(Mods, if this is outside the purpose of the subreddit, please feel free to take this down or direct me to another subreddit – I don't use reddit often at all)
I work at a coffee shop in a major city and have recently begun working a second job at a different coffee shop. For convenience let's call them “Shop A” and “Shop B”. Shop B has been around for much longer and it is exceedingly clear the more I work there that Shop A has problems that Shop B doesn't. Namely, the workflow is much better and doesn't involve people crossing paths behind the bar, the tasks for when the shop is slow are specific and not just “do what you can/prepare for close”, schedules are given out with more notice etc.
On top of these problems, there is also an issue with boundaries at Shop A. A longtime employee of Shop A, “Alex”, frequently treats the group of coworkers as a friend group. They share personal updates on an app specifically for work communication and call people, especially new people, frequently. When I was hired Alex would call me every day before I had ever met them. They are disabled (cerebral palsy), and my coworkers and I do not want to make them uncomfortable by pointing out this behavior publicly. But I also feel that acting as though we are all close friends is asking too much of us. Someone new was hired two weeks ago and Alex is already doing the same thing (calling them frequently etc.).
Essentially, I have a few goals I want to accomplish before leaving this place. I want to leave no later than August, so I think that's a reasonable timeframe to accomplish at least some of this.
- Create an employee handbook and job positions. The job has mostly been a matter of discerning standards and getting varying messages from different coworkers on all kinds of things, whether it be recipes, how to clean something, etc. Disclaimer: I have been told that I'm too bossy in a performance review, and I understand that criticism and have backed down on interrupting or commenting on other employees. (I had gotten into a habit of that and understand how annoying that is.) That said, we have one boss, two managers, and a dozen other employees, and the managers were only just given those positions and don't really have clear responsibilities. It would be so easy to not overstep my job position if I actually HAD one!
- Work with coworker “Morgan”, whose idea this was, to establish a cleaning schedule. Various parts of the shop clearly go without cleaning for far too long and are not an established part of closing. We want there to be a schedule based on days of the week – on Mondays we clean the fridge, on Thursdays the containers and lids, etc. Closing at Shop A only takes 30 minutes, whereas at Shop B it takes an hour, to give you an idea. >_<
- Establish clear boundaries around the groupchat and employee permissions. I think this could be as simple as restricting who can message in certain groupchats to just the boss and managers, because Alex will often repost announcements the boss gives in an announcement-specific channel and then converse about them there. I can't imagine this isn't possible within the app we use (Crew).
While boss of Shop A, “Taylor”, certainly appears sympathetic to all these things and has said that 1 and 2 are goals of theirs, they also just clearly don't want to bother with the extra work and think things are fine as is. I have serious problems with Taylor's management style and am honestly uncomfortable behind the counter with them. I don't know how to push them in the direction that Morgan and I (and others!) want without losing my job. Also, I can't realistically unionize because this store has one location, though I really want to.
Advice and questions welcome. Appreciate this community.