Tonight, after the Super Bowl, there will be the debut of a new show on CBS called Undercover Boss. You can click on that link to learn more about the show, and watch some preview videos.
The basic gist of the thing is this dude who’s the CEO of Waste Management goes to work as a regular employee; he does things like riding the garbage truck and picking up trash, cleaning nasty old porta-potties, stuff like that. He learns a lot about what it is like to be a regular worker, and comes away from the experience with a new appreciation for his employees.
If I ruled the world, I would create a similar TV show called “Applebee’s Slaves”. My show would not only feature top-level executives at the Applebee’s restaurant chain working as cooks and servers in their own restaurants…but they would also be forced to live on their pay. For six months.
The fact is that these higher-ups, who do nothing but sit in their ivory offices all day, pressure their store managers to cut costs in any way they can. This includes forcing employees on the closing shift to work for free. I am NOT making this up. I worked as a cook for that hellhole years ago, and they did it to me. The restaurant closed at midnight, and that’s what time the managers were told to clock us out. But we were not allowed to go home until the kitchen was cleaned to the manager’s satisfaction. This could often take as long as two hours, depending on how busy the place was close to closing time.
I was paid ten bucks an hour. So if I had to close every night, as was usually the case, and worked five nights a week, I was basically cheated out of $100 per week. Money that we desperately needed. At the time, Mike was still going to school at MIT, and the only money we had to live on were from my pay and his student loans. It wasn’t much, that was for sure. We couldn’t even afford a car at the time…after Mike’s old Ford Bronco II died its final death, we sold it to a junkyard for $75, canceled the insurance, and took the bus.
$100 a week may seem like peanuts to these hoity-toity higher-ups, but for us, it was a lot of money. These people make millions in salary and bonuses for doing very little hard work; they can afford to buy diamonds, fancy cars, and other expensive toys whenever they want to. They never have to worry about how they are going to pay their rent and buy food. They think nothing about taking food out of people’s mouths, in order to be able to afford to pay themselves high salaries. It is truly sickening.
What they did to me and my co-workers is illegal, but Applebee’s covered it up well enough so that none of us would have any way to prove that we worked until 2AM, while only being paid for no later than 12AM. I have no idea if they still engage in this practice or not; even if they stopped doing this, I will still never patronize another Applebee’s restaurant ever again. They stole thousands of dollars in pay from me and my co-workers during the time I was there, they will never get another penny from me. Ever.
If the people who made these financial decisions were forced to live our lives, on what they paid us, for six months…no dipping into bank accounts or anything…maybe, just MAYBE, they’d understand and change their ways.
I finally had enough, and walked out on my shift one night, after the manager, in his usual cost-cutting ways, cut the entire kitchen staff for the night except me and some new guy who was on his second day, and wasn’t fully trained yet. They even sent the dishwasher home.
Then it got busy. Very busy. The new guy behind the line was almost useless, so I pretty much had to work all three stations. I was getting yelled at by the manager and servers for not getting all the tickets out within the 15 minute time allotment. Yes, they had a rule that all food had to be out within 15 minutes of the ticket coming in. They didn’t care if the kitchen was understaffed or not..dammit, MAKE that food magically appear on the plate!
I was getting very tired of being yelled at over circumstances I had no control over. It was the manager’s fault for cutting most of the kitchen staff, but did he offer to come behind the line and help me? Nope, he’s too good for that!
But as I saw more and more dishes piling up at the dishwashing station, I snapped. I realized that I’d be working until 3, maybe 4AM, doing not just the regular cleaning behind the line, but dishes as well. For not pay once the clock hit midnight. I said, screw this, I’m not going to take it any more. I’m not a slave; I expect to be paid for all of the work I do, especially if I’m doing the jobs of two or three other people in addition to my own. As the tickets kept coming in, I walked off the line, went into the back room and got my bag and my jacket, and walked right through the crowded dining room toward the door.
The manager chased after me, begged me not to go, promised he would help me if I’d stay. Where was this offer when I needed it, when I was literally begging for help? Screw him. let him work the line by himself and see what it’s like! I turned around, flipped him the bird in front of all of those customers, and walked out the door.
And it felt SO GOOD!
I found another job about a week later. I simply told the truth as to why I left Crapplebee’s, that I was being overworked and not being paid for some of my time.
This is why I have so much resentment toward overpaid executives who do little work, while they allow the ones who do most of the work to suffer. This is why I hate companies like AIG, who take OUR tax dollars to get bailed out of a mess that THEY caused, and still hand out hefty bonuses to people who already make plenty. For once, I want to see these people walk a few miles in our shoes, and see how they like it!
