Decent Part-Time Job... Not So Great Full-Time Job
Pros
Front of House Position: -Flexible hours for college students. -No limit to time-off requests. -As many free cupcakes as you want. -Good environment if you have good people working with you. -No experience needed - a great first job. Manager Position: -A whole lot of freedom. The owners hardly ever visit, so you can pretty much decide what you want to do, as long as the rest of your management team agrees. -Overtime is very lightly regulated, so if you want/need to work extra hours, it isn't ever a problem. -As long as you coordinate with the rest of the managers and have enough notice, you can pretty much get any time off you want. -They tend to hire people from within, rather than taking (experienced) people from the outside, so you can get management experience at a pretty young age (the managers tend to be in early to mid 20's). -Raises are an option about once per year (but make sure you email and ask). -401k matching is an option for managers. -When it happens, they take issues of harassment very seriously and handle it swiftly with confidentiality and professionalism.
Cons
Front of House Position: -No opportunities for a raise unless you get promoted to a Floor Supervisor, which is based on availability and how long you have worked there, not merit. Even then, you only get $1 above minimum. -Many people only work for long enough to get experience to get a higher paying job, so you are constantly working with new people, which means picking up the slack even though you're getting paid the same amount. -Customers. My god, the terrible customers. -The quality of a shift can really depend on who you are working with. Manager Position: Where do I even begin. -The position is "assistant" manager even though you aren't assistant to anyone - there is no hierarchy within the store, so brand new managers are at the same level of authority as ones that have been there longer. -The owners of the company are incredibly out of touch, and almost never visit. The other corporate employees are nice and are definitely trying their best, but with no actual basis for how each store runs (their visits tend to be short and infrequent), they tend to make decisions without knowing what is actually best for each location. -There is a complete lack of care from the owners of the company. After working one of the most challenging days of my life, the CEO said "we can't reward every small victory," completely minimizing my experience after refusing to give any help while I handled the situation. -The corporate team does not take into account the needs or thoughts of current management when hiring a new manager. -Overtime becomes mandatory during busy holidays - I often worked overnight in December and around Valentine's day, and once hit 80 hours in 5 days. There were times that I was working until 2am and then had to start again at 6am, so I slept in the store more times than I can count rather than having to take an Uber home (as the trains were closed). -If an employee (or employees) calls out sick or don't show up, you have to finish everything on top of the manager duties. -The salary is far below the industry standard for management, and there is no paid vacation time offered. Nearly every benefit offered is just because it is legally mandated. -The kitchen staff is managed by someone who is off-site, and on the rare occasions that he is in town, he does absolutely nothing to help out. This means that kitchen staff turnover can be incredibly high (there was a year that we had 12 people quit in as many months, and this is on a team of about 10 people). He's a nice person, but very clearly does not care about his job. -Since raises are not given to Front of House employees, it is very hard to retain quality staff. Turnover is incredibly high. -The store itself is falling apart, and the owners refuse do to proper repairs. There are multiple holes in the kitchen floors exposing the wood underneath, and they keep doing patch jobs rather than the renovation that desperately needs to happen. The HVAC system broke more times that I can count and the customer areas look worn out. -Inventory is ordered by corporate, and ingredients regularly run out, which means trying to locally source things. Buying hundreds of dollars worth of butter and eggs at 2am was a regular occurrence.
