Fucker's that work at Wendy's; A.K.A A tribute to the crew that work under me!

The BBQ Pit
1

As some of you may already know I work at Wendy’s here in Montreal. And as much as I enjoy my job it seems to be the root of most of my headaches. Tonight was no exception.

  I try to be a good manager. I am friendly with the crew and try to do my best to keep them happy. But lately I have been feeling a little stepped on. I am one of the only night time managers that seems to inforce the procedures set my those higher then myself and because of this I am not always the most liked in my store. I do what I can but at the end of the night I want my store cleaned to the best of our abilities, even if it means missing the metro at night. (Night buses are available after this) Whereas other managers allow free drinks to the crew (which they often abuse) and leave half ass closes because they all wanted to finish at 12:30 am. With a new General Manager around here he has put a lot of pressure on me to push the crew to follow procedures big and small to ensure the highest quality of service as possible. This is where my trouble started tonight:

 My cashier came in without a name tag. Now you might say, its just a name tag. But for a manger who makes 3 to 4 tags a day because people are too laze to remember them, you have to draw the line somewhere. Anyway, I warned *Mr.Cashier* that starting next week all lost name tags would mean a dollar and every forgotten one 25 cents. So from this point on he was miserable.

  I had been trying to get my coordinator and my cashier to use the ice scoop, instead of dipping the cup in the ice which causes contamination, for the better part of the night. Now *Mrs.Coordinator* is mouthy and I have caught her on more then one occasion eating our food infront of guest's in line. So when I went on break I took the liberty of watching the camera to make sure no one stole drinks and to make sure everyone kept working. They didnt steal drinks which was a surprise to me but instead didnt work whatsoever. They stood around and yapped. To make matters worse they decided that the use of an ice scoop was of no importance at all and did not use it once. This made me upset but what follows pushed me over the edge. With the ample time that they had to talk and show no effort to work, *Mr.Cashier* covered the camera so I didnt see what went on, then when it was uncovered decided to show me his true feelings when her left me a message saying, "Fuck You" on the camera. When I finally got downstairs I found a makeshift "tip jar" which he had placed by the cash to make a few extra dollars with. I had planned on giving them each their warnings quietly after their shifts but this was the last straw. I blasted them both saying that they both had warnings and with attitudes and work habits like this they wouldnt be there very long. They both tried to argue that they always used the ice scoop and the notes where only a joke but I told them it was final. *Mr.Cahier* then turned away and yelled. "Well (insert name of old GM - who was a coward and a bitch and she made our lives miserable) is back!" refering to me. I turned to him and told him to punch out, that he was to go home and face disciplinary action on his next shift. He said I had to right to kick him out and this turned into a yelling match. Long story short I let him stay but gave him the warning after his shift.

   I cant leave these people alone for a minute. They talk and never work. They try and get away with whatever they can. They are rude and disrespectful and I could strangle those little fuckers......

   This is my hell.... anyone want to buy some crew, I'll sell them cheap, real cheap.

Amber

2

OK, but can I get a Whopper to go first?

3

When I worked at Wendy’s many moons ago, my manager had a solution to the name tag thing.

She made up a few extra tags with horrible names, such as Bertha. If you forgot your name tag, you had to wear one of those.

That said, it probably wouldn’t help in your case. Our crew worked really well and it was actually fun to work there as a high school student.
They actually used a tip jar? Wow. That would have surely gotten someone fired.

4

Mistake. Realistically you can’t be friends with people who you can fire. Either you’re going to piss them off when you do your job by enforcing rules & regs, or you can be their friend and let them off with stuff.

Of course if you do the latter they’ll think you’re soft and try to get away with more things.

Be consistent, be polite, be fair - but be firm, and apply the rules. Also be very careful not to make a threat you can’t back up. If you tell an employee to punch out, then you’d better be damned sure you mean it, as now you’ve got someone bragging about how you tried to can them but they made you back down, etc.

