebook: Chelsea Z Leigh

Everything I’ve said is true and provable. If it sounds like slander, that’s because their behavior is morally and ethically wrong. They’ve told people I wasn’t a good employee (because they are embarrassed) even though their own messages show otherwise and both the owner and admin/non-manager (who fired me) promised me my job back because they clearly had no intention of firing me before this happened : See post on Facebook that includes 100% of our communication from my last 6 months of employment – there you see that I NEVER called in (or texted in, since they don’t answer or return phone calls) and I was only late twice during the whole time I worked there. 

This is the only issue that happened on my two shifts back in KC… there were two misogynistic customers on my first of the two shifts back to work before returning to Louisiana for my grandmother’s funeral. I’ve dealt with plenty of disrespectful men/customers in my career, but these men were on another level. They harassed me, left, came back, and immediately started taunting me again. There was no manager to go to, so I followed the closing bartender’s instructions and asked the door guy to remove them. He did—and apparently speculated about it to the owners the next day because he gets there early enough for them to still be there. He is known for running his mouth and has gotten people fired before.

It’s also possible the customers themselves complained because they were definitely the type of guys to do so. But either way, if the owners had an issue with me kicking someone out (something that bartenders do have to do sometimes, but I had never done before while working there) they should have called me the next day to discuss it. Instead, they said nothing, offered no support, and fired me a month later. If they needed someone to cover my shifts, they could have started training the server they eventually promoted much earlier—but they waited until two weeks after I was back home permanently to start training her (see screenshots of the group chat)

This is bigger than just what happened to me. It’s about workers’ rights and the fact that—outside of Montana—employers can legally treat employees like this with no consequences. I’m sharing my story because it is my constitutional right to do so, and because people deserve to know how this business operates and treats its workers.

And finally: tip your bartenders and servers well (especially if you go to THIS bar) They may be going through something genuinely terrible, and they might need that money (that they ARE working for) worse than you could ever imagine.