I’ve been scrolling through this sub and I just thought I’d share my experience as a restaurant all rounder (bartender/ barista/ waitress/ unappreciated cog in the system)
I worked this job over Covid and during my first university internship. My degree requires 1000 hours of field work (unpaid) split between the last 2 years of the degree. I needed the income for my internship. I was a school mental health worker which was rewarding but mentally and economically exhausting. So many of my peers in the degree were fired from their jobs because they couldn’t accomodate for the internship. I was incredibly privileged as this job accommodated for this and gave me weekend shifts to get by, but the conditions and the way they treated staff was quite horrific. During that time I had to sacrifice my own mental health so that I could get by financially. I managed to get government financial assistance (Centrelink), but they were giving me $5 (AUD) a week at the time (no I’m not joking)
A few things that happened during this time:
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the diner suddenly changed from being part of a restaurant chain to being their own private manager owned restaurant. I was not told about this and only found out by seeing a “you may know this person” pop up on instagram with a restaurant who had listed their address in their bio which was the exact same as the chain restaurant I worked at. When I inquired I got a vague answer about it having to do with the price of their meats or something, turns out it was a lie and that the conflict was as the CEO of the chain restaurant was my managers ex and I guess they couldn’t be civil? Idk.
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I got paid in cash, I requested to be on the books and receive pay direct to my card as I was on Centrelink and I needed the pay slips and required information so I could declare my income. They told me I could but then changed their minds. As I was not ‘on the books’ , management were incredibly stingy with pay. At one point they cut pay by $3 and didn’t tell anyone. I only found out when calculating a pay after an 8 hour public holiday shift and realising something didn’t add up. We also didn’t receive pay differences for working during public holidays or weekends. We had a flat rate which was below the legal limit for people in my age range.
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I got no support from Centrelink, they refused to support my claim for income and the diner were underpaying me for long weekend hours. I am a lived experience social work student with anxiety and depression. This lived experience is highly valuable to my profession, but also means I am more susceptible to vicarious trauma and burnout, this plus being an unpaid intern and getting treated horrifically by both Centrelink and my job was too much, my mental health reached a point it hadn’t in years and I had to quit to basically keep myself off the edge.
(I know not a lot of people don’t have the option to quit a job to preserve their mental well-being. I am incredibly privileged to have been able to do that as I was being supported by parents to get through the rest of my internship)
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they had me work a night shift alone with no one else but the apprentice chef when they knew they had a massive table coming in.
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When I quit, they begged me to work 1 more shift. I did it (I know I know, I should not have done that).
After I quit about a month later the restaurant shut down due to “lack of staffing” (not surprised), apparently around when I quit about 3-4 other staff members also quit. There were not many of us at all so that was enough to tip the scale.
I’m in a better place now. Still in my degree but I have a different job and feel incredibly supported by my team. Just thought I’d share a bit about my experience as it’s therapeutic for me and also might help others scrolling this sub notice similar red flags and behaviours in their work places. Thanks for reading.
Edit because I forgot to include something:
– we had a tip jar, never got the tips.