Quite frankly, I'm sure some of it is illegal, but I've been curious about posting this and seeing the response.
Thankfully I don't work here anymore, and I haven't for over a year. I love my current job. I quit on the spot and always make sure to watch for a few minutes every time I go to the mall, because they're always short staffed and struggling.
For about a month and a half in 2021, I worked at a “nondescript” cookie place in a mall conjoined with a pretzel place. I worked the pretzel side.
The GM's kids were majority of the employees, and the favoritism was extremely obvious. At the end of the day, you couldn't leave until all of the cleaned dishes were back on your side (half was the cookie place, half was the pretzel). That was fine, except the manager, or if his kids were standing in for him, would always tell the washer to finish the cookie side dishes first. The pretzel side had easily less than half the dishes as them, but they got to leave first every night regardless.
Once or twice in the time I worked there, the register came up short (which was apparently a recurring problem). I was asked to give them my tips to make up the difference, which I did. No one else had to give up tips.
I frequently had to come in at 7 in the morning, along with one or two other coworkers, and a manager. More often than not, the manager was over 30 minutes late but we weren't allowed to clock in until a manager had clocked in. We were still fully expected to work.
Coworkers said some of the most heinous, racist shit I've ever heard. Sometimes well within customer's hearing, and frequently about customers or people passing by. Since they were the manager's kids, nothing happened.
I often worked on my side alone for closing, and once we were closed and I was cleaning, I was aggressively cat-called a few times. I was reprimanded for “ignoring a customer”.
I'm sure there's more I've forgotten, but these are the main things that frequently annoy me. I figure that's what I should've expected from a minimum wage mall job, but nonetheless I find these are good stories to fuel the fire.