A new era has started at SUR, and unsurprisingly, one SUR-ver is already in trouble during the Vanderpump Rules Season 12 premiere. Lisa Vanderpump has dealt with plenty of staff issues over the years, and Marcus Johnson was no exception after he was caught sneaking drinks during his shift.
“Working at SUR is a f—king playground for me,” Marcus said in his confessional during the Dec. 2 episode. “You gotta keep it interesting, or else we’re just serving tables.”
He continued, “[There are] servers that know the menu to a ’T.’ And they’ll tell you everything, down to the arugula or whatever. I’m just like, shaking it up. Love to get in people’s ears.”
But Marcus also hinted — a little too accurately — at where things were headed when he said, “Everybody loves me here, so I’m not gonna get in trouble. What are you going to do, fire me? How?”
Fast-forward to the next day, when Lisa admitted she was furious with Marcus.
“Sometimes people get a little too comfortable, and they make ridiculous decisions, and this was one of them, and Marcus will pay for it,” she said in her confessional.
After a SUR staff meeting ended with Lisa telling Marcus to “go home,” he broke the fourth wall outside the restaurant.
“Didn’t expect that, I ain’t gonna lie,” he told producers. “Well, I mean, we all do that. But, I mean, I got caught. So, what can I say?”
Lisa Vanderpump details why she was angry with Marcus Johnson after a shift at SUR
The same night, bartenders Chris Hahn and Natalie Maguire noticed a backlog of drinks waiting to be served. But when they looked for waiters, none were found. Instead, Marcus and Venus Binkley were in the back of the house taking shots. “To an awesome night, my man. Let’s f—king have a good time,” Marcus toasted.
His behavior also frustrated his trainee, Jason Cohen. “Training with Marcus, I feel like I wanna do more. He’s like, ‘Do less. You come here, you just don’t work.’ I’m like, ‘What do I do?’ He’s like, ‘Nothing,'” Jason said.
When Marcus and Jason were later caught on camera sneaking more drinks, Marcus warned him, “Don’t tell Demy [Selem],” SUR’s assistant manager.
But Marcus wasn’t as discreet as he thought.
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“Today, I was watching the camera because I was looking for something that I lost, and I saw that Marcus was drinking in the little barback kitchen,” Nathalie Pouille-Zapata, Lisa’s business partner, told her the next day. “Teaching Jason how to do it—how to sneak in. And then he comes over here, chatting with Venus at the bar, casually asking the bartender for two shots. And they like took those shots, and went to like sneak two more drinks.”
Lisa pointed out to Natalie that sneaking drinks was hardly a new issue at SUR. Viewers will remember The Valley‘s Kristen Doute and Stassi Schroeder famously turned a tampon container into a flask during their Vanderpump Rules days.
“Listen, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard this bulls—t, okay? I mean, do we suspend four of them? How is that gonna hurt the business?” Lisa asked.
But as she emphasized in her confessional, the environment at SUR has shifted. “I know that people will sneak a drink here and there. I mean, this ain’t my first rodeo, that’s for sure. But, this is 2025, this isn’t 2013,” she said. “SUR has HR. We have to crack down on this kind of stuff.”
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Did Lisa Vanderpump fire Marcus Johnson for drinking during his SUR shift?
Lisa called a staff meeting with her entire SUR team to call out Marcus’s behavior during the Dec. 2 episode.
“Last night, what transpired, is Marcus standing at the back of house, swooping cups of sangria,” Lisa shared. “Venus, standing here with Jason and Marcus taking shots—before you even start working. What kind of service are you going to give?”
She then pointed her anger solely at Marcus: “I am not happy with you at all. And you know what the worst thing about it is? Is that here you are training somebody that I think is going to be part of the team and you know how you’re training him? You’re training him to get s—t-faced like you.”
Lisa ordered Marcus to gather his belongings and “go home,” but she stopped short of firing him—at least for now. “Have a really good think about it, because let me tell you, I don’t want to speak to you anymore,” she told him.
Check more of the SUR drama to come in the Season 12 trailer.
