Working conditions in pizza places are pretty damn bad in general. I used to be an asst. manager for a Dominos franchise and the number of labor laws they broke were insane. And that’s not even counting drugs, theft, sexual harassment, etc.

I’ll second Ashley’s comment - even the best run pizza places generally come chock-full of borderline illegal bullshit.  When my ex managed one, he really tried to cut down on the level of sexual harassment that was constantly dished out to the token 16-year-old phone girl, but I’m not sure he was ever more than partially successful, because the other managers didn’t give a crap.

I liked this part, too:

So what about using the ovens to heat the place?

Like they’d be complaining if the ovens could heat the store, or that they’d not die in the summer if that were the case.

One of the funniest articles I ever read was a bunch of CEOs and HR executive complaining about how employees today just aren’t loyal to their companies anymore.

Hey, dipshits, why do you think you deserve loyalty from people you constantly screw over and treat as expendable?  Do you think everyone who works for a wage is a masochist that will take any treatment you dish out because they love you so much?

Personally, I wouldn’t order from that pizza place—who knows what the employees are adding to the pizzas, and could you even blame them?

One other thing:  I work in an archive, and it’s always freakin’ cold in the building, because it needs to be to protect the artwork.  “Freakin’ cold,” by the way is 70 degrees in the main parts of the office, and 62 degrees in the vaults.  When our heat went out and it got down to about 60 degrees, they sent us home because it was too cold for us to do our work.

Classy that he blames it on his wife.

Running a business like that, blabbing about background checks on people they don’t even employ—it’s part of a behavior pattern that will land them in significant legal trouble sooner or later. Not that they’ll learn anything from it. These people think they’re right so legal problems will only make them feel victimized and they’ll come out of it bigger assholes than ever.

Aw, this is local to me, so I can actually do something about it.

What a raging tool.

It’s enough to make you nostalgic for the days of Emma Goldman and the Molly McGuires

Sounds like my landlord, who didn’t fix my heat for a month.  Oh, and there’s rats living in my walls that they won’t get rid of, either.

He lives in a mansion in the Garden District.  Fuck all these aristocrat douchebags.

Makes me want to move there just so I can boycott the place.

This is why I try to always leave the pizza guy a good tip.

Yeah, I tip them at least four or five bucks too.

Round here the ovens would keep the place plenty warm on even the coldest nights. Turning off the AC in the summer could be pretty bad though. 

I work a job where I have to deal rich assholes from time to time. I say we tax the shit out of them. I’m tired of listening to them whine. I once worked a job where I worked with REAL rich folks. Sarofim. Hobby, Bissonet, Jamail, De Guerin and the like. Billionaires are way cooler and nicer than newly minted millionaires.

but by publicly airing the fact that the employee had previously had a DUI

Oh my. Is this an employee who does pizza delivery? If I were a lawyer in that town, I would be carefully filing this away. Mr. Benjamin better pray that none of his drivers is ever, ever involved in an accident. “Isn’t it true, sir, that you knew so-and-so had a conviction for driving drunk? Yet you continued to let him get behind the wheel of one of your trucks?”

There is probably not a state law giving an exact room temperature, but I am quite sure even Washington requires a safe work environment, and freezing temperatures ain’t it.

Auguste droppin’ Grandmaster Flash.  Nice.

Melle Mel, if you want to get technical.

I got fired for not coming in when I reported I had the flu.  In the same state.  It’s illegal for a food service worker to come in when they are ill.  I had to fight to get unemployment.

I hated the bosses I had in Washington.  Pricks, every one of them.

I’ve walked off a jobsite with less cause. To take another idea from Fark, I’d suggest all the employees quit at the same time – during a busy period. The owners can strap on roller skates and do the damned job themselves.

Can I get all European on your arses and just suggest some damn legislation?  In the UK at least there is a statutory minimum temperature for workplaces.

Auguste:

Melle Mel, if you want to get technical.

Although if you want to get pedantic, it’s actually “it’s like a jungle sometimes,” not “like the jungle.” Classic song, though.

On topic: this is a small company with just 25 locations, all in the state of Washington. They probably can’t afford to hand-wave this away like a larger company could. If they allow themselves to be tarred as the pizza joint that mistreats their workers in extreme ways, they’ll collapse within the year. Of course, that’s assuming that anyone other than labor-rights advocates gives two shits about it, which in my experience, tends not to be the case.

