Hello all! Never thought I'd be posting here. My boyfriend works at a McDonald's in central England, in a smallish town where jobs are incredibly sparse. He and all of his coworkers are technically very lucky to have their jobs.
I grew up in the states and never knew this, but apparently international McDonald's are MADNESS in size and profit.
The restaurant's top manager will mess up the schedule very frequently and put people on shifts they can not show up to. She tells them to figure it out… so they just don't turn up.
When this happens, hundreds of orders get backed up and she won't let ANYONE (some even underage) go on their breaks. She instead yells at the workers to hurry up and has several times told shift managers (word for word), “you'd better not let anyone go on break right now”. People have reported her time and time again and nothing has happened. She gets a slap on the wrist and aggressively doubles down on the workers.
My boyfriend has requested I not report her to any sort of labor organization. He says she wouldn't get fired regardless, and the outcome would almost certainly be that she begrudgingly begins to adhere to labor laws while continuing to knowingly cause understaffing. It would just make the employees that do show up suffer harder. He is too tired to risk it and too defeated by risk of unemployment here…
I have no idea what I can do for him. I don't know if this is a rant or request for advice, but it hurts hearing him come home after a consecutive 9 hour shift without a proper break (on these days she schedules them at the very end of their shift so they basically clock out right after their break ends). I hate her guts and I hate knowing capitalism rewards her for her abuse (but hey, her profit numbers are doin' great!).
Thanks for reading, all 🙁