This is probably going to turn into a rant but if you make it all the way through I would appreciate some insight. Basically I work at this relatively small business. There are like 20 locations in total and only two in my state. I started when I was 17 and was working all the time. I had to work 12+ hour shifts with no real opportunity to take breaks. I was responsible for planning events, leading/teaching classes, handling customers and transactions, and cleaning/organizing the place because when I got there it was disgusting. Fast forward to now, I’m 18 and now the general manager. On top of those responsibilities, I also do all the shopping, baking, training, handle everything with the customers unless I genuinely don’t know how, and basically manage the store on my own. My boss recently had a new business endeavor that requires them to be out of town all the time. We recently hired someone else who has a ton of admin experience which helps a lot, but she’s so new and being handed so much responsibility that she messes up a lot. I forgot to mention that in the time I’ve worked there we never had more than 3-4 employees. We now have a team of 6 but it’s just not enough. They don’t plan on hiring any more and we have some very busy summer camps coming up and they apparently plan to have 1 instructor for every 16 kids? That’s just not safe or plausible. When I’ve mentioned hiring more people I’ve gotten answers like, “Well we just want to make sure that the people we have get the hours they need” or “We need to watch payroll, it’s getting out of control.” For a bit more context, summer camps are 8:30 to 4:30 and they have 32 kids in them. There is also a lot of preparation involved for each day. Around 2 hours. On top of that we still have nightly classes that take around 5 hours a shift if you do the bare minimum. As well as upwards of 6 events on the weekends. And they think we can do this with 6 employees. I’ve started to feel like if I’m not always doing everything then it doesn’t get done. Yesterday I went in for what ended up being an 11 hour shift after my previous 12 hour shift and there were just so many things that were pissing me off. I was talking to one of our new employees about how I’m just so frustrated because we are understaffed and there is just so much that I have to do. Now I’m super nervous because I was talking about that and there are cameras with audio. I emailed my EOD last night about my shifts this past weekend asking a bunch of questions among other things. Like how many more people are we going to hire, how are shifts going to work, etc. She wants me to call her instead of emailing. I want to tell her that I would prefer if she would email me about that stuff. She called me as I was typing this out. I just get so nervous doing this kind of stuff because, one, I can not handle confrontation. And for two, she is notoriously unprofessional. I also feel bad because it’s small business and she tries to create an “we’re all family” environment, which, after reading on the subreddit, seems like a manipulation tactic. I really just don’t know what to about any of this. I live on my own and support my self 100%. I only make $16 the hour and I feel like the work I’m doing it worth so much more than that. I genuinely think that if I straight up quit with no notice, which would be completely within my rights, they would be fucked. I could be making the same amount for way less work. I’m just a mess.
TL;DR : My boss doesn’t want to hire more people when we need them really badly. I feel like I don’t get paid enough for the work that I do. I feel like I won’t be able to work out my grievances with the way things are professionally which is making me anxious to the point of nausea.