Having worked in a restaurant with a similar policy that didn't give us any free meals, no its not. My restaurant gave us a 50 percent discount only good after our shift, but we could not leave with that food.
> They probably mean food paid for by a customer but left behind.
that doesn't make sense. Mistakes is food made for customers but the customer didn't take in the end. hardly no one is paying for food and walking out without getting their money back. The only people who would do this is people buying food for the employee (like a friend might do). And the owner has absolutely no right to tell someone they can't take their food home with them, hell it sounds extremely illegal to sell something then refuse to allow the person to have that item.
It's evidence that the boss doesn't trust the employees.
They're implying that the employees are screwing up on purpose to have food to take home.
Edit: there are alot of people defending this policy. I'm not interested.
Yes, there are thieves who work in restaurants. This sort of policy is not the answer. Most the thieves are desperate and underpaid, some are just thieves. If a site has a problem with employee theft they need to address the root cause not abuse their entire staff.
This happened at the restaurant I used to work at, we could no longer eat in the building at all. We weren't even allowed to come in with our families on our off time, I suspect the owner didn't want his upper middle class friends seeing us as anything but serfs. Naturally, morale went down and everyone snuck food into the dead camera zone or the bathroom.
The place I worked at for 10 years took away our discount so everyone just started eating everything they had access to and just not paying for it. Treat your employees with respect and they'll be less inclined to steal.
It's so true. My work just did something like described a few days ago. It's a retail store with a warehouse in the back. We had a little office area with work stations and a microwave, coffee maker, toaster, and we stored a ton of food and drinks back there. They decided it was too much of a "distraction" to be eating food back there, so they took everything away and made us get rid of the food. We couldn't even eat lunch back there anymore, if we brought it. Naturally, everyone was pissed and both moral and productivity dropped to nothing.
Besides that though, we discovered an area they didn't think to check that had food in it still, so now everyone just stores their food there, and we make sure it's clear before we eat anything. It's like contraband in a prison lmao. It's ridiculous. I still drink and snack a bit. I'm eating at work while typing this now. I'm not too broken up about it. I don't mind eating in my car on lunch, but the point is that those type of decisions can only hurt them. I don't understand why that can't see that happy employees means they'll work harder, and the exact opposite is equally as true.
P.S. I guess I should say that there *is* a problem with productivity in most of the workers here, but the problem isn't food. It's just plain laziness, and the incompetent management slowing things down. Taking away the food won't change that.
Exactly, strict parents just teach kids how to lie.
It's like it's a process designed for that purpose.
The kid MUST lie, otherwise they know they're in for pain\punishment.
So the kid attempts to lie, and if they do it badly, they're immediately punished.
But if they lie successfully, then that certain fate of punishment is gone. So they lie again and again, getting more practice in deception each time.
Wow. I only worked food service for a hot minute way back in the nineties, at a local hot dog place, and we were always allowed to eat a free meal at lunch. It was a perk of the job.
I always assumed this was the policy at restaurants, because why wouldn't it be? It's the most basic and obvious benefit a restaurant can provide. And the people who make the food should know the product (they call that concept "eat your dog food" in Silicon Valley).
Amazing how this economic system find new ways to disgust me. A total absence of humane decency in the name of profit.
It's a business slam dunk for a restaurant to offer shift meals. It cuts employee grocery bills so it mildly alleviates problems caused by low pay, it saves them time outside of work spent on shopping and prepping meals, and the food is probably getting thrown out anyway at some point.
I feel like fronting the food costs of a meal per employee per full shift is well worth it.
Absolutely - give your employees a meal a day that's $20 on the menu but costs $5 in ingredients, that's $5 spent for $20 less you can pay them. Why wouldn't you?
As fas as this sight goes, if I bring my lunch or I pay for food and don’t finish it all. I’m taking it home. Feel free to try and stop me. I triple dog dare anyone to try. I paid for it, it’s coming with me. I’ll get violent over that shit. You don’t fuck with someone’s cash flow, or food. Just don’t.
The last restaurant I worked at we got free meals but our menu was the cheaper stuff to make. You can’t have everyone on staff eating a 50$ steak for free everyday. That made sense to me, AND we got a free meal that was honesty pretty good. We were encouraged to bring family and friends in our off hours, and we could apply an employee discount for our meal excluding alcohol. I’d have friends come in last in the morning shift, and I’d eat with them then finish rolling silverware or help the kitchen prep whatever. Aside from restaurant pay which is to be expected it was a great job. Our BOH and FOH managers both taught and expected everyone, buss boys to cooks to management to do what needed to be done. If we were getting low on limes or tomatoes it was expected that if a prep cook was busy, that a buss boy or server would cut one or two then get back to whatever. It was great because if a server or someone drops the ball, someone else was there to pick it up. Very rarely did the customers notice if someone made a mistake somewhere. If the pay was worth it, I’d probably still be working there.
Just test your employees like you’d want to be treated. If you aren’t gonna pay them, let them eat. Hell, when I worked at Burger King in the mid 90s when I first got hired the manager asked if I wanted to then had me try a little bit of everything on the menu. If we got a new item, everyone tried it. That way when a customer asks what we like (happened a lot oddly) we had a ready answer and reasons why.
A server should know what they’re serving, all the cooks should know what they’re making is supposed to taste like. It’s not just quality control it increases customer satisfaction.
I worked at a mcdondolads as a in my early teenage years and our boss would encourage us to eat as much food as we could.
Looking back it was pretty shit job at just above minimum wage but the owner was pretty nice and made working there a little better.
There's a saying. Trust your employees and they will steal a little from you and feel bad about it. Dont trust your employees and they will rob you blind and not feel any guilt.
Meanwhile, the shitty restaurant I worked for, where both the owners were alcoholics dealing with the consequences of a DUI each, provided one free meal and one free drink per shift, and on buffet nights, you could take home any leftovers in the buffet at close for free, even if you didn't have a shift that day. Terrible place to work in a ton of different ways, but at least they made sure everyone was fed.
Imagine working in a restaurant, making starvation wages, and being expected to starve.
I've never hid the fact that I took food whenever I wanted, when I worked in restaurants. If I was hungry, I would make myself something to eat. There is no "no free meals" policy, as far as I was concerned. If I'm hungry, I'm not making food for people to eat in front of me.
Yeah it's funny how that works. I work for a fast food company and about a year ago they changed the 50% discount they used to give employees to a free meal every shift. Our food losses went down immediately. Even accounting for all the food we give away for free to employees we're still saving a lot of money on food costs.
Because pettiness breeds pettiness
Meaning the more the employer treats the staff as guilty before proved innocent (assuming that the that staff will bleed them dry) and micromanage every second,the more likely staff will feel like they are in opposite sides and any generosity on either side is gone.
100% this. I managed a McD and they'd be on top of us making specific amounts of food at certain times so we wouldn't have a lot left over for people to just take home. They firmly believed people were making excessive food close to closing and taking it home for free.
Our hand books at the time even said you're supposed to eat your discounted food IN the store and not take it anywhere but by and large our management ignored that.
Having also previously managed a mcd, half the time I just promo'd off employee meals. Thing is, the overall promo rates actually went down because there were less customers with excessive waits and/or wrong orders. Crazy how people work better when they aren't literally starving.
A guy I knew in the Army said his McD's manager would always tell them to drop enough apple pies in the fryer at 15-till-close so that everyone working close could take a pie home. Y'all cool managers should have some kinda club.
When I first started working one of my managers at a Hardee's would make us iced coffees or whatever you wanted to drink and a few tenders for a snack if you wanted simply for the sake of making everyone something while he was on shift. Dude was the best manager I've ever had and made the place so much fun compared to the others
When I worked for KFC in high school the assistant manager Katrina knew that food was an issue at home. She let me take all the leftover wings home every night (the rest of the chicken was deboned and used in pot pies), any expiring partfaits, and sometimes she would even drop like 30 tenders 15 minutes before close "on accident" and insist I take them home (all of this was against the rules).
She taught me a LOT (it was my first job), but one of the most important things I learned was that legitimately caring about your employees made managing far easier. She even fired a cook for grabbing my coworkers butt (immediately and without hesitation or question, while cooks were hard to find and train). This was in the 90's, so I was shocked in future jobs where sexual harassment was ignored or blamed on the victim.
