I almost can't decide where to begin. The main point is that at this Pizza Hut, which is located at Old Town in Kissimmee, Florida, is just 50 different levels of wrong.
First off, I have been working for this Pizza Hut for just under a year; my husband has been working at this location for five years, and for Pizza Hut as a whole for 10 years.
Between the two of us we've had our share of shifty managers and lazy dropout coworkers, but the past year, our Pizza Hut employee experience has just been hell on wheels.
To start, the RGM for the store, Robert Hector, by chance is Hatian. The only reason it matters is that he won't give an application to anyone who ISN'T Hatian. If a person of ANY other nationality asks for an application, he'll tell them we're out. If a Hatian walks in five minutes later, suddenly we're back in stock.
That's not the end of it though. Since I was hired a year ago, he's hired two people, both for a higher wage than he's supposed to (and both higher than my starting wage, but I was hired by one of the sane managers, so I won't complain). Both employees were Hatian, but again this is a nonelement to me. The problem starts when the first employee is allowed by Robert to basically talk on his phone all night.
I wish I were exaggerating. He would literally spend his shift calling people and begging them to call the store to tell Robert there was an emergency so he could get out early. This worked for two weeks until all the employees who had shared a shift with him demanded he be fired. Thankfully he was.
Then came Annemarie. She was sweet, if shy. She was also Robert's Mother-in-Law. It's alright for my husband and I to work in the same store, as neither of us are managers. However, for a Store manager to hire his own mother-in-law to work at his store is entirely against policy. And this isn't mentioning the shift manager whose boyfriend was just hired to our location so they could work together.
Again, this is the tip of the iceberg. Our location is a prime tourist spot, and so the prices are a bit higher than typical. We're an extremely busy location, so even on our slowest nights, we work our backsides off. Those who have worked here for a while can tell you night to night how we'll do, and how much the store will make. Usually it ranges in a dinner shift from $4-$7k. Based on this, you would think it is in the best interest to prepare enough dough for the shift. More dough means accommodating more customers, which means more profit for the store. Right? Wrong. We're extremely limited in how much dough we're allowed to prepare, and practically every night we've run out of everything by 8pm.
Robert's reasoning for this is that he doesn't want to have to order (and have to date and put away, since he refuses to hire someone for that job) a larger truck. He doesn't want to spend more money on dough, which defies logic, and the very principle of running a business: You have to spend money to make money.
This no-spending ideal of his extends to everything about the job, as well. We frequently run out of silverware because there isn't enough. We have had to go to the Burger King next door on SEVERAL occasions to borrow lids, straws, cleaning solution, and more, as we run out constantly, and Robert will go months before reordering these things to save money.
To elaborate again on the employee side of things, on a shift that requires two cooks, a cutperson and a dishwasher, he will regularly schedule only two employees: a single cook, and a dishwasher, to do all four jobs. Then he'll get upset that the employees don't keep up with the onslaught of Disney tourists that we get without fail every night. Front of house he'll allow 2-3 servers and no cashier or hostess on a floor that needs at least five servers as well as a cashier.
Now to begin on favoritism. We have Robert, who is the RGM. Teresa, the assistant manager. Amanda, Rachel, and Raul are the three shift managers. Raul is given a pittance of hours to keep him from suing the place for discrimination, when he's perhaps the hardest working manager in the place. He, however, bears little in the way of drama, and so gets into trouble for speaking up for the employees. Rachel was brought to this store when Robert came, and for lack of a less spiteful term, she's his pet. More accurately, his canary. She is put on shifts to report to Robert the dissension in the ranks. He hears about everything from the personal pan we didn't ring up to our saying anything to disagree and defy Rachel.
While I'm not complaining about the practice in general, I am complaining about the repercussions the employees suffer for simply speaking their minds. I'll say I disagree with something that's going on, Rachel will hear and report back to Robert. Suddenly I'm losing hours. That seems fair, right?
Just the other day Amanda, who wishes she had the clout of Rachel, threatened to take away the hours I currently work simply because I'm unable to work on Mondays, due to babysitting issues. I'm willing to work six other days, and I've never been scheduled for a Monday night, but they'll cut my other hours because I'm not willing to work this one shift.
