(no subject)
I got married in September and left my job at DQ in Vancouver. For those of you interested there are 5 DQs in Vancouver and two are owned by the same people. the other three are independently owned. There was always weird shit going on at the stores, and I'm not just talking about the stuff that happened because one of them might have been haunted.
I have to vent my rage because of all the things I have seen and all the things I experienced. And the fact that these experiences are still going on. I'm sure it happens all the time, everywhere, but the fact that people have complained about how they are treated grinds my gears. I thought it was normal, or how it had to be, but the longer I work at my current job (also a DQ) the more I realize how much in the wrong they are.
1) Favoritism: This happens everywhere I'm sure. People get in real close with the management and they get what they want. Whether this means a promotion, a raise or better hours it doesn't matter, rules get stretched for people who are tight with the management. It happens at my current work for people who need an advance. But when I get blamed for a shitty labour percentage when I was left an even shittier labour percentage why isn't the person who left me with that written up. At my new job I was left a 30% labour and I got it down to 24%. They were very happy with my performance. If the same thing had happened at my old job I would have been written up. Why wasn't it down to 21? Or 19?
We had a manager who was a shit manager. He didn't seem to care about how the store looked or about how our closes went and he spent hours on the computer paying attention to his farmville and facebook. We all knew this was wrong and we were all annoyed by it, but because he was friendly with the management, he was given a free pass. Until he got caught. I wish he'd been looking at porn because at least that wouldn't have been as horrifying as what actually happened. He had brought his girlfriend into the store after everyone left and was having sex with her in the office. He apparently did it in other places as well, supposedly once was while people were still in the restaurant. Most people would have been fired and blacklisted immediately, but not him. They offered him a demotion, or be fired. He took the demotion. He slowly fell out of favor and ended up quitting later that year.
This was the least of the problems. The General Manager got away with a shitty attitude toward customers, got away with majorly fraternizing with the crew, because she was close to the owner. Managers got away with treating their crew like shit and having shitty labour and crappy closes because of how close they are with management. One manager even left the front door unlocked overnight and wasn't disciplined for it. I left a window unlocked and I was threatened with termination.
2) Payroll - To understand these part, there's a little bit of back story. We had this wonderful manager who seemed to care about the company and us. Fast forward to August and we discover he's stolen upwards of 50k. We'd been having problems with our bank not cashing our checks or paying our vendors but we thought Bank of America was the problem. It turned out that our owner had not been checking the bank statements and we found out that all of this manager's deposits, and many of our General Manager's deposits were missing. This was partially because our GM was lazy and told everyone else to take her deposits. We eventually caught him, and he went to jail for 3 months. for over half a year after that our checks still weren't going through and some of our vendors still weren't getting their money.
a)Raises - No one got raises unless you were promoted. If you asked for a raise you were told to work harder and they would watch. I worked fast and hard, and when I asked they said I had to be less messy. I improved on my mess. Still no raise. I worked with someone who asked for a raise and they humiliated her and ended up firing her. Other people only got raises when minimum wage went up. And that was after two years!
Now, you don't have to give your employees a raise, but for your employees you want to keep fairly happy, especially those who are loyal and have worked for you for a while, you should give them some type of bonus. Which brings me to...
b)Bonuses - They had very specific criteria for the management to get bonuses including keeping a low labour and increasing sales over the previous year for each quarter. Now this happened for a friend of mine in 2009 where he succeeded. He didn't get his promised bonus. Now who can blame him for not caring? Most of the time people would look for a new job, and he did, but everywhere he turned people said no. They did this again to the manager who screwed his girlfriend in the office which was part of the reason for his rebellion. I was a "backup manager" so I don't even know if I was even able to get one, but I was pretty sure i didn't count.
3) Hiring/Firing/Training - I'm not sure if I'm angry at this because it ties into number 1 or if it's because of the way they did this. They would interview a couple people and hire them all. Then they would expect the crew members to train them up to snuff to create hardworking members of our crew. However since Labour was so important to the management, those who were training the newbs were sent home when labour was too high. So after a week or two, those who needed help were abandoned and fired. It's perfectly legal of course. Then there were the people who they didn't like just because they were annoying or they were weird or too quiet.
Then there was the management. When they would hire a manager they would be super interested in them. But as they got to know them they would stop caring and not promote them. This happened at least twice (at least where the potential manager did not get fired) once for this obnoxious girl and once for a guy I actually thought was a good potential manager. Instead they were left to flounder as crew members. Which is why I don't believe this - http://portland.craigslist.org/clk/fbh/2804819948.html
4) Nearly breaking the law - Now you can't have the management be responsible for everything. When a kitchen guy spits in the gravy cup of the man who stole the wife of his best friend, that's not management's fault. But when things aren't to temp, people lying about temping things, the set up of the place being not up to the health code, and then telling the managers to tell to LIE to health department and to corporate DQ. But there were two things that got to me.
While working at DQ, I have a certain sympathy for pregnant women, even as annoying as they might be. One of our managers was pregnant and I was allowed to watch her give birth. When she came back, she had been demoted. This is not illegal, if and I quote - "is if an employer can demonstrate business necessity for the employment action" as long as the company has more than 8 employees. It was winter, so you can say that there was a reason she wasn't increasing sales, and she always kept labour very low when she could. But they didn't like her. So they demoted her.
Then there's another girl who annoyed the shit out of me. She insisted she could never get pregnant because of her tilted uterus and because her bf did so many drugs that he was sterile. When she got pregnant, I laughed. Now that I've gotten away from there, I've feel sorry for her, especially with how management treated her. Today, I found out the management was talking about not letting her come back after giving birth, which is against the law. No one should lose their job because they had to give birth.
