As the title says, I'm trying to figure out what or even if I'm able to do anything about the things that happen at my workplace regularly.
For a bit of context, it's a fast food place (I know it's not ideal but for the moment my only option) And in my 6 months or so that I've been here the list of things I've seen are.
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Daily wage theft. This happens to the people closing every night. We are expected to fully close, clean, restock, and prep for the morning shift within 1 hour of closing regardless of if we are fully staffed or not (which we aren't most of the time) or have to train new people. If we aren't done within one hour of closing the manager will clock everyone out and their excuse is “that's just how we do things here” and it's normally a full hour of work that we're screwed out of, even more if people don't show. They also regularly cut hours in the systems preventing people from going over 40 hours so they don't have to pay overtime.
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Child labor. This one really bothers me. One of the managers regularly brings her child to work, no older than 7 years old, and has him near things he shouldn't be like grills and fryers and puts him to work stocking things, sweeping, moving trash around, and folding boxes. I've watched this poor kid fall a few times trying to do these things.
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Store manager regularly threatens employees (especially the undocumented ones) with firing or cutting of hours should they step even slightly out of line from what she wants or even if people run slightly late (5-10 minutes) but she is perfectly okay to show up an hour late and regularly reminds us that we're all replaceable.
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We don't know our schedule. Yes, that's correct. We don't know our schedule. We were all made to join a whatsapp group in which every night, anywhere from 9pm-3am the manager will post the schedule for the following day. Keep in mind this place opens at 6am, so if you were up late waiting to see if you worked the next day and you open, well you better grab a few redbulls. She will also claim at the start of every month that, “the schedule has been made for the month, there will be no more days off” but refuses to share it and due to that it's basically impossible to plan anything around work because nobody knows when they're working next, and if you can't make it or arrive late that? That's right, threats to fire and the person will almost always be punished with cut hours that sometimes are up to a full week. I looked up and saw that my state requires a 24 hour notice for a schedule change, but this isn't even changing the schedule, it's just straight up not knowing when we'll work next and it's taken a horrible mental toll and caused me to be isolated from my loved ones as I can't plan things in advance at all.
There is a few more things that go on but those are the main ones. We recently had an hour long mandatory unpaid meeting where I was able to record the manager straight up admitting they they do not pay overtime and that they do indeed cut hours to the 10-12 people at the meeting. In this meeting the manager told us that we were a family and that every one of us had a piece of her heart while in the same breath saying “everyone here is replaceable and if you have a problem with working here, you can leave through one of the 3 doors, the drive thru window, and if none of those work for you your free to climb the ladder on to the roof and throw yourselves off. It's okay though, they brought 2 pizzas.
I'm sorry that was somewhat lengthy, I think part of me also just wanted to vent my frustrations. But yeah, is there anything I can really do and if so how do I go about it, or am I shit out of luck in this hell hole?