Tim Hortons: The Assistant Manager from Hell

--- THIS BLOG HAS BEEN ABANDONED. OUR NEW HOME IS: THE WEASEL SOAP BOX ---

The route from the bottom of the food chain to the top can be hellish.

One must start out at the bottom. The people at the bottom of the ladder are blamed for everything that goes wrong because it is easier. These people are simply just "pond scum" and are treated like that by those above them, whether due to being in a supervisory position, or having a certain amount of seniority.

As one rises, they quickly forget how it felt to be treated like a bottom sucker.

The sense of seniority quickly gets to them; a position of authority erases the last memory of being a bottom sucker. Power is a delicate mistress, who can be the harbringer, the deceiver. This little mistress entices her new arrivals.

This is no less true for the assistant manager I had to deal with in my short time there. Not only was she not the most diplomatic person I ever met, but, I often got the feeling that she hads no qualms singling out those she didn't like and accusing them very randomly.

If something went wrong, even if you were on break, if she didn't like you, I'm sure it is why you were blamed.

I remember being blamed because there were coffee grounds that had landed outside of the garbage bin. I had been on break, and when I got back, she was sweeping up and pointed it out to me. I hadn't been the only person using that trash can, but, she singled me out anyway and had me cleaning it up instead of actually helping with the customers (and then accuses me of being "slow"...) uh-huh...

Or... the customers have stopped coming for about one minute and you want to take a breather? HAH! Forget it, she was on my case about how I needed to make sure my stocks were full. While it's ok to point out this, there is such a thing as being overzealous.

Then there's the deli... not such a bad thing until you encounter peanut butter and sweaty hands. Yes, after you apply peanut butter to a bagel, you've got to remove your gloves because there is always someone who's hyper-allergic to peanuts. So, it's busy and you've got to work solo - damn hard if youi've got to change gloves and you get no sympathy because no one gives a damn that you need help.

Of course, she doesn't help matters. Her method of helping is to demean you and make you feel like you've done nothing, even though you've tried to ask for help, explaining that your hands are sweaty and the gloves won't go on...

The little things she picks on; it must make her feel like a big woman. After all, she's going nowhere in life. As is the fate with most people in managerial positions in the service industry.

She has no concept of how to treat people fairly.

It really showed through when a nice co-worker of mine found a cigarette butt that had wound up in the fridge. My co-worker didn't name anyone because she didn't think that anyone had actually put it there. She just happened to be working in the baking area the day the assistant manager was there.

The assistant manager called me into the back, and accused me without even asking me anything before hand. She came out and accused me of smoking during work hours and then allowing for the offending cigarette to wind up inside the fridge.

My co-worker seemed surprised.

I tried to defend myself. I don't smoke and this was a serious allegation, especially given the way the company deals with people who actually DO smoke on their breaks. I heard one story where a young man was fired and was arrested... it seems extreme, but, it really did happen.

I tried to explain to the assistant manager that I don't smoke, and that the only way it could've got into the fridge was for the butt to have been on the bottom of a container.

I then added that the previous shift I had been baking and I had been refilling the fridge with the supervisor and I was bringing the containers back and forth between the fridge and the freezer OUTSIDE. I explained that it must've got stuck on the bottom after I dropped a container on the ground.

She didn't like my story and never followed up on it with the supervisor (of course she wouldn't, damn air-tight alibi, since there was someone of autority with me at the time). She then had mused out loud that it must've been another worker. She decided to accuse some young kid of sixteen, who seemed too dazed to do his job, let alone light a lighter.

I don't know what happened there, but, I imagine she got the lynch mob and went after him.

She said said she wouldn't tell the manager...

I had explained to my supervisor what she had said and he was outraged. He had been with me and knew that I didn't do anything wrong. He thought she had been very unreasonable. So did other co-workers. They found it outrageous.

She has a miserable disposition, which showed crystal clear the day I was dismissed. Before the manager had dismissed me, the assistant manager had said to me that, "no one likes you, and no one wants to work with you."

What I find the strangest of all this? When the manager was dismissing, she was not happy about it. She had told me that she tried to fight so I could stay on board. From the way she spoke, I got the impression that she had been given orders from the general manager. The GM could've influenced by the assistant manager, since the manager didn't seem like she want to dismiss me...

Moral? Assistant managers are bigger assholes than managers.

...TBC...

Related Links
Tim Hortens: Blogger's Work Experience

Tim Hortons: A Blogger's Work Experience

--- THIS BLOG HAS BEEN ABANDONED. OUR NEW HOME IS: THE WEASEL SOAP BOX ---

I normally refrain from mixing my personal life and my blog, and from there, my blog and work simply because it might compromise your position at work if you do. But, there comes a time when that invisible line can be safely crossed and it is when you've either quit or been fired.

I will go back to the beginning of my summer to write about this, since my work experience at Tim Hortens, a well-loved Canadian coffee shop chain, began at the end of June 2006.

I was hired in July after one interview with the general manager and a VERY quick interview with the manager the next day. The manager had hired me without actually asking me questions that might've changed my fate for the next couple of months.

Training

I had been hired on the spot, and I was to go into work the next day for my first day of training from 3pm-6pm, a nice short, three hour shift in order to get me accustomed to the store and its basic operations.