Why do they need someone for this shift? The store employs Five cooks total. Two of those cooks work day shift, and can't work nights. One cook just took a leave due to scheduling conflicts with his other job. This leaves two cooks for night shift, Maria and myself.in order to properly staff a night shift, this would mean the two of us working seven days a week, which neither of us are able, let alone willing, to do. Robert won't hire a new cook, or pay us overtime.
I've gone on for an hour now, and yet I still haven't mentioned how certain employees (who are actually the worst employees we have, and who, at any other job, would have been fired LONG ago) get preferential treatment simply because they don't go to Robert and tell him the truth. I could mention that two out of three of those employees are African American, and that the third is married to a Hatian.
I hate to tout discrimination in this complaint, but the instances of it are so overwhelming that one can't help but bring it up. The day cook, who doesn't cook, and instead leaves that job to the day server, and who also doesn't do any prep, and leaves that to Robert of all people, and who doesn't do dishes, instead leaving THOSE to whoever else will do them (what does she do? That's a good question. She leaves on time and saves Robert labor. That's pretty much it.) is rewarded with a consistent 35 hours per week, any day of the week she wants off, the ability to leave early on demand (guess who comes in early to cover for her.) and the max pay raise every quarter. She happens to be Hatian.
The other day cook, a white male, is lucky to work weekends, and is chastised constantly when he doesn't finish ALL the prep, ALL the dishes, and ALL the orders in a timely manner.in my opinion, they should be lucky he does what he does. I for one enjoy Saturday shift above any other day because I know when I get to work I don't have to prep dough, or wings, or bread, or stuffed crusts, or scrub the make table clean in order to even find the scoops, or remove an entire shift's worth of lids from the area to do my job.
I'm not a lazy person. When I get into my shift, I expect to make sauce, and to clean and fill the make table, and so on. I do it every day. If, however, I were to neglect any of my closing duties, I get reamed for it, same as that day cook. Yet if Genesta, the female day cook, chooses to neglect ALL her duties her entire shift. Why that's just fine, and everyone else had better pick up the slack.
I could give such examples for several of the employees there.
The thing that makes me most ashamed, though, and that was the catalyst for this complaint, was a recent incident. Robert and Rachel were standing at the register, taking cash from customers, and in front of them and everyone in the rest of the store, were badmouthing the employees they don't favor. That's something you just don't do. No matter WHO is the bad employee, the managers' job is to fix these problems, not sit in front of customers gossiping about all the things they don't like about us.
Another point, if you anger Robert by actually speaking your mind, he'll cut your pay. We have a server, she's perhaps the most dedicated Pizza Hut employee I ever met, someone who actually qualifies for her company bestowed Customer Maniac title, complain that certain other employees were stealing money. Shortly thereafter, the employees in question were not spoken to at all on the matter, and the server finds her hourly pay cut by 20 cents an hour.
We've since discovered this can't be done without employee knowledge, and a signature, neither of which Robert attained, so they must have been forged.
Other practices include managers changing their own time clocks to reflect showing up on time when in fact they're up to an hour or more late for their shift, then turning around and writing up employees that show up 10 minutes late due to traffic.
There's also padding checks by adding extra sauces and drinks to the bill, then pocketing the money, or discounting checks after the customer leaves and pocketing the difference.
To summarize, employees of certain nationalities are guaranteed a cushy place here, the worst workers among us, who fulfill perhaps one of their duties on a good day, get preferential treatment, the hardest working of the managers and employees are treated as expendable unless we pick up everyone else's slack. It's alright for the managers to cheat, steal, be late or even skip work without so much as a slap on the wrists, but for an employee to even ponder calling in with a real illness is grounds for a write-up or worse. Employees are expected to do nearly all of the management's duties, and we get admonished if we're not able to cover both our own duties and theirs.
I wish I could say this long-winded testimony is all I have to say, but every shift I come home with something else that makes me incredibly sad to work at a place I actually love to be, thanks to the abhorrent job practices that go on there.
Selina
Kissimmee, Florida
U.S.A.
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