To take another idea from Fark, I’d suggest all the employees quit at the same time – during a busy period. The owners can strap on roller skates and do the damned job themselves.

Which is a good idea but in reality, I’m sure these folks don’t have any money to pay the rent without this lousy job.  They’re most likely trapped working for this company until they get fired.  The management might have to scramble to find people for a short time, but it doesn’t take that many people to run your average pizza joint, so they’d bounce back pretty fast.  Meanwhile, they’d be able to talk all kinds of crap about their former employees when said employees go looking for new employment in this fantastically crappy economy.  If you’re working food service, it’s because you can’t find anything better.  The management of this place knows it’s got everyone’s ball in a vice and is just squeezing for shits and giggles.

(I’m looking at you, Books A Million, you shit-tastic employers who insist on keeping the fucking store open during a goddamn ICE STORM and forcing your employees to risk death on the frozen roads to come in and do NOTHING for 8 hours because nobody else is stupid enough to go out in that weather.  You dog fucking minimum wage paying shits.  No, I’m not angry, why do you ask?)

Apparently everyone has only one testicle, or else that should read “balls in a vice”.

Yes, yes and yes.  In a world of “right to work”, employees have been treated worse and worse all the while wealthy business whine and mewl about a complete lck of employee loyalty in a country where employees are treated worse than most pets.

That said, Auguste, what dividends?  I’m not seeing either large corporate employers or those wondeful assholes, the small business owners being held accountable for their actions.  The law still supports most of the childish and brutishly greedy behavior, so who is paying?

“The Jungle” would refer to the meat they put on the pizzas… Or does no one recall Upton Sinclair any more? Whippersnappers…

I’ve seen the “best” and the “worst” from corporations. Back in the late 90s, I worked for a small stock brokerage firm in IT, and they treated us, well on the one hand, like gold. Lunch was brought in for us daily, an overnight installation meant they’d pay for a hotel room near the office, we got incredibly generous bonuses. On the other hand, we *were* putting in 60+ hour weeks and being salaried, we got no overtime - and if they hadnt brought in lunch we’d have gone without food because there was no time for a “lunch break.” But they needed us, and they not only knew it, they knew we knew it. We had “field trips” for fun on the occasional Friday evening, if we traveled, they took care of *everything* but putting nametags in our underwear. We busted our arses for them, and they showed us that they were not only aware, but appreciative of our efforts.

That company was eventually bought out by a Large Corporation at around the same time the internet boom went bust and then came 9/11. We were expendable. There were plenty of IT people looking for work. So…overnight installs - no more hotel. No more bonuses. Lunch? No lunch breaks, and no lunch brought in. And the expectation became that an 80 hour week was something to be grateful for even if we were paid only for 40 hours. We worked in offices that were unheated over the weekends and at night, we spent a lot of time in data centers whose temperature was determined by the equipment and not the needs of the humans servicing it, etc.  It’s expected that at least 3 weekends a month will be spent on work. And this year…no bonuses. No raises for anyone at my level. I suspect the Big People will still get their multimillion dollar bonuses, but we were told that regardless of how hard we worked or how good we were, it had come down from on high that no one was to be performance reviewed at any level above “meets minimum expectations.” And I have what would be considered by many a “good job” because I make a good salary and have decent benefits.

In my opinion it’s driven by the economy. In the late 90s there werent a lot of people who could do what we did, so we mattered. Now, it’s cheaper to replace, outsource, hire a consultant. There are bodies out there who can do the work - perhaps not as well, but well enough. And we’re all terrified about losing our jobs, so the companies do not have to treat us well.

What I fail to grasp, really, is not the economics of the situation, it’s how companies, which after all are made up of *people* can justify the way employees are treated. Not on paper…I dont understand how they can do it and sleep at night.

...different species of human, Homo Affluensis...

Which, I suppose, under some variation of Grimm’s Law could evolve into Eloi...

