I just need a minute to bitch. So my friends and I all work at a very popular casual fine dining chain restaurant. We had made plans, the four of us, to go to Austin at the beginning of January for a week. Mind you, we all had taken off for this MONTHS in advance. We’re celebrating my friend, G, turning 21 and we are all so close to one another that we wanted to hang out and relax a bit since we all give AT LEAST 45 hours a week to this restaurant.
FOUR MONTHS in advance we had all taken off!! FOUR!!! Now mind you, G and I are both Keyholder managers (very minor, think glorified shift leads) and now that the date for our trip has come up, they have denied ALL OF OUR REQUESTS. After we had already booked a flight and a hotel room!
Their explanation was, “You’re taking away half of our management staff, and over half of our bartenders.” Which quite frankly isn’t true, we are 4 out of the 11 people who work behind that bar. We’re only asking for a week off. ONE WEEK! And we are the ones SLAVING OURSELVES AWAY day in and day out training and expediting and staying overtime and coming in on our off days to keep this place afloat.
G and I decided to take it upon ourselves to write a feasible schedule that didn’t include all four of us (doing the managers job, btw) just so we can present it to them and say, “Hey…this is possible, let us go!” and I am so livid that I told them I will not be there whether they scheduled me or not.
This is a place that I worked 25 hours overtime the week that my dad died. This is the place where I’ve endured sexual and physical harassment with no consequences. I can’t believe I continue to work there, and quite frankly after this I may not be employed there anymore. I just WISH I didn’t need the income to stay afloat.
Anyways, rant over. Thanks for listening.