Sick of seeing people I love getting taken for a ride

I don't know where else to put this, but since it comes up in the context of work as often as anywhere else, and this idlers of this sub will be sympathetic I'm sure.

I am sick, and tired, and done for life with seeing people I care about getting taken advantage of at work, by absentee owners, by incompetent managers and by unpleasant colleagues. Obviously none of that is new to me, the people I care about nor in fact any of you reading this. Maybe lockdown prompted me to reflect more, but I feel like over the past couple of years I've watched (among many others) my partner go from service job to service job, and at every turn the pattern is almost the same:

1. Partner starts job (signs (part-time) contract)

2. Has a few crap shifts, decides to stick it out in the name of persistence

a. Asks manager about the details of the crap, hears back “it’s always like this…” (optional extra: “when I’m not around”)

1. Crap shifts continue, change not incoming

2. Partner and I talk and her needs/expectations are clear; I suggest she speak to the best (of a bad bunch) of the managers to explain

3. Partner explains to the manager, gets the same reply

4. Partner endures until she’s tired, angry, unhappy and can barely face returning to the job

5. Partner explains this to the manager and resigns

6. Manager asks her to stay on a few days, implying that it would be bad if she didn’t

7. Partner feels she has no choice – she’s tried everything including leaving and nothing changes

I know, none of that is an unusual pattern, especially in the service industry. What gets me so frustrated is the extent to which employers break or flout the law and barely even justify it:

No breaks, or breaks taken mandatorily at the very start or the very end of the shift (a shift which could be more than ten hours)

• Employer’s defence: we’re too busy, we don’t have time, people haven’t shown up for work
• Conclusion: if your business can’t run within the boundaries of the law, then it’s not a viable or sustainable company
• Conclusion: if you’re working your employees twice as hard because people don’t show up for work, then maybe that’s a reason why people don’t show up for work

Partner and owner discussing working details; manager brushes off complaints on the basis that “it’s different when I’m here”

• Employer’s defence: they don’t offer one; owner simply believes this, or otherwise just says it to get my partner off his back
• Conclusion: lying to employees or fobbing them off doesn’t solve any problem, but makes them trust and respect the employer less

Manager causes undue stress by micromanaging employees

• Employer’s defence: we have standards to maintain
• NB: standards routinely forgotten when it’s busy; manager is not in fact micromanaging standards, but instead everyday/low-level employee activities
• Conclusion: managers need to be trained as managers, because managing isn’t just telling people what to do or shouting at them when they stop moving for a moment
• Conclusion: if you don’t trust that your employees can do the basics of the job without immediate supervision, then either the trial shift model is insufficient, or managers have issues with trust/personal stress management/customer-facing work

Employer (restaurant in this context) do not provide food as described on the contract

• Employer’s defence: sometimes we run out of ingredients – this is a fair response
• NB: if there’s no food, employer doesn’t offer a break, or will cut breaks short because the employee “isn’t doing anything”
• Conclusion: employers are routinely ignoring their contractual obligations

The advice for all of this is well-known, of course: speak to HR (the owner’s wife, in this case(!)) or speak to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau (in the UK).

The problem my partner keeps hitting however is that she feels it’ll achieve nothing (not unreasonable though admittedly it does make a certainty of nothing changing), or that she feels intimidated by her manager(s), or personal reasons: she doesn’t want to cause a fuss, doesn’t want to be identified as a problematic employee and face repercussions, doesn’t feel she has the authority/right to stand up to managers or the owner (for culturally-learned reasons regarding relationships with authority figures), or frankly because after 6 hours of sleep and 11 hours of work, she’s not really got the energy to do much more than go to, or return home from, work.

I’m not frustrated specifically by the egregious behaviour of this and other employers (well, I am, but not as much as the next bit), but more particularly by the fact that my partner, alongside others I care about like my sister and my best friend, are consistently taken advantage of at work and don’t feel they have the right or capability to put a stop to it. In the darkest moments it feels like it’s something that affects women disproportionately, because western society continues to encourage compliance and submissiveness in women. The result is that my otherwise very strong-willed partner makes excuses for her employer, brushes aside her own doubts and fears until much later, and all the while her employer gets to continue enjoying the financial benefits and lack of responsibility that comes with failing to treat your employees in line with their contractual rights. The service industry makes this far worse by the revolving door nature of its employment model: employees who would say something end up quitting before they muster the will to act, and the more meek employees then have no allies, so they say nothing, all the while thinking “well, I’ll be out of here soon so I’m not about to start trying to organise my colleagues”.

I’m at a loss, because it seems to be every job, and affects so many people I care about, even if I’m just describing my partner’s experiences here. My weird energy wants me to get up and either organise something for them (with the vain hope that it’ll balloon and become something much more impactful than one little restaurant), or otherwise go wild and act out the heavy outcomes of all those protests that never actually seem to go as far as rioting. Otherwise, I don’t know what to do, and it’s slowly draining me of my will to participate in this inhumane society. I’ve still got will remaining and I still want to do something (and since I’m on r/antiwork, I’m talking more than sending some letters and signing some petitions), but one person smashing stuff on their own isn’t a revolt, it’s civil disobedience and property damage. I probably can’t encourage violent activity here as that’s likely considered incitement to violence, but maybe I am allowed to say that if we woke up tomorrow to a choice selection of authority figures’ heads on spikes outside the Westminster, I’d not weep.

The saddest part of this on a personal level is seeing my wilful, brave, determined and moral partner lose all of that to a feckless business owner who’d rather abuse their employees and replace them when they burn out than show a shred of human F***ING decency and treat their employees like the beings-with-rights they are. It’d be one thing to lose the love of an industry because a person grows and changes, but quite another to be effectively bullied out. I don’t know why I’ve written this diary entry, and I don’t really know why I’ve put it online, I think I just need to externalise all this, because otherwise I think I’d end up just going down that extreme path I described above. I am, however, at my wit’s end hearing about people being abused and mistreated at work, and watching employers get to just walk away, even benefit from it, at the psychological expense of the person most vulnerable in the situation.

Solutions? Can we try an industry-wide union that leans very heavily towards strikes and other industrial action? Can we as employees set a new standard of management behaviour, to the effect that being an untrained drill sergeant nitpicking the minutiae can be considered incompetence, rather than leadership? I would try anything because without trying something more tame like that, I can only think that this might change if the more exploited employees of the service industry (amongst others) adopted a more combative posture and took their rights, rather than waited to receive them.

Thanks for your patience in reading this frustrated ramble; if any of it resonates with you, then I’m very sorry, you deserve better than that.