I hope this is an okay place to post this. I’ll try to keep it brief, but it’s a long complicated story. I do actually like my boss. Idk if it’s basically stockholm syndrome at this point because I don’t really have a single good thing to say about her, so I’m not sure why I genuinely care about her and her business. I consider myself a really loyal people pleaser and I am not feeling good about what is coming. I am part of a very small team of 3 full time people, 3 part time students and the owner. Two of the full time people plan to walk out tomorrow during a meeting where our boss plans on tearing us apart for no good reason. We worked incredibly hard over the last couple weeks, to the point where I made myself sick, everything went wrong but I worked my ass off and got everything done properly. I have worked countless unpaid hours for her because I felt forced to. She does not pay us tips that we are legally entitled to. She does not pay overtime. She does not pay stat holidays. We have to stay a minimum of an extra hour per day over our scheduled hours, sometimes I have stayed up to 18 hours at a time (when my shift is only supposed to be 8 hours) because of the volume of work and lack of staff/organization. She yells at us, insults us, complains about all of us to other staff members behind our backs, acts like all of her staff members are completely incompetent but it really comes down to her management and the fact that we’re all absolutely exhausted all the time.
Basically I know this is all unacceptable and this is only the tip of the shitty workplace iceberg. It goes much deeper. She has been kind and generous at times so I guess that’s why I have a soft spot because I know she’s not all bad. But the sporadic kindness just doesn’t make up for everything else. I know the obvious answer is going to be ‘quit’ BUT I am not well off. I have been looking for other employment. I haven’t found anything suitable yet. My other coworkers have family/partners that make good money and can rely on that but I am in a position where it’s not a smart financial move for me at all.
I’m considering writing a professional letter detailing the issues and my proposed solutions to those issues, and then conditional on if she’s willing to actually listen to my coworkers and I asking for a raise and to be paid tips, and holiday pay.
I just don’t know if it’s a giant waste of time and will just make me look more stupid. If all three of us walk out Monday it would absolutely cause chaos next week, she would have to close/cancel orders. I don’t want to completely fuck her over because it’s not just her, I’d be fucking over the clients and part time employees. But if I stay next week will be the week from HELL. Plus I don’t think she would actually make changes permanently. I feel like she would just go back to her old ways eventually.
Basically my question is, do I give it one last shot, for the sake of being the bigger person and not fucking over my boss, for giving her a real chance to fix these issues and not disappointing customers? Or do I just walk away for the sake of my mental/physical health and just live as cheaply as possible until I find a new job