I have to vent my rage because of all the things I have seen and all the things I experienced. And the fact that these experiences are still going on. I'm sure it happens all the time, everywhere, but the fact that people have complained about how they are treated grinds my gears. I thought it was normal, or how it had to be, but the longer I work at my current job (also a DQ) the more I realize how much in the wrong they are.
1) Favoritism: This happens everywhere I'm sure. People get in real close with the management and they get what they want. Whether this means a promotion, a raise or better hours it doesn't matter, rules get stretched for people who are tight with the management. It happens at my current work for people who need an advance. But when I get blamed for a shitty labour percentage when I was left an even shittier labour percentage why isn't the person who left me with that written up. At my new job I was left a 30% labour and I got it down to 24%. They were very happy with my performance. If the same thing had happened at my old job I would have been written up. Why wasn't it down to 21? Or 19?
We had a manager who was a shit manager. He didn't seem to care about how the store looked or about how our closes went and he spent hours on the computer paying attention to his farmville and facebook. We all knew this was wrong and we were all annoyed by it, but because he was friendly with the management, he was given a free pass. Until he got caught. I wish he'd been looking at porn because at least that wouldn't have been as horrifying as what actually happened. He had brought his girlfriend into the store after everyone left and was having sex with her in the office. He apparently did it in other places as well, supposedly once was while people were still in the restaurant. Most people would have been fired and blacklisted immediately, but not him. They offered him a demotion, or be fired. He took the demotion. He slowly fell out of favor and ended up quitting later that year.
This was the least of the problems. The General Manager got away with a shitty attitude toward customers, got away with majorly fraternizing with the crew, because she was close to the owner. Managers got away with treating their crew like shit and having shitty labour and crappy closes because of how close they are with management. One manager even left the front door unlocked overnight and wasn't disciplined for it. I left a window unlocked and I was threatened with termination.
2) Payroll - To understand these part, there's a little bit of back story. We had this wonderful manager who seemed to care about the company and us. Fast forward to August and we discover he's stolen upwards of 50k. We'd been having problems with our bank not cashing our checks or paying our vendors but we thought Bank of America was the problem. It turned out that our owner had not been checking the bank statements and we found out that all of this manager's deposits, and many of our General Manager's deposits were missing. This was partially because our GM was lazy and told everyone else to take her deposits. We eventually caught him, and he went to jail for 3 months. for over half a year after that our checks still weren't going through and some of our vendors still weren't getting their money.
a)Raises - No one got raises unless you were promoted. If you asked for a raise you were told to work harder and they would watch. I worked fast and hard, and when I asked they said I had to be less messy. I improved on my mess. Still no raise. I worked with someone who asked for a raise and they humiliated her and ended up firing her. Other people only got raises when minimum wage went up. And that was after two years!
Now, you don't have to give your employees a raise, but for your employees you want to keep fairly happy, especially those who are loyal and have worked for you for a while, you should give them some type of bonus. Which brings me to...
b)Bonuses - They had very specific criteria for the management to get bonuses including keeping a low labour and increasing sales over the previous year for each quarter. Now this happened for a friend of mine in 2009 where he succeeded. He didn't get his promised bonus. Now who can blame him for not caring? Most of the time people would look for a new job, and he did, but everywhere he turned people said no. They did this again to the manager who screwed his girlfriend in the office which was part of the reason for his rebellion. I was a "backup manager" so I don't even know if I was even able to get one, but I was pretty sure i didn't count.
3) Hiring/Firing/Training - I'm not sure if I'm angry at this because it ties into number 1 or if it's because of the way they did this. They would interview a couple people and hire them all. Then they would expect the crew members to train them up to snuff to create hardworking members of our crew. However since Labour was so important to the management, those who were training the newbs were sent home when labour was too high. So after a week or two, those who needed help were abandoned and fired. It's perfectly legal of course. Then there were the people who they didn't like just because they were annoying or they were weird or too quiet.
Then there was the management. When they would hire a manager they would be super interested in them. But as they got to know them they would stop caring and not promote them. This happened at least twice (at least where the potential manager did not get fired) once for this obnoxious girl and once for a guy I actually thought was a good potential manager. Instead they were left to flounder as crew members. Which is why I don't believe this - http://portland.craigslist.org/clk/fbh/2804819948.html
4) Nearly breaking the law - Now you can't have the management be responsible for everything. When a kitchen guy spits in the gravy cup of the man who stole the wife of his best friend, that's not management's fault. But when things aren't to temp, people lying about temping things, the set up of the place being not up to the health code, and then telling the managers to tell to LIE to health department and to corporate DQ. But there were two things that got to me.
While working at DQ, I have a certain sympathy for pregnant women, even as annoying as they might be. One of our managers was pregnant and I was allowed to watch her give birth. When she came back, she had been demoted. This is not illegal, if and I quote - "is if an employer can demonstrate business necessity for the employment action" as long as the company has more than 8 employees. It was winter, so you can say that there was a reason she wasn't increasing sales, and she always kept labour very low when she could. But they didn't like her. So they demoted her.
Then there's another girl who annoyed the shit out of me. She insisted she could never get pregnant because of her tilted uterus and because her bf did so many drugs that he was sterile. When she got pregnant, I laughed. Now that I've gotten away from there, I've feel sorry for her, especially with how management treated her. Today, I found out the management was talking about not letting her come back after giving birth, which is against the law. No one should lose their job because they had to give birth.