I work at a restaurant that receives most traffic during the Fall and Winter months due to our close proximity to a popular farm to fork area and Christmas tree farms.
I get paid $15/hr as a busser/hostess. Fine, whatever. I learned very quickly that I was given more job duties than I could handle. From running the front (checking customers out, seating) to bussing (clearing, wiping, setting) and to taking drink orders when needed and running sides of salad, dressing, and sometimes food.
The manager who is normally there whom everyone loves because he treats everyone with respect is now leaving due to the newish owner basically not giving a single shit about the restaurant.
I am the type of person that when it is super busy at the end of my shift, I stay, because there is NO ONE ELSE, to help the serving girls out. The owner is a cheap ass and doesn’t wanna pay me an extra half hour or hour of work. That would be fine if she would instead take on my job duties, but she instead goes to the back and makes phone calls and leaves the servers to drown. Even going as far as telling them to buss their tables when it’s busy!!! They can’t!!!
She questions people when they inform her we need more of XYZ, asks how much we have, because she refuses to go to the store and purchase ingredients.
She also keeps a skeleton crew. We rarely have anyone to cover another person if they call out or quit. She would rather not hire more people to pay and leave the restaurant without prep or work done in order to not have to pay people for their time.
Every Sunday, we have an older guy come in who makes bracelets for kids and adults. Just something fun. The owner, knowing the guy had to leave and wanted his payment for being there, made him sit and wait for thirty minutes while she fucked around in the back and told everyone who bothered her about paying the guy that “she knows” and “just a minute”
This owner had come in to a large waiting list and proceeded to seat 8 parties in a row and made the kitchen and servers very behind because she doesn’t know how to keep a flow when seating customers.
The worst of it, however, was today.
This owner changed the schedule two days before the weekend (our schedules are on paper) and did not notify ANYONE of this change. Mind you, our schedules are put out every Sunday for the week. We never have two weeks out schedules. Today, I showed up, the other hostess showed up, and the THIRD hostess showed up. We normally only have two on a Sunday. This third hostess was not sent the schedule, told there had been a schedule change, and obviously didn’t bother to look because we always are going to use what was posted on Sunday.
She had been babysitting the previous night and had to drive an hour and half to work, just to be told she was not working that day.
Then, when discussing this weeks schedule later that afternoon, the owner yelled at my coworker because she was texting the other hostess trying to her shifts covered, and she said that we are NOT allowed to discuss the schedule with other employees. This employee quit after leaving and texted our manager that she would not be working her scheduled shifts this week.
I am looking for a new job as I write this, just frustrated because I feel guilty for leaving the girls without a hostess to help them on busy days, but I cannot continue to watch my coworkers be berated and stressed because they do not have me.
Tl;dr: New owner has never owned a restaurant before, leaves employees to drown by not hiring, keeping short shifts, not ordering ingredients needed, changing schedules last minute and without informing, and disregards how normal restaurants are ran.