Bit of a rant sorry
I (19f) currently work at a fast casual restaurant chain. I have been working there on and off as a seasonal worker for a year and a half (summer/winter breaks, etc.)
For context I an currently a college student and last summer before I started college I was hired there for the first time. They were severely understaffed and I was trying to get hours, at one point it was just me and my boss (the previous shift leader) running the front by ourselves doing 60+ hours a week 12+ hour shifts. I am used to doing full/busy shifts by myself. I only work front of house though.
However, earlier this year I ended up dropping out of school and I decided to work and go to community college back home. i got rehired at this job and I told them I would stick around for at least a year or so.
More context: Here is how our management is set up:
– Regular employee
– Shift leader (2-4 per store usually)
– Shift manager (1-2 per store)
– District manager
– Regional manager
A few months ago our SM went on medical leave and he hasn't been back since. The DM asked me to be shift leader a couple months ago since they knew I had the most experience out of everyone (Turnover here is relatively high). I accepted as long as they would work with my schedule which was flexible, just no more than 40 hours. Luckily, she was at our store a lot to fill in for our SM and help me with all the work. Basically she was showing me how to do a lot of the SMs work. It was manageable until 1) DM hired way too many employees in FOH and 2) that same DM got moved to another set of stores and we got a new one who is hardly here.
Since then, I've been working with new DM directly but she is rarely ever at the store, maybe once a week for 4 hours. She has trained me how to do most of SMs work and she does a little of it herself but I end up doing most of it. This includes petty cash, invoices, reporting store incidents, disciplinary notices, responding to emails, sales and food costs, inventory count, a shit ton of paperwork, etc. (We even have 1 special day during the week where we have to compile all of the paperwork and scheduling and send it to corporate and it takes forever. Only management can do this not regular employees)
Not only that, I have had to train a lot of new employees who barely get any hours so I have less time to train them. As a SL training others is expected, but I'd usually have SM there full time who would help me. I'm the only one who can train FOH and like i said new DM is never there. Other more experienced employees help me train newer workers but even then I end up doing most of it. On top of being a regular cashier, taking and passing out orders, store cleaning, etc.
For the 2 months I've been SL I worked anywhere from 30-40 hours a week. I'm so exhausted. Even if I only work a 5 hour shift I have a buttload of work to do. It's very stressful as a student and work doesn't expect me to cover extra shifts thank God but I already work a lot. Oh, and at my job SL only gets paid $1 more than a regular employee per hour. Fuck this shit.
I know for a fact at least at our store there's no one qualified to be SL and if I left then most likely new DM would bring in someone from another store but it would take weeks and she'd have double the work.
If we don't get a real manager to help the store, at least give me $1 more an hour for fucks sake. New DM is a nice person and she does genuinely try to help me as much as she can but it's so much work that I'm overwhelmed. Idk if she even has the power to give me a raise. At least with SM around to do some of it I could focus on training employees more and making performance go up (It's in the dumps, like our yelp because our food quality has gone down and the newer employees are giving out wrong orders).
I'm going to put in my 2 weeks in a week or so, or threaten to quit if they don't give me a raise. I'm so tired of this. How should I go about asking for a raise? lol