How retail jobs exploit and steal from employees

[Dreamstalker]

We're mandated one day off per week...which means that if you're one of the competent few and scheduled for fewer than five of the remaining days you are basically on-call (their 'needs' dictate what day you will have off). That's BS.

[Andara Bledin]

Check into your local labor laws. There's a good chance that they have to give you a certain amount of warning before you get called in. Of course, they could make it so that you have to go in to check, but still...

On call is typically a specific status that isn't treated the same as having a non-set schedule.

[HYHYBT]

I've also been asked to stay on and do a late shift on more than one occasion when I've worked the day shift, and every single time I have refused.

This was the main reason I hated McDonald's switching to 24 hours. When they closed at night, we might be late getting out if there was a late rush or something went wrong, but there was at least a definite beginning to the end. But we routinely got overnight managers who were unreliable about showing up, and it wasn't allowed under any circumstances whatsoever to leave the store with no manager present. So: normal procedure, night shift comes in at ten, I'd go do my deposit and help out a while if it was busy, then go home. If they were a little, or even a lot, late, that wasn't so bad, but if they didn't show up at all, there often wasn't even time to go call to see what was going on until 10:30, sometimes even midnight... and if they weren't coming in, or said they were but never showed up, I'd wind up stuck there until six or seven in the morning. Which wasn't SO bad once, but it would happen over and over. Then they'd get rid of that person and just have me do overnights for a few months, since I was doing it anyway and at least wouldn't also be doing afternoons, then someone new would finally come in for that and I'd be out for half a year, maybe even a whole one before it began all over again.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I was also asked once to go home at lunchtime and come back to do the late shift after someone called in sick. I refused, cuz I'd get absolutely nothing, cept probably a migraine brought on by the stress. My colleague who was also working the day shift refused, too. In the end, they had to close the petrol station early cuz they couldn't get anyone, and both of us were told we weren't acting as a team. Our response was that we'd worked our shifts, and since we were not managers, it wasn't our jobs to come and pick up the slack.

That is still my opinion. Look, if I've gotten up at seven am, the last thing I want to do is the equivalent of a nine am to ten pm shift, especially if I'm getting nothing out of it. Even when they ask me to tack on the late shift to a day shift, I still say no. Firstly, I have a life. Second, there's no guarantee I'd ever see the overtime pay. And thirdly, I'm not a manager or a second. I choose not to be cuz of the dog's life that seconds have, cuz if someone calls in sick and they can't get anyone else, they're expected to cover the shift. While I have the right to say "No way", I'm going to carry on saying it.

[ben_who]

Vivid flashbacks here of my days at the Grease Factory and the little tricks the managers would use to get you to work longer hours. Wait until you'd clocked out and were heading for the bus, then hand you a broom. When you got wise to that, they'd hand you the broom BEFORE you clocked out, and made you keep working until you'd missed your bus.

If you worked overtime, they'd hack into your time card and remove it. (A lot of people who were wildly overscheduled found themselves with paychecks indicating "40.1 hours.") Of course, if you were an instant late, it was the rack for you, but the second you clocked in, they completely forgot clocks existed. Work eight hours without a break, and then have the manager "forget" to let you clock out so you could get to your other job? WEEKLY, at least.

It sounds like a horrorshow, but it was nickel and dime stuff, really; the owner thought he had the generosity of Jesus because he paid a quarter over minimum wage and bragged that he had no minimum wage employees. Not that that stopped him from raging against the possibility of any increase to the minimum; when it bumped up to $5.15, that was a bigger jump than the quarter he was paying us.

It was annoying enough living it; I got out of there after too damn long and went to find a real job. It wasn't until later that I realized that all that nickel-and-diming wasn't just this one restaurant, or even this one franchisee, but was more or less company-wide policy, with recommendations traded and collected under the table on the most effective way to exploit younger employees, and ways to keep them from retaliating. And other chains had started doing it, too. About a decade after I fled the Grease Factory, the owner of six Subway sandwich shops in this state was screaming his head off about lazy employees after being dragged into some kind of tribunal for refusing to pay overtime and forcing workers to work without pay.

I hope I live to see the day that Wal-Mart and McDonald's become unionized.