I’d been working a week at this sports bar when I was asked to attend a compulsory staff meeting that had been scheduled for AFTER hours on a Tuesday night. By after hours, I mean 12:30AM. On a Tuesday. When I wasn’t even scheduled to work that night. Oh, and it was unpaid. I had lectures the next morning and politely asked if it would be possible to have the meeting before the bar opened rather than after it had closed. I was told it was scheduled for that time because it was a “social” meeting, whatever the hell that is. I have worked in many bars in my time and at no point have I ever been asked to attend a compulsory, unpaid staff meeting scheduled for after closing time. I did not attend and received a written warning.
During my second week, a regular customer came in that I had not seen before. The other staff on told me his nickname was “Eminem” because he was quite strange and used to mutter weirdly and would make even weirder hand gestures. It took me three seconds to work out the poor guy wasn’t weird or crazy, and the “weird” hand gestures were in fact sign language. The guy was deaf and none of them had realised this, choosing instead to mock him openly for quite a long time. A week later the entire staff got written warnings because someone forgot to turn the dishwasher off one night. I never went back for another shift.
My final foray into the world of service was by far the worst. The landlady was a useless, lazy spineless idiot with a similarly useless, lazy spineless lump of a husband (who did not have a job at all, even in the pub). The landlady did no work whatsoever, preferring to hide upstairs despite not scheduling enough staff on because she would “cover it.” We would quite often end up with a bar queue three people deep, the kitchen bell going constantly with food and not a clean glass in sight, while she would be upstairs having her hair dyed. The husband was a really odd guy who never wore shoes even at the rare times he managed to lift a finger behind the bar. He constantly went around in increasingly battered and filthy novelty Homer Simpson slippers and I never saw him wear anything else.
She did absolutely none of the usual back of house things that managers usually do — deliveries, cashing up etc. She had us doing all of it. The only thing she actually controlled was the stock ordering and auditing and would never allow anyone else to be involved in at all. It became clear why she was so militant about that shortly before I quit. She really loved being able to say “on the house” to people and was giving freebies out left, right and centre. Every drop of alcohol that her and the husband drank came from behind the bar and every meal they had came out of the kitchen — breakfast, lunch and dinner. Which, for two people and a young child over a prolonged period of time, racks up to quite a hefty amount of lost stock that hasn’t been paid for.
The brewery who owned the place started to get suspicious. The more pressure put on her by the brewery meant the more pressure she put on us. She used to sit us all down (with her husband, who was not a manager or even a member of staff) and accuse us all of stealing because they were a few bottles of spirits down, or a few pints etc. Every one of these occurrences would end with her saying the missing stock was going to have to be paid for out of the tips. It eventually came out that they were around £12,000 down in stock in total, occurring over about a year, which was why they were so manic when it came to the stock orders and audits. They were trying to cover their own tracks. Trust me when I say, there wasn’t a single staff member there who was stealing a thing. It was all them. A few months after I left the brewery finally saw sense and sacked them. That pair well and truly ran that place into the ground.
MVWJ is my current job, working for a dry cleaners, which is a supposed promotion from my last job at another location. When I first started I soon realized how much work this place was going to be (and the employees were not much better). The managers asked me to point out what was wrong with the store so they could improve since the store was in danger of closing. Apparently this didn’t sit well with D who has been here since the store opened, close to 20 years, and she did everything in her power to blame me for her mistakes and if I did make any D made sure everyone knew. Keep in mind I am less than half her age. Also the other employees feed on drama and love to pick on the new girl. I put up with everything and settled on ignoring everyone around me, eventually she stopped acting like a 15 year-old and got over her grudge. Then her son, who also worked there, began acting like a fool.
He hits on every girl who walks into the store and actually believes they like him (I’m sure they only responded to get a discount). He’s disrespectful to everyone and talks about sex in front of customers and even told some of the older women he had something “special” for him in his pants (I’m keeping it clean). Aside from obnoxious comments, he always arrives late and everyone suspects him of stealing. I brought up his getting fired to my managers and one was completely against it. Later I found out she (who is married and “in love”) was having an affair with this illegitimate want-to-be-gangster/father of two, who didn’t even own a car! And who was also sleeping with one of the pressers who is also married. This just outright disgusted me but, I ignored it since it’s not my business, that is until this disgusting fool was trying to hit on me! Obviously I said no. He in return told that same bimbo manager that I did nothing, even though I worked the most, he always complained and always talked bad to me and about me.
I had enough when he started talking bad about Hispanics and called himself Spanish (even though he’s obviously black mixed with white). I’m Mexican and if anyone knows anything about history they know that the Spaniards colonized Mexico and on top of that my grandparents are direct Spaniards, even my last name is Spanish. So when I told him that if he went back to school and earned and education maybe he would have some right to speak about others and if he didn’t like Mexicans maybe he should get out of Texas. Usually I wouldn’t say anything like that to anyone, but insulting me is one thing that I can ignore, but insulting a race whether is mine or not really gets under my skin. Call me politically correct. I never thought I could work at such a horrible place, but you have to take what you get while you’re a college student.
Before I begin, I am fully aware that most service industry jobs are not the greatest, but this experience was pretty bad. I’ve worked in the service industry for a while so that’s why I totally disagree with people who tell me that my experience is something I should expect in this industry.
