My boyfriend works as a chef at a grocery store kitchen. When he started, he loved his job. He gets to cook whatever he wants using store ingredients. Starting wage is $14 for cooks. When he began, he was one of 5 chefs on payroll. Primarily, the kitchen has two at once and maybe three at a time depending on how busy they expect the day to be.
Two chefs left and that left them with three. Around the same time, a few deli employees (basically same department) left as well. Things got more busy because the chefs were also being scheduled for deli positions too. Not that big of a deal. The manager said they were going to have someone new in a week.
A month later, my boyfriend and the two other chefs were breaking overtime. One asked the store manager, “Can we get a raise since we are basically carrying a much larger workload than usual?”
Store manager said no so the guy put in a two week notice. After the first guy left, the second chef decided to hardball the store manager and said “Look, we are 4 people (the other deli employees included) working in a deli made for 10. 8 at the very least. I need a raise or I can’t stay”. The store manager said “You might as well put in your two week notice today”.
The guy did and then never came back for his next shift.
Now, there are two deli employees and one chef (my boyfriend) and his deli manager who is super nice. He has been breaking overtime to the point that they are telling him he can’t do anymore overtime. He signed up for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week but has been working 12 hour shifts for 6 days a week and basically being forced to do overtime while being yelled at for doing overtime while being told they need him to come in because they have no one else. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal somewhere in there.
They keep saying that they are hiring people and here we are now three months of this later. He doesn’t want to leave his super nice deli manager and remaining coworkers but I keep urging him that he should. I’ve found tons of job offers for him and they pay more too. A job that doesn’t make him skip his breaks because he’s too busy doing several other jobs aside from cooking.
Should he actually quit or is this healthy to continue on?