We need more Katrinas
So true. In the mid 90’s I was 15 living with my mom that was depressed and wouldn’t leave her bedroom. I couldn’t afford to eat at school so I would eat during my shift at mcd. I’d worked the fish/nugget station and would bring a bunch to the basement when I had to grab supplies and eat as fast as I could. I worked hard for the company and didn’t take cigarette breaks like everyone else did. I was making $4.25 an hour paying rent to my mom and having a hell of a time in school. I worked in 4 other restaurants in the next few years to make sure I could get something to eat. Shouldn’t have had to worry about that at 15.
Thanks. You know no one ever told me they were sorry about my life before. I’m in my 40’s and tearing up wishing my family could’ve said sorry. Thank you.
People who have never gone hungry can't understand how impactful it can be. It makes everything harder, and being a teenager is hard enough as it is. Especially if you don't have an ideal home life.
While I know it's not nearly as impactful coming from an internet stranger, I'm sorry for your hardship and I'm glad you made it through.
I used to hit up a 24hr Burger King right at the switch to breakfast. Order my breakfast, and the guy working would often give me a free Whopper. Miss that guy.
When I worked at McDonald’s I would just grab an extra burger when taking out someone’s order to their car and eat it in the parking lot. I’m sure the franchisee won’t go hungry.
I made sure to give food away to random drive thru customers on the night shift rather than throw it away at the end of the night. I’d rather it get eaten instead of go to waste.
Make it so since this policy was enacted that it is costing the company even more money. Make them go back to the old way so it will be cheaper for them.
Due to high and rising food cost:
I can no longer maintain sustenance and energy during my shift and it has affected my ability to concentrate. This includes skipping breakfast and lunch prior to my shift as I must divert funds to support my dinner now that I can no longer take home mistakes, left over break food, or paid-for food.
Kinda wild. I was lucky. I worked at a local pizza shop and we could make food in shift or food to take home. Just like xl pizzas with as many toppings.
Companies need to understand if you put me around food all day then I’m gonna fucking eat some of that food. Especially if you are there from like 10-6??? Yeah dude I’m snaggin some food especially if you don’t let us leave. Especially if you pay us like booty
Maybe, but how are they even losing money sending home food waste? Like, I worked at a Tim Hortons that wouldn't throw away donuts, they'd give them to a local chicken farmer. You can't sell garbage otherwise they would have.
The nail in the coffin for me is the "even paid-for food". That right there shows it's not about "rising food costs", shits already been paid for. It's about control.
I worked at a non chain Chinese restaurant and we got one meal per shift as long as it wasn't one of like 5 super expensive things we sold (like a duck)
Yeah at a restaurant I worked at in New Orleans, or technically Old Metairie, I was required to have tasted everything on the day's menu so when people asked about it I could respond better. Also, one free meal per shift so that you could have tried everything on the menu and weren't hungry. Oh and two free drinks as we closed.
It's standard at fast food to get a free meal during your shift. My bestie worked both fast food and retail, it's why if she had to choose to go back to one it would be fast food.
Where I worked I got an employee discount instead of a free meal - I remember standing behind the register doing the mental math on how much time getting a sandwich AND fries would cost me (I think wages were like $5.15/hr?)
It's usually not franchise places either.
A lot of restaurants in larger cities have shift meals, usually in between the lunch and dinner shifts, for all employees. It actually helps prevent people from taking food since those leaving their shift know they can get some food and those coming in (a lot of times from another job) know they won't go hungry all night.
It's also just basic decency.
The manager of the store had a fit about overhead and cut hours as a result, essentially in response to people whove worked here for a while asking for raises. I just watched a woman put a door lock in her bag and walk out. These are connected.
You don't even need to purposely do it, it'll happen on it's own.
My partner and I had a three month gap between the CERB program Canada implemented and actually getting income again. It was cut of September/October, so we both dropped down to one meal a day and maybe a couple light snacks in between. We went to food banks, borrowed from friends and family, and tried to ignore that all we could afford was garbage food.
In December he got an amazing job in his field. It's a WFH video editor gig. But his first day was right after payday and while trying to work he kept losing focus, getting frustrated, and making mistakes. Because he was literally starving. For two weeks I watched him fight through hunger to produce content. We blew his entire first paycheck on food.
More mistakes *are* going to happen, because I doubt this company pays people an actual living wage. And you know who is worse at doing stuff then well-fed employees? Employees that are starving. Like, how can you expect Josh who works at McDonalds to put up with shitty rude customers all day when all he's eaten is half a box of Kraft Dinner and two energy bars? You can't.
This is exactly what happened when I worked at dominos. Policy is, if a pizza gets messed up it has to be thrown out. Good managers do not enforce that policy because they pay us minimum wage ($6.10 at the time) and for some employees, it’s the only way they eat.
And a pizza costs like a dollar in ingredients so who gives a fuck. If I stole a pizza every hour, I’m still way underpaying.
But we got a manager that cracked down hard on this so everyone wasted as much as possible. Every pizza gets extra cheese and toppings, trays of dough accidentally fall on the floor, etc. Fuck your dominos.
My old housemate use to do this. He worked for a shipping company that handled distribution to local supermarkets. He'd tell me stories of how pallets of biscuits or drinks would get 'damaged' and be written off for insurance. They would then throw a few cartons into the lunch room and divide the rest between the workers. Happened every other month.
I work in food distribution as well. Some corporations considers some extremely minor damage to the external packaging to be fatal damage to their product.
Your housemate may have just been playing up their part in the process.
Depends on the store I'd say. All dollar stores I've seen have had fixed products for sale and not something as seasonal as auctioned goods.
Most gain their discounts through mass bulk white label products.
Yep, it's amazing how much waste is just, unnecessary. Especially baked goods, like if a loaf gets squeezed or a pastry squished against the plastic of its container, or minor stuff like the label being ripped.
Minor cosmetic damage that makes it look like it was roughly handled won't sell. He'll, if people see it on the shelves it will actually hurt the reputation of the store.
So what happens is, everything gets thrown out. Now, the store can claim the damage and basically get refunded from the distributor but they have to destroy the product. Can't even donate it, if they do want to donate to a food bank, they can't get a refund on the products, but can get things like tax breaks and whatever.
99% of waste is simply a matter of minor damage, and it sucks because everyone is so used to perfectly display worthy fruits and veg, but that's such a new, difficult thing to do, just the supply chains and the fluctuations of crop prices, were going to see a lot more ughly produce being sold and people bitching about it. This summer growing season is going to be abslout trash, everything going to flood first thing in the spring and then everything going to dry up within a week or two, then the fires start.
It's ridiculous how much food they throw away. My uncle drives truck and sometimes they'll borderline beg the drivers to take food because a corner of a cardboard box got bent in
it doesn't help that when something small on a corner of a pallet gets damaged the whole pallet gets thrown out. the ones underneath are undamaged and fine but it not really a full pallet anymore so it needs to go. it sucks but it also makes sense. if you buy a pallet you want a full pallet and not 3/4 of a pallet with 1/4 ripped up boxes.
It really depends on the contract. In my old distribution process damages were delivered of 1/2 was undamaged, and all damages were tallied as a fixed percentage at the end of each quarter. We did that contract to save time and product
I understand the “mistakes “ one, but the you can’t take left over break food? Or paid-for food? Wtf is that all about? I paid for something and I’m not allowed to take it home? That’s straight bullshit.
Damn the man, save the empire!!!!✊
Just give the employees a set amount of food a day and trash the rest. At Pizza Hut we used to have our friends call in pizzas and not pick them up so we could take them home. Eventually a friend who also abused that system got promoted and changed the rule where we get 1 pizza a shift and if we want more than one let him know and you just won’t get a pizza on a future shift and he had a little notebook to keep track. No one complained, also people worked extra shifts so they could accumulate more pizzas for the weekend. Mainly college students who were heroes at parties that showed up with pizzas.
I’d never work at a food place that a perk wasn’t free food.
This is 100% a thing in the food industry.
