I graduated from nursing school recently and I've been doing my first few months on the job as a nurse. I am so excited to be getting paid more. I used to work at multiple shitty food service jobs like Dunkin Donuts. In all of these jobs, we constantly had to be doing something even though there were no customers, everything was already clean and tidy, all the food prep had already been complete, and there was genuinely nothing to do. The shift leaders would tell us to take a cleaning rag and pretend to wipe the counters while we stood there and had conversation because the owner would look at us through the security camera to make sure we are actually working. One of my managers even made us get on the floor with a magic eraser sponge and filer type tool to scrape the dirt (grout?) from between the cracks of the tiles. It was the most humiliating, degrading work ever and should not have been my responsibility as someone who handles food. I hated when a customer comes in and they see me on my knees on the ground scraping dirt. Like what the fuck?? I can't believe I used to think that was okay and I should have quit immediately.
Besides that, me and my coworkers were so brainwashed. At Dunkin, I had several shift leaders who only made 2 more dollars above minimum wage ($14) and they would bend over backwards for the owners of the store. They would run themselves to exhaustion picking up double shifts (not because they need money, they just wanted to help out), never sitting down and constantly moving around/cleaning something that is already clean, and getting mad at coworkers who are actually making minimum wage ($12) for not breaking their backs. They would be proud of how exhausted they were from working and brag about how they are so tired from working 60 hours that week. I even had a coworker get upset at other coworkers for talking about their wage because it's “against the rules.”
During my time at this job, the managers failed to pay me for training and if I didn't keep track of the hours I worked and advocated for myself, I would never have gotten that money. I had coworkers who hadn't gotten paid for several months because Dunkin involuntarily signed us up for some kind of a credit card (no idea what it was, maybe it was a debit card), direct deposit stopped working as a result, and the managers did nothing to help us with this change. They also messed up our schedules constantly and talked down to us like we are children. They don't care about us, don't even pay us, and my coworkers still go out of their way to do more than the bare minimum. Literally why?? Don't even get me started on the customers. Someone spat at me during COVID because we ran out of donuts. Fucking animals
By the way, I am 26 and I was among the youngest of my coworkers. I think many people think food service is just for teenagers and that's why they don't deserve better pay. At this Dunkin, some of the employees were teens but most of them were immigrants with children, grandchildren, and families. This isn't just some part-time food service job that we held during our summer breaks and we quit after several months… this was people's livelihood and they just humiliate workers and forget to pay us. When I quit my job and told my coworkers I got a nursing job, they said “good for you for getting out of here” because it's seriously hell and deep down they know it. I will never ever go back to food service. That's the end of my rant, thank you