This isn’t as immediately egregious as the unheated workplace, but it so astounded me in its pettiness that this seemed like a good place to share. So, I work at a newspaper. And we employ newspaper carriers. And they must have their own cars and valid insurance and they get paid very little, with one of the justifications being that it is side employment for housewives and people who have other jobs. It’s only a few hours in the morning, right?

Well, we recently got an announcement at work that said if we get the newspaper at home and want to save up the rubber bands that hold the newspaper together and bring them back in when we get a large amount, the carriers would appreciate it because they have to PAY FOR THEIR OWN RUBBER BANDS!!! I know times are hard for newspapers these days. I feel it every day. But we cannot pay for the rubber bands and instead have to pass the cost on to our $8/hr newspaper carriers? It was just pathetic.

I have contacted the workplace health folks I know in Washington State - people I went to grad school with.  I suspect they will pick up the e-mail if they are not already forwarding it to the appropriate enforcement authorities.

I suspect that the health inspectors will also be interested - unless they have issued people the requisite heavy gear used by meat cutters and others performing food service tasks in cold environments, they are likely not able to keep a sanitary shop.  Wearing extra regular clothing won’t do here because it isn’t appropriate - bulky sleeves drag in things and cross contaminate, it can’t be kept clean, gloves under gloves are not acceptable, and all of that.  I also doubt that they are able to maintain the proper temperature ranges for various foods if they don’t control the shop temperature.

Other than that, I hope their pipes freeze before my buddies give them the kind of hell we were trained to raise in such situations.

Idlemind - thanks. I caught the Sinclair reference from the original headline. Glad to see I wasn’t alone!

“Although if you want to get pedantic, it’s actually “it’s like a jungle sometimes,” not “like the jungle.” Classic song, though.”  Jungles are warm, so that’s not the point.

The Jungle was a Sinclair novel about utterly inhuman working conditions in the food industry of the time, and so many people were so grossed out reading it that it galvanized major food safety and workplace safety revolutions. Worth reading. Not around mealtimes.

My own story, and one of the main reasons I took retirement from the Postal Service last June, was when, last January, I was called into my supervisor’s office and told that management might issue disciplinary action against me because…

...wait for it…

...because I had gone to see my doctor…

...ON MY DAY OFF.

Yes, really.

In my opinion it’s driven by the economy. In the late 90s there werent a lot of people who could do what we did, so we mattered. Now, it’s cheaper to replace, outsource, hire a consultant. There are bodies out there who can do the work - perhaps not as well, but well enough. And we’re all terrified about losing our jobs, so the companies do not have to treat us well.

The dot-com boom drove a certain type of “traditional” businessman absolutely batty. I’m not talking about the kind of businessman who was upset the Underpants Gnome business plans or the tulip-craze mindset of investors—those criticisms were legitimate. Rather, I’m talking about the ones who were resentful and bitter because the barriers to entry into a hot industry were relatively low, and because for the first (and perhaps last) time in living memory the labour market dictated that they had to give up their HR Culture controls and actually compete for and appeal to competent employees.

The last 8 years have been a period of retrenchment for those types of control freaks and greedheads. There’s no doubt that Bush was their man, and I’d lay money on the proposition that this pizzeria owner and his wife voted for him in 2000 and 2004.

Gracchus, I know what you mean.  A perfect example of what happens in such an industry when the “HR Culture…control freaks” reigned in IT here in Canada at the same time.  My then sis-in-law had just graduated with a computer degree, and all the jobs available where in the States, with big incentives being offered.  Demand for those positions was just as high here in Canada but the Canadian companies were—I shit you not—not hiring anybody unless they had 3+ years’ experience AND complaining to the government that they needed subsidies because of the brain-drain to the USA.

Bruce A.—what was the rationale for that? Because I sure as hell can’t come up with one.

“To take another idea from Fark, I’d suggest all the employees quit at the same time – during a busy period. The owners can strap on roller skates and do the damned job themselves.”

Ha! Wouldn’t work. Admittedly I only know the pizza places in my town, but they’re almost chronically understaffed, with the exception being Friday nights. I once had a shift where it was me and one driver (normally slow store) getting utterly swamped, and then the computers went down. The owner called to order a pizza and I freak out at him on the phone because OMG everything’s going to pieces. He says “I’ll take care of it” and just gets a pizza from the store down the street. Never heard from him again that day. This owner seems a lot like the ones I worked with in the sense of no consideration for anything but his own bottom line and immediate interests. He probably wouldn’t care if there was a walk out.