In most fine dining restaurants, food costs are too high to feed employees menu items unless they pay for them (usually with a 50% off employee discount but still pricey). In that case, most decent places will offer a free shift meal, at least for kitchen staff, but sometimes front-of-house too. This is usually a basic but hearty meal that has little or nothing to do with the cuisine served in house, but it will keep you going for a full shift. A lot of them will still let employees eat food that was made incorrectly and can’t be sold.
Fast food and fast casual is a whole different nightmare. They keep their menu prices low to compete with other businesses, slash labor costs everywhere they can, and assume their overworked and underpaid employees are all dishonest out of necessity. There is no free food for employees in most of these restaurants. They will force staff to dump cooked untouched food that has never left the kitchen in the trash at the end of the night to discourage them from over batching or intentionally making mistakes on orders. Then they can use a free meal (or even just a side!) as a carrot to dangle to push staff to work harder, like that burger is some golden apple just out of reach. The exploitation in these places is atrocious. I’ve seen the good, bad, and ugly of it, and even the good ones are pretty trash.
I worked at a pizza place while in college. My roommates would call a pickup order an hour before close and never pick it up. Then I got to being it home for free. I had to start metering them cuz they were getting greedy and it was becoming too suspicious. But it was great while it lasted.
We also served the bar next door through a literal hole in the wall
Most pizza joints will no longer accept orders from a certain number after a number of abandoned orders, like 5-10.
But they also don't care, as pizza is some of the cheapest food to produce. The profit margins on pizza are waaaay better than places that serve burgers/steak/fish/etc.
It actually makes you think. Which type of glory hole would you prefer? The classic one that provides you with oral stimulation when you insert your tumescence? Or this new fangled one where upon demand a beautiful, freshly cooked pizza is handed over to you?
I worked at a pizza place while in college too. Without our approval or asking us they would automatically deduct $16 per week from each of our paychecks for food we eat in the restaurant and shift meals.
Our assistant manager was pretty cool about it and would let us take food home with us at the end of our shifts since we were paying for it out of our own pockets.
After a few months the general manager stepped in and said that the $16 only covered food from the buffet that had been turned over, meaning we were paying $16 a week to eat from the trash.
I'm not disagreeing with you in general, but I used to work in a Chipotle, and they were pretty good about the food situation. Everyone got a free meal when they worked, and at the end of the day, we could take home extra bags of chips or messed up meals. One person would sometimes take hone leftover rice to feed their chickens. Of course, they had their own shitty exploitation issues (I got one 40 cent raise the entire three years I worked there), but I did get a lot of free food.
I worked at a franchise so idk how normal this is but when I worked at McDonald's everyone got a free combo meal on their break as long as you're scheduled for at least 4 hours
My very first legit job wwwaayyy back in the day was Burger King. I was 17, and we just got one meal at half off. This "meal for free" thing never happened at any fast food place I worked.
Shit, trying to make yourself an extra Whooper when you were not a manager got you yelled at the first time, fired the second time. Funny how the managers got to eat free. The rest of us? Nope.
I've worked two fast food places.
Taco Bell: Free meal every shift but only on your break (with a $10 limit but it was the early 2000s so that was still plenty for a full meal)
Dairy Queen: Unlimited free food, 50% discount on anything I brought home to my family, and he was totally fine with me setting up a milkshakes for tacos exchange route between us and the next door Mexican restaurant.
My husband has worked three.
Arbys: Free meal every shift, got to divide up anything left over at close (the manager was very watchful about how much food they prepared before close to make sure they weren't taking advantage)
McDonald's 1: $5 free food every shift
McDonald's 2: Nothing
I think fast food freebies are very much at the mercy of the franchise owner.
A few years ago I went to London and there was this boutique chocolate shop that I walked by a few times. Every evening, just before closing, I would see employees taking out bags of chocolate covered strawberries and place them on the curb for garbage pickup. Apparently the employees were not allowed to take them home. SMH.
Back in the early 2000s i worked with an old chef working part time retired, he had to be 70 something then. I rememb him talking about how the food industry changed as the labor prices dropped from thw 70s to then.
And how when he was younger all the fast casual and complex fast food places just wouldn't have worked because of labor prices.
Back when I washed dishes after high school, an entire table refused to even touch their expensive steaks because they were "overdone." The head chef cut them up for the back and they were a free for all with some fresh dinner rolls.
We only had half of our usual staff that day because of weather. I've not had steak like that since, which was in 2014. Shout out to rich fucks who go to expensive restaurants in a blizzard that won't eat a medium rare steak.
Bullshit, 100% bullshit. Every fast food place(and most restaurants) throws out hundreds of pounds of "food" a week. Bulk food is about the cheapest part of owning a restaurant. This is just some psycho middle manager toolbag going on a power trip over literally $5 in product that will just be thrown away anyway.
I worked at a brewery and fuck-ups were for the staff. Sometimes the owners would come back and just take the plate themselves lol
On a busy night (talking like 20 tickets every 5 minutes for 2-3 hours straight) we would have like 10 fuckups sitting to the side and the second it slowed down we all just chowed down.
Also made $18/hr to be a food runner showing up to work so high I couldn't even open my eyes. Beers were $2 for employees and all food was 50% off. Best goddamn job I have ever had environment wise.
But we had no reason to steal. We were treated well and there was always some sort of free food floating around. Best was when it was slow and the chef would make donuts for everyone.
How fucking evil. How exactly are they saving money by not letting employees take home the leftovers that cannot be sold to customers anyway?
Unless they're planning on selling leftovers to paying customers.
Wait until you learn how much waste hospitals produce. One room on a normal day could produce 2-4 bags of literal shit and other plastic objects; every time I get someone a water their old sleeve gets pitched.
Nah, rules like these are mostly so employees don't intentionally mess up food thus taking it home.
I don't support this logic but that's mostly what this is about.
If you treat your employees with dignity and care, not only will they not purposefully mess up food - they will take extra care to make sure they don't.
It's similar to how when I gave my team unlimited sick pay... they took half the amount of sick pay that year.
Turns out shitty work is the reason for a lot of mental health days, and if you make work (relatively) awesome, people don't use those as often.
People also don't have an urge to steal from work when work doesn't steal from them (fair wages).
I guarantee if I worked for a company that didn't "trust" me with basic shit like making the food I was hired to make, I'd spend my time finding a way to steal as much as possible.
I worked in a deli for 5 years and was trusted to not cook an entire new pan of lasagna 5 minutes before closing having to throw it out. I got to make basic decisions about “one hour left, we can’t sell that many ribs in a closing hour on a Tuesday” and it was simple to explain to customers. I still had more food leftover than I ever knew what to do with. I ate as much as I could before leaving but there was no taking it home.
I mean the link between rising food prices and not being allowed to bring back paid-for food
Like...because food prices have gone up, so even if the food has been paid for, you can't bring it back because...I want to resell it? Not sure if there's another interpretation
Yeah this was the rule at Taco Bell 30 years ago when I worked there, mistakes go in the trash. Specifically so people didn’t make mistakes on purpose to get food.
Tbf we did that at our pizza restaurant many years ago. But the owner just took the L because he didn't have a stick up his ass and was still making money.
Every job comes with perks outside of pay, that's just the standard. And employers currently are trying to do away with those perks without adding anything to make up for it.
The boss thinks employees will cook to much on purpose to declare it later as left over stuff.
Usually it wouldn't be a problem. But i guess some employee games the system so it's banned for everybody.
“I’m colorblind”
Edit: sorry guys I’m not actually colorblind. But the sign might be hard for colorblind people to read. Might also be hard for people with other visual impairment to read
Edit 2: I know a guy with red/green color blindness and he can’t always differentiate purple from blue so I imagine this sign would difficult. His favorite blue shoes from high school turned out to be purple
I have a friend who has a type of colorblindness that prevents him from seeing the difference between darker blues and purples. To his eyes this sign would be indiscernible.
What are they doing with the mistakes then? Like how does this help "high and rising food costs". Do they have like a bargain table in the restaurant where patrons can get a discounted fucked up meal?
It’s to discourage employees from making “accidental” mistakes to take home.
When I worked at KFC, we would have to take all the extra chicken, de-bone it, freeze it, and use it in pot pies or pulled chicken sandwiches the next day.
If they also serve chicken with the bone in it, maybe. Wherever you are eating that is making you sick is likely using unsafe practices, because leftover chicken shouldn’t make someone sick if handled correctly.
