Panera Bread review: employee review 4

I don't approve of the way Panera treats their employees, I myself quit because of unfair treatment, and I was an Assistant Manager for over 3 years. I will address each item you mentioned though in order. First everyone has favorites, you yourself had a favorite manager and people you preferred to work with, generally people who come in on their time off when asked, fill in last minute, work late, work more diligently, etc will get preferential treatment because they take care of the business. While it is a minimum wage job those who treat it as nothing more than a paycheck will only get that out of it, those who make an extra effort to do more will get more, generally speaking. They enforce the rules they themselves break all the time... their job is to enforce the rules, if they are breaking the rules then they understand they are risking their own jobs and if ever caught they could in fact lose them, without you elaborating on these supposed rules I can't be anymore specific. If you break the rules you get written up, 3 write ups and you should be termed. If you get more than 3 then you are lucky you're still there. I can tell you there are no good raises in this company, paid time off? for associates? you are full of crap. Salaried managers don't even get paid vacation for the first year. There are some franchises that offer associates PTO after 2 years, if you worked for one of them you were lucky and should have finished out your 2 years, if not then no one got PTO, and you should get your facts straight before you post in a public forum about it. Breaks are subject to the business, again I can't comment on vague problems. Managers cannot afford to hide in the office when it is busy, they will be fired if there is a complaint and they were not out front to prevent it. If you ate without ringing up your food and were only written up you are lucky, I would have fired you. Managers meals are free and your manager likely rang it up at the end of their shift, or possibly at the beginning to keep from forgetting to do so. How would you know, you admitted you only ever worked dish which is in the back of house and cannot see the registers. I'm sure your scheduling manager did play favorites with her girlfriend, I've seen it happen and it sucks, sorry. However people get hours based on their performance and attitude. From your post I'm not sure that you had the best attitude and perhaps you were a great dishwasher, perhaps you were a terrible dishwasher and they only scheduled you so as not to fire you, technically we are supposed to have everyone trained in 3 areas in 60 days. If you weren't it could be for a number of reasons, high turnover, not enough trainers, not enough staff, unwillingness to learn or be trained, poor attitude, poor attendance, poor availability, poor fit with the culture of the company, overwhelmed management, poor management, vindictive management, poor training, I could go on and on and on. As for losing a shift for not covering a shift, if that was indeed what happened then that was vindictive of the scheduling manager, however maybe they just decided to schedule someone they knew would show up for work, again, cant say wasn't there. As for your GM, I've only ever had 2 qualified GMs out of the 12 I worked for, I'm sure your GM was a piece of work, most are. If she left you alone in the building she should have been fired. Did you tell your Director? I will say if you were closing dish and took longer than an hour in my area someone else would be doing your job the following week. Not a defense for your GM like I said leaving associates unattended is a terminable offense. I will say though, GMs don't make 60 grand a year unless their store grosses more than 13, 000 a day with fantastic holiday sales and perfect labor, platinum audits, and a positive increase from last years sales each month. GMs generally make between 35, 000 and 42, 000 plus bonus. the busiest best ran stores I worked at had a maximum bimonthly bonus of 4, 000. You are kidding yourself if you think that is adequate reimbursement for running a store, you are on call at all times, are unable to take your vacation time, frequently have to come in on your time off, you work early and late and are the one who catches all the blame for everything that goes on in your store even when you aren't there. You made minimum wage because associate at Panera is a minimum wage job and unless you showed exemplary work ethic your biannual review was not going to get you a raise. Raises in most cases are a dime an hour for the highest scoring reviews, trainer raises are a quarter and becoming a shift supervisor is treated on a case by case basis but unless you work for corporate you are not likely to make more than $10 an hour. From your complaints though I would say you are lucky you lasted as long as you did, frequently we keep people on staff only because we haven't enough people to get rid of them. Be careful what you say on public forums, unfounded accusations can be prosecuted for liable and slander. I had a rule when I hired, you don't recommend a friend to work at Panera, its not something you subject your friends to and those that I did hire I explained in detail what they were getting themselves in to. The first 90 days is a probationary period, if you don't like it by then, quit. There are many reasons to complain about Panera however it seems your issues were likely your own doing. Perhaps you should try retail.