Hello people of antiwork!
I've been a lurker here for quite some time and honestly I had hoped to never need to be a person to ask for advice here, but given current circumstances, I can't just stand by and watch my partner suffer like this anymore, at least not without a fight. If it helps, this is in Texas, specifically further south.
Bit of context beforehand:
My partner works for a new (as in early 2000s) yet decently sized pizza chain after MONTHS of trying to work at a location. We honestly loved the food there and something sorta just clicked in place once we discovered they where hiring, thus began our journey to land a job at a location. The first place we tried was the most preferred of the choices, but dispute looking good to the interviewer who was the general manager, it was shot down by higher in the chain of command (likely due to a mix of our lacking of food handlers+TABC and my lack of job experience period). This was a big blow to us as we needed jobs, but we did the best we could.
After many months of trying to apply for different jobs, I managed to score with a closer yet very different pizza chain hoping to one day use it to look good for our original place. My partner also tried with other places too, but I also encouraged him to try for a different location with the pizza place we chose. After many weeks/almost a month or two of pushing and calling and three interviews, we eventually got the news that he was hired! At the time we where both over the moon as it meant we finally made our first step in the right direction to the future we have planned. Little did we know though, this boss was not very good…
The problem:
It was originally determined that I would work part-time as it was easier for people to help me with transportation (I don't have a license or a car and am this reliant on others to take me places) along with it being better for future college prospects, while my partner would work full-time (aiming for 30 to 40 hours or somewhere close). He made this clear in the interviews along with the fact that it took an hour to drive from our home to his workplace and thus would prefer to work longer hours to save on gas, but was told that no one was scheduled for very long hours (4 or 5 instead of 8) except for captains and managers. The boss told him that he'd still try to get him longer hours nonetheless. My partner was apprehensive at first, but felt as though he worked too hard to get this far to back down, so he hoped the boss would keep to his word.
In comes his schedules, which not only showed that he regularly worked 10 to 15 hours a week, but that plenty of people where scheduled with even less hours, some working less than 5 or 2 FOR THE ENTIRE WEEK (I've seen one person have 1.75 hours on a week…). My partner has told me that his boss had openly admitted admitted to giving people lesser and lesser hours in an attempt to get the person to quit rather than fire, and discussion of problems between coworkers is not allowed within the social group chat the store uses, they're supposed to text the boss directly (which he never seems to respond to and even pretends to never get the messages dispute there being clear evidence that it went though). When someone brings it up, they're discouraged/shut down by the boss and his favorites and I believe one person who was expressing how insulting it was they got a little under 2 hours for the whole week and another person talk about how he wasn't scheduled for the week at all (both if which having been people who worked for the place for a really long time, years even). Both of which got removed from the chat by the boss.
My partner has expressed wanting to work more, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. He has expressed wanting to work at different location that was closer to our home and more convenient (as well as has a different boss that clearly works with his employees rather than sit on his ass in the office all day or yell about how often the Sani buckets need to be replaced, but that obviously wasn't stated), but the boss of that location claims that the store has fallen on hard times and isn't making very much in sales so the employees there don't get many hours for the time being (and honestly, my gut is telling me that my partner's boss doesn't want him to transfer and would rather he quit instead, but that's just me…). He has tried the best he can to do all of this civilly, but it doesn't seem to be working.
My partner is heart broken. He had been trying to do this for so many months and was even threatened with homelessness by his parents if we didn't get jobs soon (it's…. A complicated story I'd rather not go into), which made his anxiety even worse at the time. He worked so hard and has tried so much to make this work, but it's grating on him really badly and he's getting pushed closer to just straight quitting.
Is there truly anything we can do, anything at all? Even if there isn't anything we could do about his hours, is there something we could do to keep this from happening to others in the future? I was thinking about using Glassdoor and such to get the problem out to the public (specifically with me being the one to do it so he doesn't face the retaliation, but I don't know if I even can) and keeping screenshots of text and group chat conversations in case some form of legal retaliation happened, along with getting in contact with the employees that also suffer from the hour disparage, but I don't know if any of that would even work. I have such little experience with things like this and I'm grateful that my own boss and fellow employees are much more kind and understanding, but I don't know how to help my partner… Any advice at all would be deeply appreciated.
Thank you for your time, and I hope you have a good day even if things are glum.