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| Let me tell you a little story. It’s a story of how a company turned the best job I ever had into the worst in less than six months. A story of how fast food turned an arrogant young man into an humble old one, and then into a cynical and jaded one. It’s the story of how Gastronomy Foods is quickly running the KFC in Bangor, Gwynedd into the ground by destroying the staff who work for them. I mean, when the main aim of staff is to prevent people coming into the restaurant, then eventually the customers are going to start noticing. It’s the story of how I’m struggling to maintain my humanity in the face of impossible odds. And, it all starts over a year ago . . . Last April, I got myself a new job at KFC in our local town, Bangor in Gwynedd (formally, of course, Kentucky Fried Chicken, a marketing decision which has caused the general public an awful lot of confusion – the number of people wandering in and asking for cheeseburgers, Happy Meals and fish burgers depresses the mind). Now, I’m an intelligent man with a lot of certificates to prove it, and the idea of someone with my towering intellect working in a fast food establishment rubbed the fur of my soul the wrong way. Still, bills needed to get paid and I needed a job. The prospect of lowering myself to this level was still, in my eyes, less degrading that admitting defeat and going back to England where the idea of spitting on someone because of their nationality is something of a taboo. So, I started my work. Minimum wage, of course. I cooked chicken, served people who couldn’t even pronounce the word ‘colonel’ and yet still treated me like scum, and scrapped the crap out of fryers. I came home covered in flour, smelling like crap and caked in sweat. Some days I wouldn’t get home until three or even half three in the morning. And, after a month or so, a funny thing happened. I realised one day that – against all the odds and every idea of what is good and pure and right in the world – that I loved my job. I mean, it goes without saying that the work was shit and the customers were shit, but I realised that these things weren’t important. The people I was working with were great and that management were great. They were, you know, part of the team. Part of the pack. Part of the posse. Just one more of the guys. No one wanted to be there and so everyone there just wanted to have a bearable time, and because of that the atmosphere was very relaxed and accommodating. People could swap shifts around as and when they needed to, you could arrange to have certain times or days off with the manager, and most importantly, no one hassled you. So long as the customers got served, so long as the chicken got cooked, no one really minded what else happened. And surely that’s the way it should be. The customer gets the product they want and go away with no complaints, the staff know their jobs and what they’re doing and so they’re left to get on with it. It may not be the most monetarily efficient system in the world, but there’s a lot to be said for a management style which has staff in a minimum wage job putting in extra hours for no pay, the way I used to. Or even staff caring about the company. I used to. I wanted a career there. My future was going to be fried chicken. It was a weird thing, but I’d finally found my niche. And then, of course, something happened. Our branch of KFC is a franchise, and the franchise was sold by the then owners, Direct TT Supplies, to a new company – Gastronomy Foods. Okay, well, don’t fuss me none, I thought. Change of name on my payslips, no hassle. I hardly even blinked. Oh, dear. How young and foolish I was. Remember that image of me working in the kitchens with fried chicken and happily envisioning my future there? Well, contrast that picture with last night when I was sitting in the pub with two colleagues who had just walked out of their shifts and out of their jobs, toasting them, congratulating them, envying them, and promising not to cover any of their shifts. From future manager to agent provocateur and rat fleeing a sinking ship in under six months? Pretty impressive. It started off slowly, of course. We had ‘security’ cameras installed first of all. Cameras which weren’t used for security at all, but instead were used to secretly monitor staff (a contravention of both the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act). We then had a multi-thousand pound ‘automatic air freshening system’ installed in our two loos (I mean, literally, two . . . not two sets of cubicles and urinals, but two loos), while at the same time we were told that it was, ‘too expensive’ to hire bouncers for Friday and Saturday nights. Bangor has over 45 drinking establishments at last count, and our shop is only one of three open after chucking out time on Fridays and Saturdays. One of the others – a smaller takeaway than ours – has employed door staff from the day they opened. The police hate us because of the number of fights that break out in our restaurant. They want our late licence revoked because of all the trouble. A few months ago, a fight broke out which meant the staff having to spend three hours cleaning up blood and discarded body parts, and a further hour giving statements to the police. They weren’t paid for talking to the police, of course, and were expected to clean up the blood despite doing so being illegal (blood is a hazardous substance from which you can catch any number of life-threatening diseases, and as such must be cleaned up by someone suitably trained and equipped). A week or so ago, we were giving statements to a local officer following a car crash we’d witnessed (entirely unrelated to our jobs), and when we mentioned where we worked he rolled his eyes and told us he’d been called out there more times then he could remember and wished we’d shut early. This was just a random bobby, out of the thousands who work our