I recently quit my job as a supervisor at a franchised fast food chain. I started out as a regular employee/team member/crew member/whatever, and got promoted shortly after as another supervisor was leaving, they were already short-staffed, and I was about to turn 18. As with any job, I put in my best effort and often went above and beyond (in my opinion) when it came to doing my job right (ex. stay late closing just to ensure the clean was top-notch). The entirety of my employment, no matter how long your shift was, you got 1 paid 15-minute break (morning shift would be around 7 hours and night shift would be around 5-7 hours, depending on how late the close took). My scheduled shifts were “night shifts” however I started partway through the day shift for a smoother transition: with starting early plus closing time, my shifts could be as long as 8 or even 9 hours. No one had the guts to complain about break times for multiple reasons: some were relying on this job as their only source of income, some didn’t mind as it was a paid break, and some people were just simply terrified of the owner. They also made decent tips, so it was not like they were working purely for minimum wage.
Shortly after I began assuming a supervisory role my attitude towards the job took a turn. On one of my first ever closing shifts, when I was doing everything for myself the first time and ensuring nothing was missed, I had forgotten one thing. I did not realize until the morning after when I woke up to a text sent from the owner to the group chat with management and the other supervisors. It was a picture of the TINIEST ever smidge of strawberry sauce on the corner of the container. And I am talking barely noticeable, accompanied by a rude text reminding that cleaning this was an expectation and that tiny smidge of strawberry was “disgusting”.
Listen: I am a HUGE advocate for health and safety, especially when working with food. I was the “hard-ass” that absolutely would make sure you recook something if needed, rather then turn a blind eye to get drive-through times down. I obviously would have cleaned the strawberry if I noticed it, which I did not. Because of how fricking minor it was.
Where I live, our winters are ROUGH. It commonly gets to -40C, with much snow, sleet, and all-around terrible weather conditions. Our drive-thru window was powered by CO2- it opened and closed on a switch. In the winter, this mechanism would freeze up so that the window went down incredibly slowly (as in, so slow I checked back a few minutes later and did not notice a change). We were only permitted 1 longsleeve under our tshirt uniforms, as well as a very thin cardigan shared among the employees. The person attending the drive-through window was forced to stand next to an open window, often with snow and freezing rain blowing in, improperly dressed. For hours. When I asked about policy on jackets for the person on window (aka not handling food), I was told no. The second time I asked of greater urgency, the owner left me on read as I was the “difficult” supervisor with her.
After I quit, I promptly called the labour board for inadequate break times as well as filed a health and safety violation complaint for cold stress. Instead of making things better, it just got worse. I did not hear back about the health and safety complaint. Instead of just giving people the correct break time (which is 30 minutes when working anything over 5 hours), she completely overhauled the schedule out of spite. While day shift now gets the proper breaks, night shift starts half an hour later and is scheduled so that they have exactly enough time to close (which is barely different from the hours they worked before) so that they are no longer eligible for a break. I should never have said anything at all.
EDIT: this lady was pretty nasty and rude in multiple other ways which are not important to the story: ex. my mom was suspecting she had COVID after a close contact so I had to isolate as well, she was trying to force me to come in anyway and later complained that you can’t just “call out because your mom is sick”…etc.