My first day wasn't too bad. I worked with the supervisor, one of the only few nice people there. I don't have the heart to say anything bad about him, since every shift I worked with him was a good one, even if he did make me work hard, and he pushed for results. I didn't mind that because I felt like I was treated with some form of respect, or at least like a human instead of like a machine that is expected to meet up to unreasonable expectations.

I had worked almost all entirely evenings for my entire there, so, I really only worked under the supervisor’s watch. I had few shifts with the manager and the assistant manager before my employment was subsequently terminated.

Evening Shift: Cleaning Up

The evening shifts are more cleaning than chaos.

All the day shift is really good for is making a mess for the evening shift to contend with. The evening crew then has to clean up everything, the deli area, front area and the baking area. This includes moping, sweeping and cleaning the tables and counters.

If we're lucky, that was all we had to do. There were days when there was more because it was a certain time of the month, so we had to clean the walls, the panels at the lighting fixtures and even the corners in the front areas on the floor.

Cleaning the deli is ok, so long as there isn't an endless barrage of customers clamouring for bagels and sandwiches, which the deli serves. The cleaning of the deli involves refilling the condiment bottles (yellow mustard, honey mustard, mayo and Tim Sauce (ranch dressing)). Cleaning out ALL the stainless steel containers.

These containers are home to: cream cheese (strawberry, plain, plain light, garden vegetable and herb-garlic), egg salad, chicken salad, tuna, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, cheddar and swiss cheese.

The only containers that never are cleaned unless the manager requested it were the ones for the swiss and cheddar cheese. The other ones were always cleaned.

When I was taught how to do this, I was taught by someone who did it rather hastily, so, I wound up adapting my own methods because theirs didn't suit me. I was told frequently by the evening supervisor one time that I was too slow having taken an hour to do it. He compared my speed to that of another girl, blatantly ignoring that it's hard to do something in half an hour when there is an endless line of customers all wanting to get food prepared.

It is also harder to do something fast when you have to take time and temperature and make sure that the water levels in the holding containers were adequate so that the soup, chilli, bacon and chicken breasts didn't burn. They would bur if the water underneath had completely evaporated. I learned this the hard way when I was working on my own on the deli on my fourth shift.

Baking is equally as obnoxious. In the evening you have to clean and the glazing station comes apart into two pieces and both weigh a lot and are damn hard to lift up, especially when you don't know how to do it.

It comes in two pieces, the top, which has three slots for resting a tray that has freshly glazed doughnuts or Tim Bits on it. This sits over a basin where the excess glaze drips back into. The basin has rather large and has a slope, a slight incline that allows for the glaze to congeal into a nice icky mess in a trough-like catch at the bottom.

This is hard to clean especially when the glaze has congealed on and won't give. It takes boiling hot water to loosen it, and an itchy sponge to clean off the excess and the excess is a lot because the station isn't cleaned until about 6:30pm during the evening shift and the glaze had been in there for at least ten to eleven hours at that point.

If you're lucky, the layer will be thin and you can scrape it off...

What is really annoying is being told that you're doing it too slowly and no one had previously shown you nor told you how you were supposed to be doing it.

As with most of the cleaning, I was never given any real guidance and then criticised because I didn't do something right.

Well, it's fucking hard to do something "right" when you've got nothing to work on except instinct, which isn't stellar at times.

Day Shift

Plainly? They suck. They are ten times worse than the evening shift despite having to not clean anything, other than the counter with a basic rag and maybe restock the supplies, which includes cups, lids, sugar packets, sweeteners, stir sticks and straws.

It is nothing short of chaos from 7AM through to about 1PM.

There is a non-stop wave of people. It's worse than other locations because it's part of an Esso station, so people stop to fuel up in more than one way. They come in for gas and rocket fuel, which we call "coffee".

These people are in a rush and the day staff has to go from being human to being robots, machines. People who can do nothing more than recite the robotic, pre-recorded statement of "next".

The day people are rather curt, and customers who may be used to more polite statements from service industry people are in for a rude awakening.

My Colleagues

While I never had to deal with them from the customer side of the counter, I found them to be rather cold. Even when the pace slowed down significantly, I didn't feel like I was working with colleagues but rather with mundane individuals who might as well have been robots.

I never felt truly comfortable around them. They didn't seem friendly to me. They didn't act human at all. I felt so out of place when I listened to them move the line along. They didn't show an iota of politeness to their words.

I remember early on my supervisor in the evening telling me that when you call a customer that you don't say "next", but rather, "can I help the next person/customer here?" and that you need to be polite in addressing them.

All the evening workers spoke like that; they were polite when they called the people over, even when it was busy. The day people were so different. It was literally night and day.

The evening people were so much nicer, even though we got stuck with the majority of the grunt work, which is the cleaning, stocking and the like. We still found time to be nice to each other. I managed to talk to most of the people in the evening shift at least once. They spoke to me.

I only ever really spoke with two or three of the day shift people, but they quit when it came time to return to school.

I hated the morning crew; they were not my type of people. The evening people were much nicer, even if we had harder tasks to do. They were among the nicest people there, the supervisor included.

The evening people didn't complain; we shared jobs, even spoke while we worked.

...TBC...


Related Links
Tim Hortens: The Assistant Manager from Hell