When your boss is a benefits dodger...
...but is nothing but smiles and has someone else do his dirty work for him.
I haven't posted in a bit, and my overall number of posts is still pretty slim. Perhaps I should consider several weeks of postings to sort of stoke Mt own writing fire, as well as stoke interest in my as to heretofore unknown writing. We shall see. I have a lot going on aside from Substack, but I think I am up to the challenge. You'll know if you start seeing posts coming your way at a rate greater than 3x per year….but I digress.
I am sitting here on my commuter bus on the way into Seattle, and I'm at the end of my “work for others” tenure. It's been 30+ years. I have worked in every phase of food and beverage you can possibly imagine. In the last ten years, the only thing new I can say I've learned in my so-called "career" is what NOT TO DO.
I thought my current employer would be different. They always talk a good line in the beginning, but me gullible as I am, I don't realize until it's too late. For example: the owner and his wife are both from Southeast Asia. At least the husband/chef seems down to Earth, his wife, not so much; showing up to work in Dior sandals and a Versace tunic at the height of he summer heat while us peons walk around in the required poly-cotton blend uniform shirt and long pants broiling like Krab-with-a-K under a salamander gone haywire….it might be just a little out of touch.
They both state, positively and unprompted, that they want the bartenders to make as much money as possible. This means we have a huge section and a lot of responsibility...both before and after service. Yet, it seems, we have little to no accountability. The bar staff all do what they want in terms of service, including clean or not clean things at the end of shift, or garnish drinks per specifications, etc. Some of this might sound trivial, and, ultimately it is, but in restaurant, it's all about cleanliness and standardization.
So I, the law abiding Lisa Simpson of the group (only male, lacking in yellow hair, replete with ten fingers...and oh yeah! Not a cartoon!) bust my ass for months on end to be sure the restaurant stays as clean as it does, and, by my activity as inventory and ordering manager, try and keep costs as low as possible while still kicking out high-quality, high-end (appearing) cocktails.
One would think that, during the course of these last six months, that we would have had a training of some kind. For the food. For service. For cocktails. In fact, I have been asking for one since April, about 5 days before we officially opened, and I am ignored when I do so.
Nope.
One would think that someone would have asked us for a food handlers card. Or a liquor permit. Or did any paperwork beyond the limited W-4 and I-9 which we all know and love so much.
Nope.
One would think it would behoove them to give people the kind of schedule that they were hired on for, such as myself. I was hired at four shifts per week, M-Th with Friday through Sunday off so I can be with my son at least part of the week.
I worked this M-Th schedule (which works out to be jus shy of 40 hours a week, FYI) exactly ONCE. The week after we opened, when management realized "oh. We're not special. The rules DO apply to us. We're not gonna be packin em in from the word "Go!.That's weird."
That week I got my shifts cut to three, which is, unless I pick up a fourth shift or God forbid a fifth, where I have hovered for the last six months. Now guess what
...I bumped 35 hours a week for the last six weeks, and what do I wake up to yesterday but another shift sliced off my schedule.
My manager says it's because EVERYONE'S schedule had to be cut equally but I don't see anyone else losing a shift this period.
EXCEPT ME.
It took me a minute to realize what was going on. At first I was just pissed that someone who had QUIT was being brought in to work two bar shifts (she has no idea what she is doing. Her bartending skills are stuck in the 90s) and she has a very full-time job on top of all of this, which aggravates the fuck outta me. In fact, I'm the only one working there who doesn't have another full-time job...which makes this shit show of a restaurant my main hustle....which ain't working for me any more.
It’s not working because my boss is trying to get out of paying benefits. Even the weenie, measley benefits that the City of Seattle requires of him, and I think its bullshit.
Whether it's the bait-and-switch BS they pulled when I first got hired, to the whittling away of my shifts because they don't want to pay benefits (!!!) I am just over the sheist. Lying about product in print. Trying to make me lie about my work product as the bar manager (who does all the managing but doesn't get paid for anything bit a pittance for ordering and inventory). Creating drama because of THEIR lack of actual training in any real sense...I'm just over it.
I wish I could learn my lesson and stop hoping for the best when it comes to a new employer. I hoped for the best and I didn't get it...don't know why I should be surprised.
How many of you have been taken advantage of by the restaurant industry? Ant industry at all? Do you feel you're being paid properly for the work you do? What is a job worth these days?