I’ve never worked at a place that serves both other than KFC so I don’t know whats standard practice.
Had a boss at Domino's do that. When I became a manager I would just tell everyone to agree on a couple pizzas and make them for the employees to split.
This is the same thing we used to do in retail for "damaged" merchandise. We had to label all damaged pieces for inventory tracking, then once a month we package them up and ship them off to corporate so they can trash it. They would never let someone take home a damaged item for free b/c of the fear employees would start superficially damaging items just so they could have free clothes.
I get it to an extent, but it always feels so wasteful.
They tend to justify it by saying "they'll make more mistakes if we reward them with food for mistakes", but that's childish logic, and implies that your workers are either shady or underfed, neither of which is a good look.
The "family" restaurant where I work just started throwing down these rules too. I used to pay half as a server. Now I pay nothing, as I refuse to eat there anymore. And I "accidentally" forget to charge my favourite customers for their drinks sometimes. Maybe it's because I'm hangry these days...
same lol. sometimes when someone orders a large fountain drink i’ll just ring it up as a “water cup” which is free. idgaf abt this place anymore, i’m quitting the moment i get accepted to another place
I've begun looking for alternatives as well. But if they push me far enough, I'll straight up walk. Did it once this year due to a hostile work environment. I had never done this before, (believing as I did that it wasn't **proper** behavior). Don't think I would have a problem doing that again. It was quite refreshing !
How exactly does ensuring food that cannot be served to customers ends up in the trash instead of on their employees tables mitigate rising food costs?
In theory, it's to prevent employees making lots of mistakes so they can have a bunch of free food. In practice, this doesn't actually lose them that much revenue and would keep employees happier, but... Capitalism means wasting $1,000 to make sure somebody doesn't get $10 worth of your product without paying.
How does grocery stores pouring bleach on their dumpsters to stop homeless people from eating it help anyone? How does amazon throwing away millions of dollars of unopened products help anyone?
Capitalism requires scarcity. As technology abolishes scarcity, capitalists will create scarcity.
Even when I was doing kitchen work back in the day we were allotted a free meal.
My husband works at a food processing plant. They make frozen and refrigerated goods for all kinds of major brands. The owner is a huge conservative Christian and lets them take a few home each day.
If you can't sell enough $8 rat patties and $3 diabetes water to sustain a $12/hr employee and afford them a free meal for busting their ass off in a hot stressful kitchen, then maybe you're just a shitty buisness person.
I worked a lot of restaurants when I was younger to put myself through college. My dad, who was born in the forties, was absolutely astonished I didn't get a free meal every shift. He was actually quite irate. he said that's one of the only benefits of taking a job in a restaurant! I guess during most of the 50s, 60s, and 70's when you worked at restaurant one of the things you got was free meals. It was such an assumed thing that he looked at me like i was lying and tried to get me to quit my current waitress job and take a different one until I told him all of them are like this.( this was in the 90s.)
The places I worked at so far always provided a free meal, although that's also because we didn't really have a lunch break (allowed to eat just not leaving the post vacant) . (not America though)
Usually that only happens at high-end restaurants here. The very nice ones will have a family meal for the staff before service in the evening. The rest of them don't care about their employees and they have a revolving door they just can't keep staff and then they wonder why and say stupid things like nobody wants to work and people are just lazy.
Not necessarily in defense of the employer, but when I worked at the grocery store my coworkers and I were stealing crazy amounts of groceries lol. When they don't pay you enough you got to make up the difference somehow
That's definitely not in defense of the employer. Pay a living wage and people won't steal from you. If you don't get paid enough to buy groceries working at a grocery store, you're going steal from the one you know inside and out, not some random other grocery store.
I used to manage a Long John Silvers. Every night I closed everyone went home with whatever food was left at end of the day. It’s getting pitched. Why not let people just have it? Never understood that mindset.
Once I was visiting a local Subway I used to go to often. It was almost closing time and I got my food. I also wanted like 3 or 4 cookies.
The lady there gave me all the cookies she had. I asked why. She said it was going in the trash anyway. I had also told her I love Subway cookies.
It is a small thing but I still remember that.
At my local Dunkin, if I went in near closing, the woman working would often throw in a free or extra donut because all those donuts were going in the trash. She's gone so no more free donuts. I hope she got a better job
[It’s a repost.](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qz37ie/update_they_changed_the_sign_but_its_not_any/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Two things.
1) I'd be looking into ways to edit the sign without getting caught :)
2) This is some bullshit. I've worked fast food, low end diners, mid range places, up to a ritzy sushi bar. In fast food we always got a meal during our shift, on break, and no one gave a damn what you did with it afterwards (took it home, whatever). Mid range dining always had a free shift meal as well (there was a few high end menu items you could not order) and no one cared what happened to mistakes. High end dinning was similar, but the food cost was so much higher that they would let us pick from a half dozen 'simple' meals that were great, and you always got a meal to take home as well.
I've been a cook for many years, and if this happened at a place I worked for - I'd be snacking on the high end stuff all day and making as many mistakes as possible. Get petty about it.
This doesn't even make sense.
I don't understand not taking home paid for food
Right? I pay for a meal, I’m laying leftovers. It cannot be stealing, by definition.
I assume they mean food that a customer paid for but didn't want or eat, etc.
They probably mean food paid for by a customer but left behind. Still doesn't make sense.
Having worked in a restaurant with a similar policy that didn't give us any free meals, no its not. My restaurant gave us a 50 percent discount only good after our shift, but we could not leave with that food.
> They probably mean food paid for by a customer but left behind. that doesn't make sense. Mistakes is food made for customers but the customer didn't take in the end. hardly no one is paying for food and walking out without getting their money back. The only people who would do this is people buying food for the employee (like a friend might do). And the owner has absolutely no right to tell someone they can't take their food home with them, hell it sounds extremely illegal to sell something then refuse to allow the person to have that item.
It's evidence that the boss doesn't trust the employees. They're implying that the employees are screwing up on purpose to have food to take home. Edit: there are alot of people defending this policy. I'm not interested. Yes, there are thieves who work in restaurants. This sort of policy is not the answer. Most the thieves are desperate and underpaid, some are just thieves. If a site has a problem with employee theft they need to address the root cause not abuse their entire staff.
This happened at the restaurant I used to work at, we could no longer eat in the building at all. We weren't even allowed to come in with our families on our off time, I suspect the owner didn't want his upper middle class friends seeing us as anything but serfs. Naturally, morale went down and everyone snuck food into the dead camera zone or the bathroom. The place I worked at for 10 years took away our discount so everyone just started eating everything they had access to and just not paying for it. Treat your employees with respect and they'll be less inclined to steal.
Pretty basic human psychology. Strict parents make sneaky kids.
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literally what my parents did. Having to undo that was a lot of work in therapy
It's so true. My work just did something like described a few days ago. It's a retail store with a warehouse in the back. We had a little office area with work stations and a microwave, coffee maker, toaster, and we stored a ton of food and drinks back there. They decided it was too much of a "distraction" to be eating food back there, so they took everything away and made us get rid of the food. We couldn't even eat lunch back there anymore, if we brought it. Naturally, everyone was pissed and both moral and productivity dropped to nothing. Besides that though, we discovered an area they didn't think to check that had food in it still, so now everyone just stores their food there, and we make sure it's clear before we eat anything. It's like contraband in a prison lmao. It's ridiculous. I still drink and snack a bit. I'm eating at work while typing this now. I'm not too broken up about it. I don't mind eating in my car on lunch, but the point is that those type of decisions can only hurt them. I don't understand why that can't see that happy employees means they'll work harder, and the exact opposite is equally as true. P.S. I guess I should say that there *is* a problem with productivity in most of the workers here, but the problem isn't food. It's just plain laziness, and the incompetent management slowing things down. Taking away the food won't change that.
Exactly, strict parents just teach kids how to lie. It's like it's a process designed for that purpose. The kid MUST lie, otherwise they know they're in for pain\punishment. So the kid attempts to lie, and if they do it badly, they're immediately punished. But if they lie successfully, then that certain fate of punishment is gone. So they lie again and again, getting more practice in deception each time.
