Strap yourself in because it's a long one!
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I was hired in as a Shift Leader at the Coralville, IA TB location. The training system is a joke. You are required to watch videos but not given the time to do so. You are placed into a position in the store and expected to sink or swim. In the beginning, it wasn't awful. It was what I expected from Taco Bell. As time went on, more problems began to form. The RGM goes out into the parking lot to sit in her car for her breaks. However, she wouldn’t clock out for breaks. As time went on, she began to bring other employees with her. There was a day where I was three people short because she and two other employees went out to sit in her car. The volume of customers we had at the time exceeded the amount of people I had on the shift. I had to leave the restaurant to approach her car to get one of them to come inside to help. When the rush died down, I asked the RGM to speak privately in the office. It’s awkward bringing up a problem, much more when your problem is the RGM herself. I told her it was disrespectful to the team that she was taking these breaks and bringing other people from the team along with her, leaving the rest to flounder. She wasn’t open to the criticism and refused to believe it was a problem. I won't go into specifics, but after that, I was ostracized, lied about, and talked about behind my back to other employees.
I got into contact with her District Manager. He got me in contact with a neighboring DM so that I could be transferred to another location. A location (Cedar Rapids, IA) that was thirty minutes further away from the Coralville location. I was made aware of how short staffed it was and how they were really desparate for help. I was more than willing to build this store up. When I arrived at the Cedar Rapids location, it was being run by the DM and two brand new employees. They were only opening the Drive Thru because they were too new to handle opening the entire restaurant. At first, they were hard working and dedicated individuals. But there was no organization, no training, no time to train, nothing. They were placed in positions and left to sink or swim. It overwhelmed them. Without going into specifics, the store was these two new people every morning, a few stragglers in between for mid shifts, and teenagers every night. They have a 17-year-old kid as a Shift Leader. They have a 17/18-year-old kid as the designated night shift Assistant Manager. Neither have enough experience to run the restaurant in a way that isn't overwhelming, disorganized, unproductive, dirty, etc. I was “promoted” to Assistant Manager Designee for the morning crew by the returning RGM and the DM. As soon as I stepped into that position, they both stepped back. The DM stepped back completely and refused to get involved with the problems of the restaurant because he considered it “babying” the restaurant. The RGM has many personal problems and is unable to fulfill the duties of her position. This past week was a nightmare. The truck order was not put in on time. The RGM is almost always unreachable if she is not in the store. I was “promoted” but that information was not communicated to the team, so from their perspectives, I just showed up and started bossing people around. One employee had an issue with that. She would stand around, so I would ask her to complete tasks to get the store running. At one point, she walked out claiming I was asking too much. After that, she started showing up an hour late, wearing leggings which violate the uniform policy, and not tying her hair up and putting a hair net over her hair. It reached a point where I sent her home, to which she started to fight me. It took a ridiculous amount of time just to get her to leave the store. I got in contact with the RGM and the DM about the situation. Neither of them gave me a way of disciplining this woman. No instructions for a warning, no instructions for a write up, nothing. The next day I was leaving to go on vacation for a week, so this matter needed to be settled. What ended up happening was a group call between the RGM, the DM and I during my vacation. From that call, it was concluded that a conversation needed to happen between this employee, the RGM, and I. That conversation never happened. I was told they had no time, the DM wasn’t there to be involved in the conversation, it’ll have to wait till I come back, etc. So, I was led to believe this conversation would happen when I returned. It did not. That employee was transferred. Later, I was blamed for this, and the DM claimed I was unwilling to work with this employee.
They are scheduling employees who have no keys to open the store. It took almost a month for me to receive a store key even when I was to open the store Saturdays and Sundays. The grills aren’t cleaned every night; the soda machines are not broken down, cleaned, or sanitized every night; the lobby is almost never cleaned at the end of the night. I was left alone on a shift with three new people and expected to open the entire restaurant. It hit a breaking point. At first, I asked the RGM to sit down and talk about the concerns I had about the restaurant. It took hours after she arrived for that conversation to happen because of the lack of employees available to run the store at the same time. When that conversation did happen, she was receptive to my touchpoints and that she was willing to work on fulfilling her duties to build the store up to what it should be. She promised to work on coming in on time, to enforce the policies, to work on scheduling and training so that other employees aren’t left astray. I thought it was a productive conversation. At the time, I was not aware of the schedule she had made. The next day, we ran out of many food items as a result of the truck order not being submitted on time. She had to leave the store to go borrow food from other TB locations. The pressure in the restaurant was building. We had four people, three of which are new, to run the entirety of the restaurant.
The next day, which was my last day, I was awoken by a call from a new employee who was supposed to open the store. He doesn’t have a key for the store. The other new employee he was with, a 17-year-old kid, also didn’t have a key to the store. The RGM was called but her phone went to voicemail. I attempted to call the DM. No answer. I made the decision to drive the thirty minutes on my day off to let this employee in who was standing outside waiting because he regularly has to walk to work. When I arrived, the 17-year-old had left and promised to return later because he didn’t drive himself, his mother drove him and couldn’t wait nor leave her child alone with a stranger. So, there was only this new employee to open the store. I was not in uniform because it was my day off and I was rushing over so this man wouldn’t be waiting for hours in 20-degree weather. I tried to call the RGM multiple times and was sent to voicemail. I dialed the DM over and over trying to get some help. I even called another RGM to try to get SOMEONE to help. No answer. I was stressed, overwhelmed, unsupported, and angry. When my DM finally picked up, it was like stepping into the Twilight Zone. I started the conversation yelling, which was wrong of me. He told me to pause and take a breath because he was my boss, and I am not allowed to talk to him like that. I understood that and apologized. After that, I started crying. I vented that the RGM is not able to do her job, I am left to carry the store on my shoulders, he wasn’t helping, and the list goes on. He said my expectations are too high, that I expect perfection. I understand that accidents happen. Scheduling people to open who don’t have keys to get in is an accident. Scheduling people to close the store who have no training is an ignorant accident. Putting in the truck order late is an accident. The RGM arriving late to her shifts is an accident. All these accidents happening within the same week is a pattern that is not being addressed. The DM continued to say that I am the only one not happy with the way the store is run. Read your Google reviews and surveys; talk to your employees. The night prior, a new night employee sent a message in the restaurant Crew App ranting about how poorly the store is run. It isn’t just me. He also said I shouldn’t have come to open the store for the employee and that I should’ve gotten in contact with the Store Manager and himself, both of whom weren’t answering their phones. He ended the call promising to set up a meeting between himself, the RGM, and I to address the situation. I just walked out. I started driving home and just gave up. I sent a text to the DM and to the RGM saying that I am done dealing with this situation. If they both don’t care about their employees enough to address a very clear, obvious problem with the environment of the store, I was not going to care anymore. I called the employee I had let in and let him know the situation, I sent a handful of texts to other employees apologizing and explaining the situation. The decision I made to work at Taco Bell was one of the biggest wastes of my time. They do not care about their employees nor their customers. They have employees work while sick. It’s a mess, and it’s a mess I will no longer be apart of.