Working for a popular pizza chain since August and I’ve been promoted to store manager on account of my previous years of management experience in another restaurant chain and there being zero other candidates. Base pay is not nearly what I thought it would be for being responsible for an entire store ($485 a week net), and I have the opportunity to get a monthly bonus of around $1000. Here’s the thing though. The bonus is based on a few different factors, some of which aren’t entirely in my control, so it feels kind of…cheap? Unfair?
One of the factors is making labor, which we haven’t made labor for the entire month of October because our sales are in the toilet due to competitor pizza places (3 in our small town), and even with cutting back to the bare minimum required crew, I’m still just barely above water. I’m doing 2-3 different positions some nights to cut back on labor costs.
Another factor is food costs. Any missing inventory is money out of my bonus, but we count everything, even things like boxes for pizzas. Anyone that asks for a to go box for leftovers eats into my bonus, and we probably have anywhere from 20-60 tables a day, so lots of boxes and ranches and refills just to go and other things that the servers aren’t paid enough to care about.
It feels like they dangled this bonus over my head when they wanted me to take the position, but now that I know how it’s calculated, it feels like I’m being underpaid for working 48-60 hours a week. And my hours worked corresponds to sales, in a way that if the store is open for prep but not customers, I’m technically working free hours. If we aren’t making money, I’m not getting credit for hours worked. I’ve never worked for a company that does that and it seems wrong to me.
The pay isn’t anything to sneer at, but part of me feels like I’m being taken advantage of. The growth for the company is terrible, as the cap for my position is based on sales brackets. Being in a small town, my net pay will never be more than $510 a week, even if I stayed for 20 years. I wasn’t expecting 80-100K a year, but I was expecting more than 35K, and that’s only if I get the max bonus every single month. Am I expecting too much, or is this a big deal? It feels wrong, but I have food on the table and a roof over my head so I feel guilty for complaining.
Edited to add: I’m the 3rd store manager in the last year. The one who worked there for 18 years quit on the spot after being fed up for so long with the working conditions. I didn’t know him though.