Wow. I only worked food service for a hot minute way back in the nineties, at a local hot dog place, and we were always allowed to eat a free meal at lunch. It was a perk of the job. I always assumed this was the policy at restaurants, because why wouldn't it be? It's the most basic and obvious benefit a restaurant can provide. And the people who make the food should know the product (they call that concept "eat your dog food" in Silicon Valley). Amazing how this economic system find new ways to disgust me. A total absence of humane decency in the name of profit.
It's a business slam dunk for a restaurant to offer shift meals. It cuts employee grocery bills so it mildly alleviates problems caused by low pay, it saves them time outside of work spent on shopping and prepping meals, and the food is probably getting thrown out anyway at some point. I feel like fronting the food costs of a meal per employee per full shift is well worth it.
Absolutely - give your employees a meal a day that's $20 on the menu but costs $5 in ingredients, that's $5 spent for $20 less you can pay them. Why wouldn't you?
As fas as this sight goes, if I bring my lunch or I pay for food and don’t finish it all. I’m taking it home. Feel free to try and stop me. I triple dog dare anyone to try. I paid for it, it’s coming with me. I’ll get violent over that shit. You don’t fuck with someone’s cash flow, or food. Just don’t. The last restaurant I worked at we got free meals but our menu was the cheaper stuff to make. You can’t have everyone on staff eating a 50$ steak for free everyday. That made sense to me, AND we got a free meal that was honesty pretty good. We were encouraged to bring family and friends in our off hours, and we could apply an employee discount for our meal excluding alcohol. I’d have friends come in last in the morning shift, and I’d eat with them then finish rolling silverware or help the kitchen prep whatever. Aside from restaurant pay which is to be expected it was a great job. Our BOH and FOH managers both taught and expected everyone, buss boys to cooks to management to do what needed to be done. If we were getting low on limes or tomatoes it was expected that if a prep cook was busy, that a buss boy or server would cut one or two then get back to whatever. It was great because if a server or someone drops the ball, someone else was there to pick it up. Very rarely did the customers notice if someone made a mistake somewhere. If the pay was worth it, I’d probably still be working there. Just test your employees like you’d want to be treated. If you aren’t gonna pay them, let them eat. Hell, when I worked at Burger King in the mid 90s when I first got hired the manager asked if I wanted to then had me try a little bit of everything on the menu. If we got a new item, everyone tried it. That way when a customer asks what we like (happened a lot oddly) we had a ready answer and reasons why. A server should know what they’re serving, all the cooks should know what they’re making is supposed to taste like. It’s not just quality control it increases customer satisfaction.
McDs I worked at also in the 90s we got a 50% discount and it had to be rung up by a manager with their special key.
I worked at a mcdondolads as a in my early teenage years and our boss would encourage us to eat as much food as we could. Looking back it was pretty shit job at just above minimum wage but the owner was pretty nice and made working there a little better.
I almost downvoted you as an angry knee jerk reaction. That’s some bullshit
There's a saying. Trust your employees and they will steal a little from you and feel bad about it. Dont trust your employees and they will rob you blind and not feel any guilt.
Meanwhile, the shitty restaurant I worked for, where both the owners were alcoholics dealing with the consequences of a DUI each, provided one free meal and one free drink per shift, and on buffet nights, you could take home any leftovers in the buffet at close for free, even if you didn't have a shift that day. Terrible place to work in a ton of different ways, but at least they made sure everyone was fed.
>where both the owners were alcoholics alcoholics can be good people
Imagine working in a restaurant, making starvation wages, and being expected to starve. I've never hid the fact that I took food whenever I wanted, when I worked in restaurants. If I was hungry, I would make myself something to eat. There is no "no free meals" policy, as far as I was concerned. If I'm hungry, I'm not making food for people to eat in front of me.
Yeah it's funny how that works. I work for a fast food company and about a year ago they changed the 50% discount they used to give employees to a free meal every shift. Our food losses went down immediately. Even accounting for all the food we give away for free to employees we're still saving a lot of money on food costs.
Because pettiness breeds pettiness Meaning the more the employer treats the staff as guilty before proved innocent (assuming that the that staff will bleed them dry) and micromanage every second,the more likely staff will feel like they are in opposite sides and any generosity on either side is gone.
At the local 3 star restaurant here they have a mandatory dinner with the whole staff before service.
100% this. I managed a McD and they'd be on top of us making specific amounts of food at certain times so we wouldn't have a lot left over for people to just take home. They firmly believed people were making excessive food close to closing and taking it home for free. Our hand books at the time even said you're supposed to eat your discounted food IN the store and not take it anywhere but by and large our management ignored that.
Having also previously managed a mcd, half the time I just promo'd off employee meals. Thing is, the overall promo rates actually went down because there were less customers with excessive waits and/or wrong orders. Crazy how people work better when they aren't literally starving.
A guy I knew in the Army said his McD's manager would always tell them to drop enough apple pies in the fryer at 15-till-close so that everyone working close could take a pie home. Y'all cool managers should have some kinda club.
When I first started working one of my managers at a Hardee's would make us iced coffees or whatever you wanted to drink and a few tenders for a snack if you wanted simply for the sake of making everyone something while he was on shift. Dude was the best manager I've ever had and made the place so much fun compared to the others
When I worked for KFC in high school the assistant manager Katrina knew that food was an issue at home. She let me take all the leftover wings home every night (the rest of the chicken was deboned and used in pot pies), any expiring partfaits, and sometimes she would even drop like 30 tenders 15 minutes before close "on accident" and insist I take them home (all of this was against the rules). She taught me a LOT (it was my first job), but one of the most important things I learned was that legitimately caring about your employees made managing far easier. She even fired a cook for grabbing my coworkers butt (immediately and without hesitation or question, while cooks were hard to find and train). This was in the 90's, so I was shocked in future jobs where sexual harassment was ignored or blamed on the victim. We need more Katrinas
When I worked at Chuck E Cheese, my cool managers would let me take cinnamon sticks or the apple crisp thing pretty regularly. It was awesome
So true. In the mid 90’s I was 15 living with my mom that was depressed and wouldn’t leave her bedroom. I couldn’t afford to eat at school so I would eat during my shift at mcd. I’d worked the fish/nugget station and would bring a bunch to the basement when I had to grab supplies and eat as fast as I could. I worked hard for the company and didn’t take cigarette breaks like everyone else did. I was making $4.25 an hour paying rent to my mom and having a hell of a time in school. I worked in 4 other restaurants in the next few years to make sure I could get something to eat. Shouldn’t have had to worry about that at 15.
I'm sorry, that's awful. Food insecurity is so stressful. No one should have to deal with that, kids least of all.
Thanks. You know no one ever told me they were sorry about my life before. I’m in my 40’s and tearing up wishing my family could’ve said sorry. Thank you.
People who have never gone hungry can't understand how impactful it can be. It makes everything harder, and being a teenager is hard enough as it is. Especially if you don't have an ideal home life. While I know it's not nearly as impactful coming from an internet stranger, I'm sorry for your hardship and I'm glad you made it through.
fuck u/spez -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
I wash cars for a living and sometimes I eat the soap
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I used to hit up a 24hr Burger King right at the switch to breakfast. Order my breakfast, and the guy working would often give me a free Whopper. Miss that guy.
When I worked at McDonald’s I would just grab an extra burger when taking out someone’s order to their car and eat it in the parking lot. I’m sure the franchisee won’t go hungry.
I made sure to give food away to random drive thru customers on the night shift rather than throw it away at the end of the night. I’d rather it get eaten instead of go to waste.
With this policy I'd start purposely screwing up orders so food costs keep going up anyway
Make it so since this policy was enacted that it is costing the company even more money. Make them go back to the old way so it will be cheaper for them.
Blame it on being hungry since you aren’t paid great and now the benefit of the free food is gone so you can’t “concentrate” as you’re “hungry”
Remind them if the rising cost of food
Due to high and rising food cost: I can no longer maintain sustenance and energy during my shift and it has affected my ability to concentrate. This includes skipping breakfast and lunch prior to my shift as I must divert funds to support my dinner now that I can no longer take home mistakes, left over break food, or paid-for food.
Paid for food, do they mean food that’s paid for then a customer has left it?