I had been working sales for about a year, which I enjoyed, but my hours were cut and had bills to pay. I decided to go back into the service industry because you usually make money right then and there. I got hired on at a fairly popular sports restaurant and since a friend of mine had worked there 2 years before, I expected it to not be that bad. From day one, I had a feeling I would not be very happy because it took about two hours to get out of there after being cut. Honestly, after they tell you that you can go you had about two hours of side duties to finish–and one of the side duties was cleaning the bathrooms. Two hours of being paid $2.13 an hour did not really mesh well with me. (Corporate took shortcuts, so the servers were the ones doing all the extra work) If the washer left we had to wash the dishes. I really did not like that dirty water would spray in my face and all over me and I still had to serve food. If that wasn’t bad enough, the girls I worked with were extremely catty and rude. Since I was the new girl, they refused to help me out, and I was always stuck doing whatever side work they didn’t do. That’s how this place worked.
I should add that the customers weren’t really that bad. I had very few issues with them, except the occasional big group of people who think they are the only people there. There was one funny moment while I was cleaning the bathroom, though. There were two girls in the restroom and they were both practicing to sing “Happy Birthday” to their friend. Yes, PRACTICING to sing “Happy Birthday”. They were in there for about 45 minutes singing over and over. Like one girl had to go a certain pitch and the other had to get this other pitch juuuust right. Not sure if they expected to be “discovered” at this place or what.
Anyways, my first week there I was stuck working from 10AM-10PM. Some co-worker disappeared for 30 minutes and came back loaded on some pain killers. She was stumbling all over the place and slurring. She tried to steal someone’s jacket and when the manager told her to show him what she had in her arms, she presented a picture frame, a new toilet bowl brush, to-go boxes, white out, and a bunch of change. She had even gone through our purses. To make matters worse, she destroyed the zipper on my expensive purse. The managers never apologized to me about this or gave me the girl’s information so I could get her to replace the zipper. After all of this, another girl and I were stuck doing that girl’s side duties because it “had to be done”.
I tried to suck this up and continued to work there for three more weeks. The last day I was there, no one informed me that we were out of several things (and no, it was not written on the 86 board or in the computer) and I was not informed that several girls left to go home so I was stuck doing the whole dining room side- usually they tell you when someone leaves, but not that day. For some reason, I was also stuck doing two side duties and I was there until 3AM even though I was not a closer. When I looked at the schedule, they had me working eight days straight. I quit the very next day, with the encouragement of my fiance.
I should add that when I got my last two paychecks, they were both only $100–that’s for two weeks of work and supposed to include credit card tips. Apparently, this place takes out whatever you make in cash from your credit card tips. At least now I am working at a fine dining cocktail bar that is freaking awesome. No more corporate restaurants for me.
I just quit my MVWJ. Admittedly, fast food workers have a stigma of being underpaid and overworked, but this job pushed its staff to their limits.
I used to work for a not-so-popular fast food chain in Australia. In the year that I was there, I would regularly work 9 or 10 hr shifts with no break, seeing as they “couldn’t afford” to give me one. The managers were constantly trying to save on labour, leaving only the barest minimum of staff. Unless it was a Saturday, I often found myself the only person running front counter and drive thru so that meant taking orders, cashing it, bagging the food, making the drinks and serving it — all by myself. Even if there were 10 customers all waiting to be served. And every single order, no matter how big the order was or how long the food took to cook, had to be done under a minute and 30 seconds. If it wasn’t I was screamed at for not being fast enough and called names like “f-ing moron” in front of customers, even if they were kids. We had customers complain to the managers about treating their staff so badly, but all the manager would do is bitch about that customer as soon as they left the store and ignore them. There was a huge turnover of staff — the three managers had all been replaced about four times each in six months and so were all very young and inexperienced.
My first paycheck was only about $15, despite doing 20 something hours. They took $80 out for our uniform, which was just a plain pair of black pants and a red button up shirt, nothing special. We weren’t given payslips so on more than one occasion I found I hadn’t been paid for certain shifts shifts in order to avoid paying me overtime. When our rostered shift was over, we weren’t allowed to leave until the manager had given us a list of things to complete. We couldn’t ask for this list 10 minutes or so before our shift was over, we were only allowed to ask for it after our shift was complete. After we had completed this list, which usually took about 20 minutes to do so, then and only then could we ask permission to leave. We weren’t paid for this overtime either.
I soon discovered the industrial chemicals they used to clean and sanitize everything burned my skin fairly badly. I had huge red patches where it had splashed onto my skin all along my arms and the skin started cracking and flaking off on my fingers after using them. When I was told to keep using them, I begged them to let me not as it hurt so much and showed them my hands. Their response? “There’s some concrete out the back. Take some and harden the fuck up, princess” and told me I’d be written up if I didn’t keep using the chemicals. Unlike most fast food jobs, there was no discounts or anything for working there. We weren’t allowed any percentage off the food or even a free drink. And since the store was located on a rather isolated highway, there wasn’t much options for food. We were also underpaid by about $5 below the legal minimum wage limit.
Best of all, when I finally had enough and found myself a new job, the manager threatened to badmouth me as a reference and not pay me the annual leave/sick leave I had saved up if I quit. I found out later from people who still worked there that she was telling them to badmouth me to my new colleagues in an effort to blackmail me into staying, since they didn’t want me to quit. I’ve been told be many people to sue them since apparently a lot of things they have done are illegal, but I’m not going to. I’m just happy to be out of there.
