Toxic Company from the head down - Food Runner Schulson Collective Employee Review

This restaurant group is awful to work for and I strongly recommend anyone avoid any of their concepts. I worked for this group twice, at two separate locations. CONSISTENCY: Schulson often stresses consistency as one of their differentiators, specifically their consistent training program, their standard spiels, and procedures. While on paper they do have a standardized system, I worked for them long enough that this supposed consistency is rarely actually implemented, and is primarily used as a method to terminate employees they do not like (I will add I left on good terms, so I am not just complaining). I’ve witnessed management putting staff in positions they have not trained for, and that they do not want, on multiple occasions, and staff being given work tasks beyond their job description, and I have witnessed training being ignored. STAFF TURN-OVER: Staff turn over, especially among management level staff is very common. They do not pay management well, and have very high expectations related to sales, turn times, and other standards. Because of this, management staff is often inexperienced, and handling a lot of stress causing burn out (as well as other stress related afflictions). Management often did not last a full year, and I witnessed multiple managers quit mid shift or simply no call no show. SKIRTING REGULATIONS: I witnessed, on many occasions, management and ownership willingly and knowingly ignoring City, State, and Federal law, particularly when asked to by well known and/or celebrity customers. This included smoking in the restaurant (tobacco and weed), over service of alcoholic beverages, permitting customers entering in unpermitted areas of the premises (including active work zones, and unfinished roofs), serving alcohol after 2AM, and more. These regulations were known and acknowledged by higher level staff, however were not enforced. UNSAFE WORKING ENVIRONMENT: Staff were encouraged to use illicit drugs (primarily cocaine) during their shift. Staff was further encouraged to fraternize with VIP guests outside of work. This included one incident where a group of VIP guests asked a (female) server to go with them to a strip club, and when the server brought this to management’s attention she was told that she should accept the invitation and participate in their outing. She did accept due to management’s response. Furthermore, sexual harassment was regularly dismissed as being ‘normal’ or ‘expected’ by management and owners. Staff and customers regularly hit on female servers and made unwanted advances towards staff. One manager spiked a drink of a female server at a company party, and then attempted to intimidate those that witnessed the event (and called her an Uber). FAVORITISM: Staff were often singled out or fired based on favoritism. Consequences for certain behavior was based on management’s opinion of the staff member rather than the action in question. While Schulson claims that they have zero tolerance for drug or alcohol use during work hours, however in practice actual consequences varied wildly for no discernible reason. I knew favorite staff members who would openly do drugs with management during their shift, or would openly drink behind the bar, and never be disciplined. I also witnessed a server get fired after he admitted to the same management staff he was still slightly stoned from smoking a bowl of weed 4+ hours previously. Again, policies were generally only used to justify management’s preferred actions, and would often be waived unless management simply did not like the staff. DISCIPLE: I’ve discussed the lack of consistency and favoritism, however on top of that, discipline was generally severe. I never witnessed a single written warning being given, despite a policy that clearly has a tiered system, instead discipline was almost always termination without warning, often mid-shift. In some cases, this may be justified, but in most cases this was overly harsh, and an official reprimand was more appropriate. This came directly from, and encouraged by, Mr. Schulson himself, and in fact most of the egregious terminations I witnessed were directly initiated by Mr. Schulson. Terminations were also never done in a manner that was respectful towards the employee or the business. They were almost always done in public, often in front of other staff (and even in some cases customers). Even in the few cases that termination was done in private, management would often discuss the termination with other staff openly.