So Im a shift leader at a chain coffee shop. It's franchised so I don't know how to go about unionizing a franchised location. Recently we've been more understaffed than usual. Theyve had to cut hours because we haven't been meeting our sales goal.
On days when we meet our sales goal, every worker is exhausted because we didn't have enough staff to handle the amount of customers. Now, they're giving us less staff each shift because we haven't been meeting the goal. But we're still unable to handle the amount of costumers now because we have less people even on busy days.
We don't just have to serve coffee and make food. We have to portion the food, keep everything stocked, clean, do dishes, somehow clean the bathroom every hour, make sure we keep up with our “red book” which is where we keep our temps and make sure everything is at the right temp and everything is in order, food safety wise. But we don't get that done. Even on normal days we have to just fake the numbers because we do not have enough time to go and take temps of all the product every four hours because we've never had enough staff.
We get yelled at when the Redbook isn't done and I've told my manager to let me talk to the district manager and I will tell them we do not have time to do it and that it that's a problem they need to staff more people…but she won't let me say anything. I like my job and I think I do a good job at my job. I care about the store. But me and my coworkers are the only ones who care! The higher ups don't care.
We recently had management changes in April and I put in my 2 weeks bc I was sick of the same issues still being an issue for 4 years and thru four different managers and 3 different district managers. The new DM convinced me to stay and said things would be different (spoiler alert they're not)
Ongoing problems (I'm talking consistent since I started in 2018):
Sewage backup every month (we constantly have to call a plumber and all he does is put a bandaid on it instead of just fixing the issue)
Ice machine breaks monthly
Air conditioning breaks every summer and we have to work in 90 degree Fahrenheit temperatures
Calcium buildup in our coffee machines (we need constant maintenance that they will not provide)
And I told them these issues when I sat down with the DM to warn her. And they still don't do anything about it until it happens and we have problems for a few days til they “fix it” and then it messes up again in a month.
So the entire crew is tired. Some people are getting too many hours they don't want. People with kids are getting 2 days a week when they have open availability. They won't give us enough staff to keep the store clean. They give us just enough to keep the customers getting their drinks.
Night shift gets stuck with everything because day shift can't get to it and they rush us out so we don't go over labor.
We're sick of it but we can't do anything about it because we're not making sales. Every time I say something they say “if you want hours we have to make sales” but like…it's not working out! We can't run the store like this! Nobody has time to clean. Nobody has time to make sure all of our food safety guidelines are being met. It does not work like this.
Tl;Dr. We're understaffed but they say we can't have more hours because we aren't beating our sales goal. What can we do about this so that we can argue to be better staffed even though we don't meet our sales goal?