But generally managing people can be a right pain in the arse, especially if it’s people in low paid service jobs with no motivation. You’ve got my sympathy.

5

I’m not sure I understand the no free drink thing. Don’t sodas cost about $0.03 each? How much soda can these people drink? You actually make them pay the outrageously inflated retail drink prices?

Also, keeping them there until they miss their ride home is a sure way to engender resentment. You may consider it just part of their job, but I’m sure they’re thinking “I get paid minimum wage to miss the train home?”

I don’t think you’re picking your fights very well, making people angry over soda and name tags is the wrong way to go.

6

Regardless of cost, employee theft is theft. If the company has decided not to include this in the perks of the job (and I can understand why they haven’t) then employees should recognize and respect that it’s one of the rules of employement there. In a food environment, having employees eating or drinking while handling food is a no-no. Not allowing free drinks will cut down on the incidence of employees drinking at the counter or in the food-prep areas. It’s a matter of principle, really.

The employees are the ones making the decision about missing the ride, not the manager. If they do a half-assed job with duties they know quite well are expected of them, then they’ll miss the ride. It’s their choice. The manager’s job is to enforce the standards and delegate the tasks.

No, actually, it’s not the manager’s job to worry about who gets pissed off at what. If the employees decide not to do what very little is asked of them, then they don’t deserve the job they’ve got. The manager in this case is not the one picking the fight, it’s the lazy-assed good for nothing employees.

Amber, as a former retail asst. manager who was promoted to store manager, I totally feel your pain. It sounds like you are really doing your best, but as others have pointed out, there are a few things you have to expect:

If you want to be a good manager and enforce the rules, you can’t be friends with your employees. There’s a thin line between being jovial and amicable with the staff, but they’ve got to understand that you’re not there to make friends or play favorites, and if you’re going to lay down the law you need to be able to back it up. I don’t know how much power you’ve got when it comes to firing and discipline, but you really need to have a talk with the store manager and lay down some ground rules. I would suggest that both the employees in question be fired. Blocking the security camera is a MAJOR issue. Imagine if the store had been robbed during that time, or if one of them had stolen something? Regardless of how much of a prank they thought it was, the little note also counts as insubordination, and in my store was a firable offense. Get your SM on your side by laying this out as calmly and non-emotionally as you can. Cite what would be in the store’s best interest, and remind them that this kind of behavior is a danger to the safety of all employees.

The nametag thing, as small and incidental as it may seem, is a big thing. The nametag is part of the uniform, and another standard of the job. You can’t make any one standard any less important. It’s good, though, to make allowances because sometimes these things happen, but it sounds like in your situation you’ve got some habitual offenders. The cost of something as small as a nametag does add up over time, and every penny spent in this manner is money that’s not being used to hire more employees, pay raises, or improve the store overall. In my old store, employees were not allowed to take nametags home with them, plain and simple. They were required to drop them off when they punched out, and could not start their shift until they’d gotten it. If they didn’t show up with a nametag or had lost one, they didn’t work. They were expected to call someone else to cover their shift.

I was incredibly lucky to have a wonderful crew of bright, talented, and responsible kids. For the four years I worked for the company, about half of my crew had been with me almost the entire time. That’s amazing when you’ve got high turnover. One thing I learned is that you’ve got to put your foot down. You don’t have to be a jerk about it, but when you have high expectations for someone and you make that known, they generally tend to live up to your expectations.

7

If you tell them they can have the drinks, it’s not theft, it’s a morale builder.

Amber, you should have fired several of them. The cashier, at least. I mean, fired on the spot. Punch out, you’re last check will be mailed to you, minus your uniform cost, don’t let door hit you on the way out…

8

I was under the impression that it was company policy not to allow free drinks, as Amber specifically said she was alert for employees stealing drinks. For the most part, managers are not technically allowed the leeway to change or alter corporate policy, and especially with a chain of such size I doubt they are going to leave these things up to the manager’s discretion. If there’s a hard-set rule against it, even if the manager has the best intentions it’s still rule-breaking and sets a very poor example.