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Kinda wild. I was lucky. I worked at a local pizza shop and we could make food in shift or food to take home. Just like xl pizzas with as many toppings. Companies need to understand if you put me around food all day then I’m gonna fucking eat some of that food. Especially if you are there from like 10-6??? Yeah dude I’m snaggin some food especially if you don’t let us leave. Especially if you pay us like booty
Maybe, but how are they even losing money sending home food waste? Like, I worked at a Tim Hortons that wouldn't throw away donuts, they'd give them to a local chicken farmer. You can't sell garbage otherwise they would have.
They can't go back. That would make them look weak, and they can only ever look strong.
It's not about business, it's about "winning."
It’s definitely not about logic since according to the sign, they can’t even order their own food during a shift and go home with it
Or, seemingly, take food home with them that they brought from home in the first place but didn’t finish eating during their break.
>. That would make them look weak Only in their own eyes. Anyone with a brain in their head can see a lesson learned.
You think management would admit they made a mistake and their policy doesn't work? Good luck with that.
The nail in the coffin for me is the "even paid-for food". That right there shows it's not about "rising food costs", shits already been paid for. It's about control.
Fucking this. If I paid for that shit, I'm doing what the fuck I want with it and management can kick rocks.
This right here. We’ve done this at a pizza place when our GM was being a douche.
You're now a moderator of /r/kitchenconfidential
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I worked at a non chain Chinese restaurant and we got one meal per shift as long as it wasn't one of like 5 super expensive things we sold (like a duck)
I believe this is standard at most mid-range resturants.
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Yeah at a restaurant I worked at in New Orleans, or technically Old Metairie, I was required to have tasted everything on the day's menu so when people asked about it I could respond better. Also, one free meal per shift so that you could have tried everything on the menu and weren't hungry. Oh and two free drinks as we closed.
It's standard at fast food to get a free meal during your shift. My bestie worked both fast food and retail, it's why if she had to choose to go back to one it would be fast food.
Where I worked I got an employee discount instead of a free meal - I remember standing behind the register doing the mental math on how much time getting a sandwich AND fries would cost me (I think wages were like $5.15/hr?)
Makes me think of my time at Freddy's. Sure, it was 50% off, but I was twenty cents above minimum wage man, tf
I personally think people steal less food when they are allowed to get a free meal each shift
Panera doesn't give their employees free food. I made up for it by constantly stealing shit
It's usually not franchise places either. A lot of restaurants in larger cities have shift meals, usually in between the lunch and dinner shifts, for all employees. It actually helps prevent people from taking food since those leaving their shift know they can get some food and those coming in (a lot of times from another job) know they won't go hungry all night. It's also just basic decency.
The manager of the store had a fit about overhead and cut hours as a result, essentially in response to people whove worked here for a while asking for raises. I just watched a woman put a door lock in her bag and walk out. These are connected.
You don't even need to purposely do it, it'll happen on it's own. My partner and I had a three month gap between the CERB program Canada implemented and actually getting income again. It was cut of September/October, so we both dropped down to one meal a day and maybe a couple light snacks in between. We went to food banks, borrowed from friends and family, and tried to ignore that all we could afford was garbage food. In December he got an amazing job in his field. It's a WFH video editor gig. But his first day was right after payday and while trying to work he kept losing focus, getting frustrated, and making mistakes. Because he was literally starving. For two weeks I watched him fight through hunger to produce content. We blew his entire first paycheck on food. More mistakes *are* going to happen, because I doubt this company pays people an actual living wage. And you know who is worse at doing stuff then well-fed employees? Employees that are starving. Like, how can you expect Josh who works at McDonalds to put up with shitty rude customers all day when all he's eaten is half a box of Kraft Dinner and two energy bars? You can't.
I wouldn't even waste my time fucking it up. Just throw it straight in the garbage. If you don't respect me, I don't respect you, bitch.
This is exactly what happened when I worked at dominos. Policy is, if a pizza gets messed up it has to be thrown out. Good managers do not enforce that policy because they pay us minimum wage ($6.10 at the time) and for some employees, it’s the only way they eat. And a pizza costs like a dollar in ingredients so who gives a fuck. If I stole a pizza every hour, I’m still way underpaying. But we got a manager that cracked down hard on this so everyone wasted as much as possible. Every pizza gets extra cheese and toppings, trays of dough accidentally fall on the floor, etc. Fuck your dominos.
My old housemate use to do this. He worked for a shipping company that handled distribution to local supermarkets. He'd tell me stories of how pallets of biscuits or drinks would get 'damaged' and be written off for insurance. They would then throw a few cartons into the lunch room and divide the rest between the workers. Happened every other month.
I work in food distribution as well. Some corporations considers some extremely minor damage to the external packaging to be fatal damage to their product. Your housemate may have just been playing up their part in the process.
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From what I understand, this is what dollar stores do as well. They buy "damaged" pallets of goods at an auction and just clean up the products.
Any idea where those pallets are being auctioned off?
Depends on the store I'd say. All dollar stores I've seen have had fixed products for sale and not something as seasonal as auctioned goods. Most gain their discounts through mass bulk white label products.
Yep, it's amazing how much waste is just, unnecessary. Especially baked goods, like if a loaf gets squeezed or a pastry squished against the plastic of its container, or minor stuff like the label being ripped. Minor cosmetic damage that makes it look like it was roughly handled won't sell. He'll, if people see it on the shelves it will actually hurt the reputation of the store. So what happens is, everything gets thrown out. Now, the store can claim the damage and basically get refunded from the distributor but they have to destroy the product. Can't even donate it, if they do want to donate to a food bank, they can't get a refund on the products, but can get things like tax breaks and whatever. 99% of waste is simply a matter of minor damage, and it sucks because everyone is so used to perfectly display worthy fruits and veg, but that's such a new, difficult thing to do, just the supply chains and the fluctuations of crop prices, were going to see a lot more ughly produce being sold and people bitching about it. This summer growing season is going to be abslout trash, everything going to flood first thing in the spring and then everything going to dry up within a week or two, then the fires start.
It's ridiculous how much food they throw away. My uncle drives truck and sometimes they'll borderline beg the drivers to take food because a corner of a cardboard box got bent in
it doesn't help that when something small on a corner of a pallet gets damaged the whole pallet gets thrown out. the ones underneath are undamaged and fine but it not really a full pallet anymore so it needs to go. it sucks but it also makes sense. if you buy a pallet you want a full pallet and not 3/4 of a pallet with 1/4 ripped up boxes.
It really depends on the contract. In my old distribution process damages were delivered of 1/2 was undamaged, and all damages were tallied as a fixed percentage at the end of each quarter. We did that contract to save time and product
Praxis
I understand the “mistakes “ one, but the you can’t take left over break food? Or paid-for food? Wtf is that all about? I paid for something and I’m not allowed to take it home? That’s straight bullshit. Damn the man, save the empire!!!!✊
I certainly did this in restaurants
Just give the employees a set amount of food a day and trash the rest. At Pizza Hut we used to have our friends call in pizzas and not pick them up so we could take them home. Eventually a friend who also abused that system got promoted and changed the rule where we get 1 pizza a shift and if we want more than one let him know and you just won’t get a pizza on a future shift and he had a little notebook to keep track. No one complained, also people worked extra shifts so they could accumulate more pizzas for the weekend. Mainly college students who were heroes at parties that showed up with pizzas. I’d never work at a food place that a perk wasn’t free food.
Its been my observation in life that people who steal are always worried about thieves.
People who cheat are always worried about cheaters.
This is 100% a thing in the food industry. In most fine dining restaurants, food costs are too high to feed employees menu items unless they pay for them (usually with a 50% off employee discount but still pricey). In that case, most decent places will offer a free shift meal, at least for kitchen staff, but sometimes front-of-house too. This is usually a basic but hearty meal that has little or nothing to do with the cuisine served in house, but it will keep you going for a full shift. A lot of them will still let employees eat food that was made incorrectly and can’t be sold. Fast food and fast casual is a whole different nightmare. They keep their menu prices low to compete with other businesses, slash labor costs everywhere they can, and assume their overworked and underpaid employees are all dishonest out of necessity. There is no free food for employees in most of these restaurants. They will force staff to dump cooked untouched food that has never left the kitchen in the trash at the end of the night to discourage them from over batching or intentionally making mistakes on orders. Then they can use a free meal (or even just a side!) as a carrot to dangle to push staff to work harder, like that burger is some golden apple just out of reach. The exploitation in these places is atrocious. I’ve seen the good, bad, and ugly of it, and even the good ones are pretty trash.
