Ya'll All Need Part-Time Jobs

Bob's Burgers, S03E14

Linda took a job at a grocery store to help the family with finances, but Bob failed to encourage her and show that Linda was crucial to the restaurant.  She started off part-time, but when Bob gave her a bad employee review, she took the full-time job as shift manager. Tina also met a mysterious boy in the dairy fridge and used his band-aid to find him when the two parted without exchanging information.

I can't believe that with the way that Linda has to bounce so many checks with their debtors that Bob thinks that they hadn't gotten to the point where they needed another income from another job.  Seriously?  They should have had Linda (hell, even the kids selling newspapers or something) working a long time ago.  I think that Bob was just too proud to admit that his restaurant simply doesn't do well enough to keep his family afloat.  After all, he has a wife and three children to support.  It's no time to be prideful.

Anyway, Bob could have had Linda back at the restaurant sooner if he only realized how much Linda does for his business.  One of the most interesting things she does is keep the restaurant at the perfect temperature.  I think that Teddy was overreacting when Bob was adjusting wrong, but he definitely doesn't have the thermostat finesse that his wife has.

Speaking of Teddy, the only part of this story that was really funny was when Bob had to close his restaurant down because of lack of meat and electricity and Teddy refused to leave.  Bob was treating him like a cat and shouting at him to go, and Teddy just wouldn't leave.  What the hell does Teddy even do?  He always seems to have time to lounge about Bob's restaurant all day with unwanted and dubious advice.

One other thing that was sort of funny was when Linda told the customers that she didn't like them.  One guy commented that of course he could hear her because she was on a microphone.  I liked that Louise sort of made that guy feel bad for making her mother look a little dumb:

[Louise] She told me that she hates you the most.
[Customer] Whaaat?

It was sort of sad that Linda thought she was showing Bob a lesson by leaving the restaurant to himself (which she was), but she ended up showing that she is not management material.  She usually manages her own kids, who have good reasons to listen to her orders, unlike employees who will use any old excuse to get out of work.  I can't believe that she actually gave everyone the day off and was left alone in the store.  It was strange to me that people didn't start rioting and leaving with free stuff sooner than they had.  I feel a little bad for the boss who had to come back and find his store in ruins, thanks to Linda.  Bob couldn't run his restaurant too well without Linda, but he didn't exactly destroy the business.  Linda probably put Fresh Feed out of business.

Tina's story was so weird.  Not surprising, but still.  That was completely gross that she kept that kid's band-aid and was using it like a glass slipper on some random kids that showed up to the restaurant.  And who the hell are these kids who were enticed by that flyer she put up?  I can't believe that she got that many people in the first place.  Must be nothing else going on in that town.

I guess her nasty efforts were fruitful, though.  She met the boy again, learned his name, and got a kiss.  I don't know if it will develop any further than the dairy aisle, but since it's Tina, who cares?  That's a victory for her no matter how she got there.

This episode wasn't too bad.  It was sort of nice to see Linda out of the restaurant for a change.  It showed that there is a worse place to work than Bob's restaurant.  This story also showed that Bob would be shut down in a second if he didn't have Linda handling the banks and such.  He really is thick-headed sometimes.  Tina's band-aid version of Cinderella was a little gross, but at least it had a cute ending.  Tina could use a boy in her life to concentrate all of her weird affections on.