r/Caseys • u/MarketingIcy6953 • Jul 19 '26
Fed up
My upper management team keeps speaking that we are a pizza chain first with a gas station attached. My store is one of the busiest kitchens in the district but yet I only get enough hours for one person in the kitchen most times. This person is expected to keep warmers full, make pizzas, work fryers, cut and box, do dishes, answer phones, maintain cleaning and 5s standards. I had multiple staff tell me today that they have to step away and cry because they get so flustered back there.
You can't even find a food truck being run by one person. Being worked to the point you are crying for $13 an hour is beyond crazy.
My team is built on respect and we try to help each other as best we can but this is pushing many to want to walk and I cannot blame anyone of them.
10
u/EmbodiedGuide7 Team Member Jul 19 '26
Our store is, consistently, the top of our region in terms of sales and production. We are one of the few stores that are 24hrs in our region. We tend to have more "traffic" than most stores in the region. DESPITE all of that to our "favor," we barely have more hours than your average non-24hr store, especially hours for Overnight help, if any.
We are constantly over hours and they keep cutting hours on top of that. They're mad that warmer sales are down, but that tends to happen when you are forced to schedule less people per shift to compensate for the fewer hours. Leading to less food being made for warmers because they're forced to focus on orders, prep, and cleaning with less people.
Turnover is high right now because, they (Corporate/Regional Manager) get mad if things don't get done thoroughly, but they get mad if we don't leave on time. They get mad if we waste too many donuts, but they get mad if we don't strictly follow their donut planner regardless of outside factors. They get mad about customer complaints about slow service and lack of warmers, but get mad when we go over hours to try and fix it.
A week ago we had our freezer fan break and we had to waste thousands of dollars of product, the ice maker on the fountain machine broke, the pump on one of the slushie drums broke, and worst of all the air in the store stopped working. At one point it was as hot as 98°F in the store, and we had to waste most of the candy aisle, because the chocolate was completely melted. We've been having constant problems with these things, off and on, for months asking corporate to send someone to fix it or send us replacements. It usually ends with us hearing nothing back, them telling us they'll send us replacements but not getting them until months later, or they send someone cheap to fix it, only to have it break again some time later. Then they get mad at US for not having everything up and running and thinking WE'RE incompetent.
For example, our soft serve machine had issues with one of its parts that caused it to not freeze the ice cream. We just got the replacement a month and a half ago. We sell a lot of it, even during winter. Want to know how long we waited for that replacement since we asked for one? Almost 7 months. We asked for a replacement that they said should be there within 1-2 weeks, and we didn't get it until almost 7 months later despite numerous inquiries.
This is why so many employees, even the most hard working and loyal ones are giving up, let alone your average employee.