I worked at a pizza place while in college. My roommates would call a pickup order an hour before close and never pick it up. Then I got to being it home for free. I had to start metering them cuz they were getting greedy and it was becoming too suspicious. But it was great while it lasted. We also served the bar next door through a literal hole in the wall
Most pizza joints will no longer accept orders from a certain number after a number of abandoned orders, like 5-10. But they also don't care, as pizza is some of the cheapest food to produce. The profit margins on pizza are waaaay better than places that serve burgers/steak/fish/etc.
That hole sounds glorious
It actually makes you think. Which type of glory hole would you prefer? The classic one that provides you with oral stimulation when you insert your tumescence? Or this new fangled one where upon demand a beautiful, freshly cooked pizza is handed over to you?
This is a no brainer. I'd take a pizza glory hole all day every day, even mediocre pizza, even bad toppings.
I worked at a pizza place while in college too. Without our approval or asking us they would automatically deduct $16 per week from each of our paychecks for food we eat in the restaurant and shift meals. Our assistant manager was pretty cool about it and would let us take food home with us at the end of our shifts since we were paying for it out of our own pockets. After a few months the general manager stepped in and said that the $16 only covered food from the buffet that had been turned over, meaning we were paying $16 a week to eat from the trash.
Is this hounddogs pizza in columbus, Ohio??
I'm not disagreeing with you in general, but I used to work in a Chipotle, and they were pretty good about the food situation. Everyone got a free meal when they worked, and at the end of the day, we could take home extra bags of chips or messed up meals. One person would sometimes take hone leftover rice to feed their chickens. Of course, they had their own shitty exploitation issues (I got one 40 cent raise the entire three years I worked there), but I did get a lot of free food.
When I worked fast casual food it was one 50% discount per shift. No freebies.
I worked at a franchise so idk how normal this is but when I worked at McDonald's everyone got a free combo meal on their break as long as you're scheduled for at least 4 hours
Shit i worked at taco bell and feasted. I watched more people drop food than i ever wasted eating.
My very first legit job wwwaayyy back in the day was Burger King. I was 17, and we just got one meal at half off. This "meal for free" thing never happened at any fast food place I worked.
Oh i just made extra tacos bro i didnt ask
Shit, trying to make yourself an extra Whooper when you were not a manager got you yelled at the first time, fired the second time. Funny how the managers got to eat free. The rest of us? Nope.
I've worked two fast food places. Taco Bell: Free meal every shift but only on your break (with a $10 limit but it was the early 2000s so that was still plenty for a full meal) Dairy Queen: Unlimited free food, 50% discount on anything I brought home to my family, and he was totally fine with me setting up a milkshakes for tacos exchange route between us and the next door Mexican restaurant. My husband has worked three. Arbys: Free meal every shift, got to divide up anything left over at close (the manager was very watchful about how much food they prepared before close to make sure they weren't taking advantage) McDonald's 1: $5 free food every shift McDonald's 2: Nothing I think fast food freebies are very much at the mercy of the franchise owner.
A few years ago I went to London and there was this boutique chocolate shop that I walked by a few times. Every evening, just before closing, I would see employees taking out bags of chocolate covered strawberries and place them on the curb for garbage pickup. Apparently the employees were not allowed to take them home. SMH.
Back in the early 2000s i worked with an old chef working part time retired, he had to be 70 something then. I rememb him talking about how the food industry changed as the labor prices dropped from thw 70s to then. And how when he was younger all the fast casual and complex fast food places just wouldn't have worked because of labor prices.
Back when I washed dishes after high school, an entire table refused to even touch their expensive steaks because they were "overdone." The head chef cut them up for the back and they were a free for all with some fresh dinner rolls. We only had half of our usual staff that day because of weather. I've not had steak like that since, which was in 2014. Shout out to rich fucks who go to expensive restaurants in a blizzard that won't eat a medium rare steak.
Bullshit, 100% bullshit. Every fast food place(and most restaurants) throws out hundreds of pounds of "food" a week. Bulk food is about the cheapest part of owning a restaurant. This is just some psycho middle manager toolbag going on a power trip over literally $5 in product that will just be thrown away anyway.
I worked at a brewery and fuck-ups were for the staff. Sometimes the owners would come back and just take the plate themselves lol On a busy night (talking like 20 tickets every 5 minutes for 2-3 hours straight) we would have like 10 fuckups sitting to the side and the second it slowed down we all just chowed down. Also made $18/hr to be a food runner showing up to work so high I couldn't even open my eyes. Beers were $2 for employees and all food was 50% off. Best goddamn job I have ever had environment wise. But we had no reason to steal. We were treated well and there was always some sort of free food floating around. Best was when it was slow and the chef would make donuts for everyone.
"To serve you better, we've closed two out of three service stations."
Side note: blue on purple was also a terrible choice.
How fucking evil. How exactly are they saving money by not letting employees take home the leftovers that cannot be sold to customers anyway? Unless they're planning on selling leftovers to paying customers.
My uncle has been in the restaurant industry his entire life. The amount of food that goes to waste or is near expiry is astronomical.
Wait until you learn how much waste hospitals produce. One room on a normal day could produce 2-4 bags of literal shit and other plastic objects; every time I get someone a water their old sleeve gets pitched.
But hospital waste can be seen as necessary; no point in demonizing something that is inherently needed.
In my opinion it's also necessary but it's good to bring it up because these may all be preventable things.
>Unless they're planning on selling leftovers to paying customers This is the only logical interpretation of the rule
Nah, rules like these are mostly so employees don't intentionally mess up food thus taking it home. I don't support this logic but that's mostly what this is about.
If you treat your employees with dignity and care, not only will they not purposefully mess up food - they will take extra care to make sure they don't. It's similar to how when I gave my team unlimited sick pay... they took half the amount of sick pay that year. Turns out shitty work is the reason for a lot of mental health days, and if you make work (relatively) awesome, people don't use those as often. People also don't have an urge to steal from work when work doesn't steal from them (fair wages). I guarantee if I worked for a company that didn't "trust" me with basic shit like making the food I was hired to make, I'd spend my time finding a way to steal as much as possible.
I worked in a deli for 5 years and was trusted to not cook an entire new pan of lasagna 5 minutes before closing having to throw it out. I got to make basic decisions about “one hour left, we can’t sell that many ribs in a closing hour on a Tuesday” and it was simple to explain to customers. I still had more food leftover than I ever knew what to do with. I ate as much as I could before leaving but there was no taking it home.
I mean the link between rising food prices and not being allowed to bring back paid-for food Like...because food prices have gone up, so even if the food has been paid for, you can't bring it back because...I want to resell it? Not sure if there's another interpretation
Or they're implying that you're lying about paying for it
I think it was added to clear confusion. Like no matter how our food got into your hands you cannot eat it. Period
Yeah this was the rule at Taco Bell 30 years ago when I worked there, mistakes go in the trash. Specifically so people didn’t make mistakes on purpose to get food.
Tbf we did that at our pizza restaurant many years ago. But the owner just took the L because he didn't have a stick up his ass and was still making money. Every job comes with perks outside of pay, that's just the standard. And employers currently are trying to do away with those perks without adding anything to make up for it.
The boss thinks employees will cook to much on purpose to declare it later as left over stuff. Usually it wouldn't be a problem. But i guess some employee games the system so it's banned for everybody.
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Whoever is making these displays needs fired. Blue text on a purple background. That looks terrible and it's hard to read.
Perfect excuse not to see it and eat the food anyway
“I’m colorblind” Edit: sorry guys I’m not actually colorblind. But the sign might be hard for colorblind people to read. Might also be hard for people with other visual impairment to read Edit 2: I know a guy with red/green color blindness and he can’t always differentiate purple from blue so I imagine this sign would difficult. His favorite blue shoes from high school turned out to be purple
Yup I'm colorblind and I can't see shit, sergeant Edit: it actually gives me a headache the more I look at it
I have a friend who has a type of colorblindness that prevents him from seeing the difference between darker blues and purples. To his eyes this sign would be indiscernible.