And you would be AMAZED how many health violations you can get away with in a restaurant. There’s one in town that is so disgustingly bad that it SHOULD be shut down, but because the owner is friends with our local Rethuglican Congressman it hasn’t yet. That and it’s one of those places that EVERYONE loves; I’m shocked more cases of food poisoning and cockroaches everywhere hasn’t gotten out yet.

Although if you want to get pedantic, it’s actually “it’s like a jungle sometimes,” not “like the jungle.”

Hence the quotes around “The Jungle.”

Can I get all European on your arses and just suggest some damn legislation?  In the UK at least there is a statutory minimum temperature for workplaces.

Yeah. Funny you should say that, because I work for a rather well-known multi-billion pound company in the UK and we’re fighting this very issue on our site - a newly-built office building - right now.

I absented myself from work only last Friday because I was not well and arrived at work to find the building unheated for the fifth time this winter and the second THAT WEEK (hence my being ill that week - I tend to come down with stuff when I’m chilled to the bone for hours). 90% of the workers at my site are in the Union and we use them to escalate any issues, but still, The Company pays scant regard to health and safety law out of a mixture of upper-management cheapness and local management incompetence.

We spent two weeks last summer without a cleaner, so the restroom had overflowing rubbish bins and the toilets - four for 45 people - were becoming health hazards; we’ve spent long periods with soap for handwashing, toilet paper supply issues(!) and oh, SIX MONTHS this year with no hot water. Everything gets blamed on ‘the landlords’ or the contracted cleaning companies. Oh, and we didn’t have a fire drill 9which by law we should have had within I think 3 days of moving onto the site) or basic fire safety compliance until *I* brought it up with the Union after legally researching it. Things have only been dealt with - and at geological speed - because staff have escalated complaints to the Union after repeated complaints and requests for compliance to local management . Even then, it takes endless meetings to eke any assurances out of management and then they usually manage to break them.

Even with proper H&s;law in effect, many, many companies try to evade it for reasons of cost, time and because managers are lazy, professionally ill-educated, unwilling to learn and incompetent and they get away with it until someone dies (see: Hatield train crash) because most workers won’t walk off site and risk their jobs because they cannot afford to do so. At my site, we’re dealing with management whose first act was to disguise the disabled parking plaques with ‘management only’ signs, the better to park their cars closest to the building. They were brought up on this by the Union when it was discovered by staff but continue to indulge in similar unethical behavior with every passing week.

The sad thing about the story is that there’s no sense that the workers could/should band together to kick this particular boss’s ass.

One aspect of this is that a great deal of what the boss is doing is utterly illegal.  If the dude who was suspended (a) was really suspended for talking about this to the media, and (b) is not a manager at the pizza place, then his suspension violated the National Labor Relations Act, and he has 6 months from the incident to file an unfair labor practice charge to fight this out.  If he’s smart, he’ll wait until Obama’s in office and then file.  Now, the NLRA is largely toothless and the National Labor Relations Board moves about as fast as molasses in that unheated pizzeria, but if it’s clear that the boss suspended him for speaking up then the Board will eventually order the boss to pay him for the 2 weeks he didn’t work.

Furthermore, the announcement quoted in the article—“the next person I hear complaining is off for 2 weeks!”—is just blatantly illegal.  Employees have the right to complain to the boss about wages, hours, and working conditions.  Threatening them about engaging in that kind of behavior is illegal.  Now, there’s no fine for breaking this part of the NLRA, but the workers can drag the boss before an NLRB agent and make the boss post a new announcement officially declaring that they can complain all they want without any repercussions.  And any discipline issued under that policy can be reversed by the Board.

And to all the folks calling for the employees to quit en masse—they should actually just go on strike.  And if they’re clever, they’ll go on strike over their coworker’s suspension and the “shut up” policy, not over the heat being turned off.  If you strike over wages, hours, or working conditions, your job can be given to a “permanent replacement” (i.e., a scab).  If you strike to protest and reverse an unfair labor practice, then your job is protected and as soon as you stop the strike the boss has to let you come back to work.

