Goldeneye
02-16-2005, 02:59 PM
I would have written this a couple of days ago had I not been busy at the time, making the subject "One Year Ago...".
I finally made the drastic decision that I did *not* want to take, and that was to suddenly quit my position at the restaurant...and I did this less than an hour before I was to begin my evening shift (which would was on a Saturday last year).
If I had reported for work on what would have been an extremely stressful Valentine's Saturday evening shift, I would have very likely either a) suffered a major mental breakdown [in front of co-workers and customers] OR b) went Al Capone.
Of course, I really wanted to screw my department over very badly, and I had the ideal schedule to do this...the schedule for the upcoming Monday to Sunday was just issued on Friday, and I was the only non-managerial staff of my department to close both Sunday night *and* Monday (President's Day) night, as expected. It included being the only non-managerial staff in my department providing coverage for the final 30 minutes on Sunday night and the final 90 minutes on Monday night.
It was a cumulative snowballing of things, but I wrote to the HR exec at HQ about a week after that detailing just about everything going on at the restaurant, especially the unethical goings-on there, including one manager of a particular department hiring his girlfriend (who worked in my department), to work with him in his department, which can easily be viewed as nepotism, explicitly prohibited by the employee handbook. There were also bullying and threatening behaviors (usually dismissed as unimportant until fairly recently), including someone from another department attempting to pick a fight with me. Bureaucratic bog down was another issue which got on my nerves, because the person involved in maintenance of the POS systems kept giving me (as well as other people) excuses on why the systems weren't fixed and/or upgraded. But one of the things that was the final straw was when I was summonsed for jury duty, HR tried to give me the run-around and tried to sidestep from paying me for the day off I had take (illegal in Massachusetts).
I didn't mention it in my letter, but I believe it was known by the HR exec was the fact that I never got by pay raised to be in line with the rest of the non-managerial staff in my department. At the time I left, new employees joining my department with no experience actually had their base pay higher than my base pay, even though I had seniority. (Their starting base pay was $8/hour, while my base pay was $7/hour, and I never had a raise in all the time I was there) I was miffed about that so much, that I actually wore my name tag upside down to protest this indignation and injustice. I only reveal the reason why I did that only when I was asked, and I whispered the reason. Even the GM at the time noticed this and did his best to correct the injustice and tried to get me the raise to get my pay in line with the rest of the non-managerial staff of my department.
I also didn't mention this particular point in my letter as it was fairly minor, since I wasn't interested all that much in getting promoted. I was actually in consideration to be promoted, but was passed over at least 3 times. That said, I noticed that the promotions were mostly being directed to a certain ethnic group, and not always in my department.
When I picked up my final paycheck about two weeks after I quit, I noticed that my (ex-)co-workers (non-managerial, that is) in my department weren't manning the stations, but it was the team leaders of my department who were manning them. In fact, they were at a meeting, which I speculate was sparked by my departure and letter to the HR exec.
With a demonstration that what go around comes around, the restaurant shut its doors quite suddenly this past October, even though the HR exec that I wrote to left the company in June, which I speculate that he quit from the company.
With this revenge being served cold, it is just a hard and (often) painful lesson for employers (and managers) who treat their employees like a machine/number instead of a person.
I finally made the drastic decision that I did *not* want to take, and that was to suddenly quit my position at the restaurant...and I did this less than an hour before I was to begin my evening shift (which would was on a Saturday last year).
If I had reported for work on what would have been an extremely stressful Valentine's Saturday evening shift, I would have very likely either a) suffered a major mental breakdown [in front of co-workers and customers] OR b) went Al Capone.
Of course, I really wanted to screw my department over very badly, and I had the ideal schedule to do this...the schedule for the upcoming Monday to Sunday was just issued on Friday, and I was the only non-managerial staff of my department to close both Sunday night *and* Monday (President's Day) night, as expected. It included being the only non-managerial staff in my department providing coverage for the final 30 minutes on Sunday night and the final 90 minutes on Monday night.
It was a cumulative snowballing of things, but I wrote to the HR exec at HQ about a week after that detailing just about everything going on at the restaurant, especially the unethical goings-on there, including one manager of a particular department hiring his girlfriend (who worked in my department), to work with him in his department, which can easily be viewed as nepotism, explicitly prohibited by the employee handbook. There were also bullying and threatening behaviors (usually dismissed as unimportant until fairly recently), including someone from another department attempting to pick a fight with me. Bureaucratic bog down was another issue which got on my nerves, because the person involved in maintenance of the POS systems kept giving me (as well as other people) excuses on why the systems weren't fixed and/or upgraded. But one of the things that was the final straw was when I was summonsed for jury duty, HR tried to give me the run-around and tried to sidestep from paying me for the day off I had take (illegal in Massachusetts).
I didn't mention it in my letter, but I believe it was known by the HR exec was the fact that I never got by pay raised to be in line with the rest of the non-managerial staff in my department. At the time I left, new employees joining my department with no experience actually had their base pay higher than my base pay, even though I had seniority. (Their starting base pay was $8/hour, while my base pay was $7/hour, and I never had a raise in all the time I was there) I was miffed about that so much, that I actually wore my name tag upside down to protest this indignation and injustice. I only reveal the reason why I did that only when I was asked, and I whispered the reason. Even the GM at the time noticed this and did his best to correct the injustice and tried to get me the raise to get my pay in line with the rest of the non-managerial staff of my department.
I also didn't mention this particular point in my letter as it was fairly minor, since I wasn't interested all that much in getting promoted. I was actually in consideration to be promoted, but was passed over at least 3 times. That said, I noticed that the promotions were mostly being directed to a certain ethnic group, and not always in my department.
When I picked up my final paycheck about two weeks after I quit, I noticed that my (ex-)co-workers (non-managerial, that is) in my department weren't manning the stations, but it was the team leaders of my department who were manning them. In fact, they were at a meeting, which I speculate was sparked by my departure and letter to the HR exec.
With a demonstration that what go around comes around, the restaurant shut its doors quite suddenly this past October, even though the HR exec that I wrote to left the company in June, which I speculate that he quit from the company.
With this revenge being served cold, it is just a hard and (often) painful lesson for employers (and managers) who treat their employees like a machine/number instead of a person.