Hi guys, first time poster. Have a weird situation at work that I wanted advice on.
I work at a popular food stop in a downtown location in a dense city. We have multiple locations but one in particular has been plagued by violent homeless people harassing staff and customers.
I actually don’t work at this location after a homeless man tried to break in after hours while I was closing. I’ve also had several coworkers assaulted, luckily no one has been injured (yet).
Homeless people have set up a camp of sorts right outside the door and they’ll walk in ask everyone in line for money, then ask us for free food. We had to close the exit (against advice of the fire Marshall) because they would steal food from the to go area daily. They’ll also dig through the customer garbage in front of us, throwing everything on the ground. And of course if asked to leave they attack staff.
The official store policy is to do nothing for our safety but then customers get harassed and sometimes end up starting fights with them. Some people also refuse to leave the seating area while we’re closing, making us stay several hours while we wait for cop response (they don’t respond to calls often because it’s bad in this area).
We’ve been trying to get some security with authority to remove people since we got a new manager last summer. We did get yellow vest security that stops by once an hour during the day…but they can’t force people to leave and they sporadically stop checking on us if they’re busy. The manager has been asking for an armed security guard at least on busy days but corporate won’t pay.
Corporate finally realized we might actually be in danger when the team lead for the store was assaulted last week… we’re gonna have a meeting to discuss possible solutions in two weeks now.
Finally to the point of my post: what kind of things should I be prepared to say to the area manager? What are our rights with regards to safety? Any recommendations?