I agree with you that freebies and perks are great for morale, but unfortunately corporate management doesn’t seem to understand that. I was lucky enough to have worked in a franchise, so we were given some input as to how we wanted to operate, within certain limitations of corporate procedure.

9

Telling someone they can’t drink in a certain location, or at a certain time, for hygene purposes, is perfectly valid. Telling someone they must pay $1.50 for a drink that costs the company $0.03 when they WORK there, is something else. It is petty and cheap, and all the workers know it. It fosters the attitude of us vs. them, the workers being separate from the company, instead of being part of the company.

It’s an unwillingness to give the worker even the tiniest benefit, yet the company is more than willing to ask the worker to miss a train. If you want your workers to be partners, you have to treat them like partners. If you want independant contractors who will give you $6.33 of effort per hour for their $6.33 of pay, feel free to treat them that way.

With respect to following company policy in this, what the workers see is that you will make them “suffer” when other managers will bend the rules to make them happy. Ergo, they will like the other managers better than they like you. They will work harder for other managers than they will for you. They will respect other managers more than they will respect you, because the other managers treat them better.

With regards to the nametag, yes - it is important, no - they shouldn’t get a free pass on losing/forgetting it. But… what is the right way to fix the problem? Personally, I don’t think it’s to suddenly proclaim that the crew is going to start paying if they forget their tags. It is confrontational and dictatorial. Better to come up with a way to help these memory-challenged individuals remember their tags. Leaving them at the restaurant is a good start, or at least leaving the extra replacement tags in your desk.

I consider it very much the managers job to worry about who’s pissed about what. A crew of angry workers is worthless, a crew of happy workers is priceless.

I agree, though, that the cashier needed to get a lot more than he got, Amber really shouldn’t have backed down on that one.

10

Regardless of that fact, the policy is not to allow free drinks. As a manager it is Amber’s responsibility to enforce that rule. If the employees have a problem with the rule, then they should take it up with the parent company or GM, or leave for a better job. Amber can’t change the rule, and if she breaks it she’s showing her employees that rules don’t mean much, and if they break them then she’s hypocritical for disciplining them.

Again, no one asked them to miss their ride. A closing shift is not scheduled to leave at a certain time. The job is done when closing duties are performed to the standard that is set by management. If the employees have not finished their closing duties to that standard, then their shift is not yet over. It’s their decision - do a bang up job and get to leave on time or early, or be a slacker and miss your ride.

But you see, that’s just it! They’re not partners! They’re hired to do a specific job and part of the job summary is that they report to and are to be held accountable by a supervisor. They’re not equals. They don’t have the same amount of responsibility. Corporate environment business rules do not work here. The job doesn’t require $6.33 amount of effort, honestly. The skill required for these jobs is exactly nada. What they’re really paying the employees for is their reliability and their level of responsibility, as well as their time. If the employee can get more for their skills, then they should by all means do so! But if they’re going to refuse to do the job because they don’t like the rules of the game, then they’re a detriment to the company and can be easily replaced.

Think about this: the employees like the managers that break the rules for them, but what do they do in return? Break the rules. What don’t you get about that? Managers who model rule-breaking behavior will breed employees that are lax themselves. Amber isn’t treating her employees badly, she’s actually doing a great job! They’re just resentful that she’s actually got some sense of responsibility and won’t let them get paid to sit around and do nothing and goof off. Imagine that? A manager who actually gives us rules! Crazy!

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but at the same time it’s not management’s job to bend over backwards to ensure that their every little whim is taken care of. If the employees are unhappy following the basic rules of the job and common ethics of responsibility, then they don’t deserve the damned job in the first place.

