Firstly, I would like to warn you that this is going to be a bit of a rant.
Hello all, after a shit show of a shift me and my co worker were having a chat about how the current state of the restaurant that we work is declining more and more. We were first talking about how we needed to hire more chefs as we keep cycling through the same 8 chefs and when one of us decide to take some time off, example one of us took a week off to go on holiday to Germany, we all get screwed over as everyone's hours get skyrocketed. It's to the point where as we were talking about this, one of the manager asked in the work group chat if any chef could do a 11-5 tomorrow afternoon as the chef that was supposed to be working is currently ill. Not even a minute later I get a private message off him asking is I could cover the shift as well as do the same shift that I was supposed to work. So essentially I would be doing an 11-23:30. To which I rightfully replied no as when I said it out loud, the other chef who was closing with me and the waiter who was closing the floor remarked that I should say no and that he legally can't ask me to as there needs to be at least a 24 hour notice as well as I legally need to have at least 12 hours rest before my next shift (I live in the UK)I wait a minute to see if he responds to which he does with “”.
We chefs have had enough now of the management taking advantage of us which they were doing with me, still annoyed that I didn't catch onto it sooner, and are basically saying that our head chef needs to hire more kitchen staff especially with summer coming around the corner and we are supposed to work in a kitchen that even on a cold night is around 27 °C and we have no working air conditioning. When we gave it a quick google we found out that if the kitchen is at least 35 °C when we can legally refuse to work until the fix the air conditioning.
What doesn't help is that we have 8 chefs (including the head chef) that just get cycled around but we are about to loose a good portion of them, one is talking about potentially leaving for a new job in 2 months time. Another who has taken 3 weeks off as he has Uni exams coming up (we don't blame him for this), one more who once he gets his legal troubles sorted, will most likely say sayonara. I've been there around 1 year now and am contemplating leaving due to the fact that I work mostly nights and that my social life is basically none existent. The good yet bad thing about the job for all of us, is that we have the job security where unless we do some seriously bad shit, we won't get fired as they can't afford to lose any of us as it would make everyone else's job that much harder.
I would like to finish this rant off by saying thank you to this community for opening my eyes to the bullshit that I would otherwise not know is going on. XXX
TLDR: My workplace is shit, and we want change!