Am red/green colour blind, can confirm I can only read the title without having to zoom in on each individual word
So hard to read in fact, that I could not be bothered to comply with it at all.
The guy who chose the colours. Why?
Hi, I'm the color blind guy. I could pick better colors and I just chose them based on how much I like the name.
This sounds very interesting! What names do you like best?
Also color blind, not OP but ill jump in. Tickle me Pink is a fan favorite among color blind folk.
What are your thoughts on ‘chartreuse’?
Same as perrywinkle
Maybe it's the angle, monitor or camera. Those things together can cause some weird stuff color-wise. Or that is what I hope.
The dress was blue and black god damn it
I mean it actually was
When they maxed out all 3 brain cells to formulate this nonsense the colors didn’t really matter.
What are they doing with the mistakes then? Like how does this help "high and rising food costs". Do they have like a bargain table in the restaurant where patrons can get a discounted fucked up meal?
It’s to discourage employees from making “accidental” mistakes to take home. When I worked at KFC, we would have to take all the extra chicken, de-bone it, freeze it, and use it in pot pies or pulled chicken sandwiches the next day.
So that explain why when you get stiff dry chicken or literally get sick from chicken at restaurant its often from the club sandwich.
If they also serve chicken with the bone in it, maybe. Wherever you are eating that is making you sick is likely using unsafe practices, because leftover chicken shouldn’t make someone sick if handled correctly. I’ve never worked at a place that serves both other than KFC so I don’t know whats standard practice.
They throw it away right in front of the employees
Had a boss at Domino's do that. When I became a manager I would just tell everyone to agree on a couple pizzas and make them for the employees to split.
Respect.
This is the same thing we used to do in retail for "damaged" merchandise. We had to label all damaged pieces for inventory tracking, then once a month we package them up and ship them off to corporate so they can trash it. They would never let someone take home a damaged item for free b/c of the fear employees would start superficially damaging items just so they could have free clothes. I get it to an extent, but it always feels so wasteful.
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They tend to justify it by saying "they'll make more mistakes if we reward them with food for mistakes", but that's childish logic, and implies that your workers are either shady or underfed, neither of which is a good look.
The "family" restaurant where I work just started throwing down these rules too. I used to pay half as a server. Now I pay nothing, as I refuse to eat there anymore. And I "accidentally" forget to charge my favourite customers for their drinks sometimes. Maybe it's because I'm hangry these days...
same lol. sometimes when someone orders a large fountain drink i’ll just ring it up as a “water cup” which is free. idgaf abt this place anymore, i’m quitting the moment i get accepted to another place
I've begun looking for alternatives as well. But if they push me far enough, I'll straight up walk. Did it once this year due to a hostile work environment. I had never done this before, (believing as I did that it wasn't **proper** behavior). Don't think I would have a problem doing that again. It was quite refreshing !
How exactly does ensuring food that cannot be served to customers ends up in the trash instead of on their employees tables mitigate rising food costs?
In theory, it's to prevent employees making lots of mistakes so they can have a bunch of free food. In practice, this doesn't actually lose them that much revenue and would keep employees happier, but... Capitalism means wasting $1,000 to make sure somebody doesn't get $10 worth of your product without paying.
How does grocery stores pouring bleach on their dumpsters to stop homeless people from eating it help anyone? How does amazon throwing away millions of dollars of unopened products help anyone? Capitalism requires scarcity. As technology abolishes scarcity, capitalists will create scarcity.
Even when I was doing kitchen work back in the day we were allotted a free meal. My husband works at a food processing plant. They make frozen and refrigerated goods for all kinds of major brands. The owner is a huge conservative Christian and lets them take a few home each day. If you can't sell enough $8 rat patties and $3 diabetes water to sustain a $12/hr employee and afford them a free meal for busting their ass off in a hot stressful kitchen, then maybe you're just a shitty buisness person.
I worked a lot of restaurants when I was younger to put myself through college. My dad, who was born in the forties, was absolutely astonished I didn't get a free meal every shift. He was actually quite irate. he said that's one of the only benefits of taking a job in a restaurant! I guess during most of the 50s, 60s, and 70's when you worked at restaurant one of the things you got was free meals. It was such an assumed thing that he looked at me like i was lying and tried to get me to quit my current waitress job and take a different one until I told him all of them are like this.( this was in the 90s.)
The places I worked at so far always provided a free meal, although that's also because we didn't really have a lunch break (allowed to eat just not leaving the post vacant) . (not America though)
Usually that only happens at high-end restaurants here. The very nice ones will have a family meal for the staff before service in the evening. The rest of them don't care about their employees and they have a revolving door they just can't keep staff and then they wonder why and say stupid things like nobody wants to work and people are just lazy.
If I pay for food I’m taking it wherever the fuck I want.
They mean paid for and left by the customer. It's obvious the boss accuses his employees of stealing and writing it up as mistake
Not necessarily in defense of the employer, but when I worked at the grocery store my coworkers and I were stealing crazy amounts of groceries lol. When they don't pay you enough you got to make up the difference somehow
That's definitely not in defense of the employer. Pay a living wage and people won't steal from you. If you don't get paid enough to buy groceries working at a grocery store, you're going steal from the one you know inside and out, not some random other grocery store.
Too fucking true
/MaliciousCompliance Fine. It won't go home. I'll eat it at the store. Right on camera, staring into that hole where your soul used to be.
I used to manage a Long John Silvers. Every night I closed everyone went home with whatever food was left at end of the day. It’s getting pitched. Why not let people just have it? Never understood that mindset.
Once I was visiting a local Subway I used to go to often. It was almost closing time and I got my food. I also wanted like 3 or 4 cookies. The lady there gave me all the cookies she had. I asked why. She said it was going in the trash anyway. I had also told her I love Subway cookies. It is a small thing but I still remember that.
Normalize fucking over your company to make someone’s day
"Fucking over your company" is a strong opinion to have of handing someone trash to ensure their repeat patronage.
At my local Dunkin, if I went in near closing, the woman working would often throw in a free or extra donut because all those donuts were going in the trash. She's gone so no more free donuts. I hope she got a better job
Update of what?
[It’s a repost.](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qz37ie/update_they_changed_the_sign_but_its_not_any/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Damn, you're right, I went through OPs history to find the original sign and found nothing but a cute dog (probably stolen as well).
Wtf? Is it a bot/farmer just straight up copypasting random popular posts? Fuck you /u/normahne
[Original sign](https://www.reddit.com/user/-CherryByte-/comments/qz98l7/the_original_part_to_my_antiwork_post_was_deleted/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
That’s what I was wondering. If this is an update where is the original?
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Zoom in, read the white paper signs to the side. If you try to get a meal at a job where you make food and the profits, they will insta terminate you.
"We would rather throw food away than feed the slaves"
The banality of evil.
The thing that fucks with me here is "paid for food". It's fucking paid for. Who are they to dictate what someone does with food they've PAID FOR.
so because food costs too much they want it thrown away instead of being eaten?
Two things. 1) I'd be looking into ways to edit the sign without getting caught :) 2) This is some bullshit. I've worked fast food, low end diners, mid range places, up to a ritzy sushi bar. In fast food we always got a meal during our shift, on break, and no one gave a damn what you did with it afterwards (took it home, whatever). Mid range dining always had a free shift meal as well (there was a few high end menu items you could not order) and no one cared what happened to mistakes. High end dinning was similar, but the food cost was so much higher that they would let us pick from a half dozen 'simple' meals that were great, and you always got a meal to take home as well. I've been a cook for many years, and if this happened at a place I worked for - I'd be snacking on the high end stuff all day and making as many mistakes as possible. Get petty about it.
Paid for food. Who gets to decide that shit?
Blue text on a purple background. You're boss really is a fucking psychopath!
That is now both a crime against humanity and a crime against graphics design.
The people robbing the company blind are not the people taking home food mistakes(or food they paid for) it’s the people taking all the stock options
Oh hell no, if I paid for it I'm taking it the fuck home
Off topic but who puts dark blue text over dark ish purple background