area. More was to come. New regulations were brought in which meant we couldn’t clean certain things until half an hour before closing. Of course, this meant we had to stay later. (And, yes, they used their ‘security’ cameras to check what time we were cleaning things.) Our staff meal allowance was decreased from £4.50 to £4 the same week that prices for the customers were increased. It took our restaurant manager five e-mails to his manager before he was allowed to buy a new mop bucket. The number of staff on each shift was steadily decreased to the point where, now, every single shift is understaffed. Holiday booked three months in advance was ‘forgotten’ about and not honoured. Rotas were not given to staff until a day or two before they were due to start (our contract states that we are to be given our hours at least seven days in advance). Temperatures in the kitchen reach over 34 degrees centigrade, and the legal limit is 30. Upset but proactive, a number of staff decide to write to management to voice their concerns, namely the illegal use of security cameras to covertly monitor staff and the illegal temperature in their working environment. In return, we have nothing. No word, no answer, not even any acknowledgement that they have received the written notification of our legitimate concerns. This was over a month ago now. So, picture the image. It’s a busy Friday night, and there are three staff on when there should be five. The temperature is pushing 30 again, and everyone is fried, working their socks off. There’s a queue to the front door, which has been there for the last few hours and shows no sign of abating. We’re busier then we’ve been for a long, long time. One of the senior management comes in (from Gastronomy). He doesn’t say a word to the staff, but goes upstairs to the office and plays around with the computer for an hour. The queue doesn’t show any signs of leaving, and everyone is still working hard. He then comes back down and, on the way out, berates the staff for working slowly. He’s upset about the queue. We need to work harder when it’s busy, he tells us. And then leaves. Fortunately, he left people speechless and by the time they’d got their voices back, he was long gone. No one, though, was surprised at his conduct. A week later. Another busy Friday night, again only about half the staff we actually need, another queue to the door, another hot, hard night’s slog for our £5.05 an hour. But it gets done and people go home. Next day. Team members on counter are, apparently, no longer to be trusted with filling the boxes with Popcorn Chicken, and so this task is taken over by the shift runner. Over-portioning cost the company £50 last week, we’re told. We also know from our own experience that we’re raking in over £2,000 a shift (two shifts a day), and it would be more if we had more staff. The counter staff are too fried with stress and heat to make sure that the exact amount of Popcorn Chicken gets put into the box (10 for a small, 21 for a regular and 32 for a large, if you’re interested) and are instead concentrating on serving the customers. I mean, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind queuing for an extra fifteen minutes if it meant you got the exact amount of Popcorn Chicken you paid for, right? Later the same day. The same member of senior Gastronomy management phones up and says he’s very angry and upset because last night equipment was cleaned before regulations permitted, and customers weren’t served quick enough by staff. They had a queue to the door of the restaurant for over four straight hours, and only one member of staff at a till taking orders. One member of staff making burgers, portioning up fries, cooking all the frozen foods. One member of staff preparing the fillets, mini fillets and chicken pieces, cleaning the equipment and making sure everywhere stayed supplied with cups and boxes and cheese and suchlike. That’s when my two colleagues walked out. Every single other member of staff was phoned and asked to cover for them, and every single one refused. I’m interested in what’s going to happen next. The two members of staff who left worked close to or over fifty hours a week. If someone called in sick, it would be one of them or one other person who would cover for them. The third person has decided he’s had enough and won’t cover any more shifts. There’s a new shop, a Costa Coffee, opening next door to where our store is. I know of at least four staff members of KFC angling hard for jobs there. One of them has said he’s quitting at the end of the month, new job or not. So, out of a workforce of fifteen, six will be gone within a month. Three are students who are at home right now, and will be until the end of September. So that leaves six people. One is the manager, one is the manager’s wife, and one is the assistant manager (who’s on holiday all next week, and thus being paid not to work). One is wholly uncommitted and probably only there because it hasn’t occurred to him to get a job somewhere else. The other two . . . well, they’ve not got any special attachment to the place, beyond paying their bills. The rats are leaving the ship. I want to tell anyone who’s thinking of applying there what they’re getting themselves in to. I want Gastronomy Foods to realise that employees are human beings and deserve to be treated as such. I want them to realise that customers aren’t their most important asset, because you’re not going to shift much product without staff. I want . . . hell, this is a blog, isn’t it? I wanted to sound off and put all my thoughts into writing with the vague hope other people are going to read them. Thanks for reading them. Post a comment, if you want – support, derision, grammatical corrections, your own fast food horror story . . . We’re supposed to be a democracy, so why do I feel so powerless? Anyway, as said, thanks for reading. |
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