I’ve been working at this cafe for about 4 months now. My insurance was supposed to be active after the first 90 days. Not only was the company late to get it activated, but I was denied it entirely.
I was told 32 hrs a week was full time and this would qualify me for insurance. I just needed to be at these hours by the time the insurance was active. I agreed to it
I knew there was already a high turn over when I started here but i just assumed it was growing pains as the cafe got adjusted to new management. Turns out it’s common for several people to leave this place after only being here a short time. I believe the cafe even went through two managers within 6 months or a year.
Since I’ve started at this cafe in March of this year, at least 8 people have quit or been fired. Some of it was due to circumstances such as moving but a majority of these peoples exits had to do with the district manager (let’s call him Q). Upper management in general is super nit picky and controlling, telling us things like: we cannot say “welcome in” because the owner doesn’t like that. We have to say “good morning” instead. If Q is in the cafe he’ll tell us to change the music if the BPM is too fast. We aren’t allowed to have phones in our pockets at all (even though parking around the entire cafe is timed so we constantly have to move our cars or risk being ticketed). Q will usually contact my manager within 30-60 minutes of a bad yelp review being posted to ask why we got it.
It’s been a draining few months here but I was counting on insurance to make it worth it. I love working in coffee and I wanted to continue growing with the company but it’s hard to do so when there’s such little concern for the staff.
I found out that Q denied my health insurance because I didn’t seem “committed enough” to the company. He said that because I worked less than 30 hrs in the past, it doesn’t seem like I’ll stick around. Once my manager told me this, I immediately panicked and told her that I had worked 35-36 hrs the last few weeks which were the qualifications I was told I needed (at least 32 hours at the start of insurance activation). Prior to this, I’d bounce around 25-30+ hrs depending on how staffing was.She called Q for clarification and essentially I was given an ultimatum of commit to at least 40 hrs a week or no insurance. Up until this point, I had decent interactions with Q and he would tell me that I was a hard worker/ very efficient so this felt like a slap in the face.
I’m already fed up with this place and that was the last straw for me. Everyone is already stretched so thin because the turn over is so high and we try our best but nothing ever seems good enough. Many people say that they’re afraid of Q and always feel like their job is on the line. There’s too much to do. It feels like upper management does not listen to the people who work the floor every single day when we try to give them suggestions on what can be improved. our wait times get up to 45 minutes almost every weekend, new hires aren’t given proper training because they’re just rushed in to make up for the lost staff, closing takes up to 2 hours sometimes because there’s so much to do, there’s barely any visible signage for anything so customers are always confused/ interrupting us asking where the bus bin is or where lids are. Customers in general are so rude and demanding and upper management is always getting on us to improve customer satisfaction. On top of it all, we are paid minimum wage but constantly told to do more and more. It feels like there’s little room for error here
I know an immediate solution to my problem would to be to commit to the 40 hrs but frankly I don’t see the point. I’m uncomfortable with Q being in charge of approving or revoking benefits whenever he feels like things aren’t the way he likes them. I’d HAVE to be 40 hrs every single week. If I needed to miss a day then I would have to use sick time (we get 1 hour for every 30 hours worked). If I wanted to take time off, it would jeopardize my health benefits.
It’s just not worth it to me. I’m tired of being expected to be so die hard for a company that seemingly doesn’t even respect their employees. I plan on quitting but I’m not sure what is the most effective way. It’s taken everything in me to not just walk out my past few shifts. I’m applying for other jobs and I have an interview next week so I feel like I’d be okay if I just quit (I also have savings) but I’m not sure. Any advice????
(I was hesistant to post this because I worried about being fired but I just can’t do this anymore)