11

This is why Amber is having so much trouble with her crew. That attitude causes workers to do the barest minimum amount of work to keep their jobs. I’m not a partner in the business, I’m not your equal, I’m just a flesh and blood machine you buy for $6.33 per hour. Therefore I will do nothing more than what will keep me earning that money. If you’re not going to fire me over using the ice scoop, I won’t use the ice scoop. If you’re not going to fire me over the note thing, heck, I may as well have some fun. If you’re not going to fire me over loafing when you’re on break, I’ll do that too. I will only improve my behavior insofar as it secures my job.

That’s no way to run a railroad.

12

No offense, Cheesesteak, but you might consider that XJETGIRLX actually has experience “running a railroad”, so to speak, whereas you do not. She might sound harsh, but in fact that’s the only way to do it, if you want the trains to actually show up on time.

FTR, [bAmber**, you need to talk with your boss about exactly how much authority you have when you’re the senior person in the store. If you asked someone to end their shift because of insubordination, and they refused, that’s not a disciplinary offense - it is a firing offense. Your boss needs to back you up on this, otherwise there will be no discipline in the store whatsoever.

13

You know, your right, Amber is doing a bang up job running her shop. I’m sure if she keeps at it, her crew will fall RIGHT in line, and she won’t have these problems anymore. They’ll all just be good little machines, and their pesky feelings about being treated as such will fade away.

14

Sorry Amber, you sound like a hardass.

Coporate policy has little regard for the humanity of their workers. To have to work under somebody that apparently sees corporate policy as written in stone and the workers as disposable and worthless sucks. To work under an asshole that holds you at work just to be a hardass forceing you to miss your ride is right out intolerable.

15

I have two stories to add to this Wendy’s thread:

First, a friend of mine worked for Wendy’s back in the days when Dave Thomas would still go to random Wendy’s stores, walk in and order food before going to talk to the managers. My friend knew who he was, treated him just like a normal customer, and he got her a small raise because she was polite, friendly and followed the rules (instead of making a big deal about him being there and giving him free food like normally happened). Sam Walton used to do something similar back before Walmart became evil.

Second, I wonder if Amber’s crew also has the day shift at the Wendy’s near me. They can’t ever seem to get a drive through order right. What’s worse is that it’s a different crew every single time I go there. Never the same employee at the window twice, but the same (or similar) mistakes on a fairly simple order EVERY SINGLE TIME! How hard is it, really, to pour a Dr Pepper instead of a Diet Dr Pepper? Or remember to hand the frosty to the customer? How about adding a fork for that baked potato or a straw for the drink? Oh, and don’t order the fries, they are either over or under cooked… Guess the crew can’t pay attention to that nice buzzing sound associated with the timer that indicates ideal french fry cooking time.

16

There’s a social theory out there that all employees unconsciously sabotage their job. Comes from feeling ripped off by the “masters.”

Makes a bit of sense too when you realize that all employees are by definition, underpaid. An employer wouldn’t have you around, sucking up valuable time and energy, if you didn’t make him more money than you cost.

17

Hey Cheesesteak out of curiosity, if you put a note up for your boss today that read “FUCK YOU,” would you have a job tomorrow? I wouldn’t. Most people wouldn’t.

If I were Amber that guy who posted the note would be unemployed this morning.

18

I used to work at Wendy’s. Man, it became a nightmare.

19

Heck, Amber, I’ll need a jop in a few weeks. Do you need a goon to start busting heads? I’ll bring my own crowbar.

20

When I worked there, there was so much going on that shouldn’t have been going on. Workers kissing each other, people not using the ice scoop, People stealing food, etc. I was a normal crew member and I knew that I drove the managers nuts because the other employees got mad (being teenagers and all that) at me for stupid little annoying things that I did. I used to talk so much. I would never shut up and it was always about mundane stuff. I didn’t realize how annoying it was until another person with ADHD was hired and he did the same things. After that, I tried very hard not to annoy these people. That’s hard to do when you are bored though.:stuck_out_tongue:
Anyway, if your employees are misbehaving, fire them. There are plenty of people out there that you can hire right on the spot. Also, when you do hire them, make sure they are mature enough to know how to follow rules.