Bruce A—0mygod, I just finished a comment on another post about how the USPS had gone right downhill lately, and how glad I was to be out of it, but this REALLY takes the prize.

When I was still employed there, I was called in once to explain why some “substantial” percentage of my sick days over the past howmany months had been on days adjacent to my “weekend” (Sunday and Monday in my case)—I pointed out that mathematically, this couldn’t be avoided, given the nature of my condition, unless they wanted me to take more sick days, which would lower the percentage next to a weekend, but raise the number of days I took off.

Years later, I developed something really serious (and “unknown to science,” at least around here) and was off work for an entire year.  Proximity of days off to weekends was not even mentioned, so I guess they have some slight amount of decency.

Upton Sinclair’s intention with The Jungle was to shed light on the horrific working conditions that exist under capitalism.  He was actually dismayed that the public instead focused on the food safety aspect of his book rather than about the abuse of workers.  So Jesse’s use of the title is perfect.

We had a situation where there were new schools that were built with air conditioning, and were so much larger than the old buildings and with more floors that they needed it.

The superintendent was a complete ass about turning on the AC, and myself and two of my professors who all had kids and relatives in these buildings wrote a memo about exactly what the hazards of this were to staff and students alike.

The next year he pulled the same bullshit, and I made that memorandum public.  I also noted that the administrative offices had AC during both heat waves, and it had been running judging from the puddles underneath the units.

I was sorely tempted to cut the electrical cables to those units, which were exposed and in a sheltered area with out security surveillance.  Releasing the memo, however, was sufficient to make the teachers union and the citizenry double down and get the required working conditions restored.

When one electrician dad of a child who needed that AC due to medical conditions thanked me, I pointed out that I was sorely tempted to cut those cables.  He said “You’d have to stand in line”.  He was casing the place from the woods with the appropriate construction tools when his wife called and said the battle was won.

Sue a former employer for badmouthing you to future workplaces? If the workers had the money to hire a lawyer for that or the connections to get one pro bono, they’d have already kicked the guy’s ass for the rest of the violations, including releasing information from background investigations.

Definitely wait till the next administration is established before taking anything to the NLRB—the current version is such a shill for employers that it would probably pat this guy on the back.

I agree with Paul; if only that were so easy. I was threatened with something similar (a bad recommendation) for having to quit a somewhat physically strenuous job due to severe back pain from pregnancy. I complained to the higher ups, but i have no idea what happened. I dont’ want to sue either, because it was one asshole supervisor at a generally good organization (my local kick ass public library), and I couldn’t in good conscience harm the library’s operating ability.

Loyalty to the company.  Yes, I learned about that one very early in my career.  It was 1982 and I had just begun to work for AT&T;.  Three weeks after I started working for them, 21 of us were called into our manager’s office and told we had one more week to work there before we were let go (two weeks’ notice is, I assume, a sign of loyalty from an employee to a company, but one week is the company’s version of loyalty in return).  I was young and unemployed and vowed never to forget that lesson, and I never have.  I have also never hesitated to bring it up when someone mentions loyalty to the company to me.  The company wants your loyalty but it will NEVER EVER show you any in return.

Anyone with any brains looks out for him or herself.  My attitude is not “the company be damned”, but rather, “I give the company the best work I can in return for my pay, but when it is a choice between what is best for the company or me, I will always do what is best for me, because the company will always do what is best for the company and make no mistake about it.”

Solution: call the local fire department AND the business owner’s and building owner’s insurance companies, and the building owner, and report chronic use of space heater - that will make the insurance rates go up, may violate terms of lease, may prompt fire department inspection (leading to health department inspection….).

Forty percent of sick days were adjacent to a weekend? OUTRAGEOUS.

Har.  Someone needs to explain to them that 40 percent of workdays are adjacent to a weekend.

LynstHolin on 01/04 at 12:00 PM:
“Bruce A.—what was the rationale for that? Because I sure as hell can’t come up with one.”

The rationale was that on my days off I should have no commitments or appointments, because management MIGHT want to call me up and order me in to work.  Apparently, on my days off, I was supposed to sit by the phone, in uniform, waiting for a possible call.  If I wanted to see my doctor, I should do it on Sundays.  Or just go to the ER, after work hours.