Unanimous Employee
Deli Department
United States
6 June 2017
Mr. Ryan
Deli employee at Deli Department
United States
Dear Mr. Ryan:
I know there are times when working at the deli, work gets very slow. There are few customers at the deli counter needing help. Food has already been cooked and is fresh again. It is put into the hot case and most of the packaging is done for the day. I have noticed many times when you walk to the back room, and the instant that you pass through the hallway, you immediately pull out your phone. The deli manager has already gone home and there is only two other people left working at the deli. Do you ever feel any fear of losing your job someday? It is clearly stated in the store agreement that we cannot use our phones at work, only at break or lunch. You have been constantly using your phone for about every day during your working hours. We rarely get those slow days because mostly every day it is very busy and team work is highly needed to get things done. Every employee is needed to be working so there is enough people helping customers. It is very annoying for customers to be waiting their turn to get helped when there isn’t enough people helping which does affect the store sales. Not long ago on a Sunday, I was on a morning cooking shift from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. I started off like any other day. I got the soups and the mac and cheese in the oven, the whole baked chicken in the other oven, and I started to prepare the rest of the hot foods. I don’t necessarily enjoy cooking so I do it is because there is no one else available to cook on the days I work. As regular, there is another person making sandwiches to display in the front case and help customers on the counter. When it gets very busy, I have to stop cooking and help with counter work which happens very rarely around the times of 8-11 a.m.
Not until it is lunch time hours, we get very busy and it is when more employees are scheduled to come help with counter work. Time quickly goes by and big waves of hungry people arrive at the deli to order food. I notice you get there by 12:30 p.m. and you start talking with the manager. Chicken tenders are running low from the hot case and I quickly dump in a bag into the fryer. I am helping in the counter and see more people coming to the deli. There were these two people that hand me a pre-order sandwich sheet to make their sandwiches but I notice that we ran out of baguettes. I had to run and get them off from the bakery department but then the fryer machine starts beeping which indicates the tenders are ready. I glance to my back and there you are, still talking to the deli manager. Politely, I ask for help with counter work which you then start helping. I go get the baguettes and by the time I get back, the deli manager has gone somewhere and you no longer are helping customers. With dread, I start making the two sandwiches and notice the other worker helping in the counter has a tiring look in his face. I finish making the sandwiches and I see out of the corner of my eye that you are in the back room. You would keep opening the door, coming out, going back in like you forgot something, and repeating the process. By the time, it was 12:55 p.m., I see that my manager passes the deli and notices there are fewer customers in the counter which she then comes back to help. With anger inside me, I finished my cooking shift feeling the unfairness and pressure I had just gone through. I regularly say bye to whoever stays in the deli but this time I felt no motivation to do so. Instead my manager says bye to me which I respond back with a quiet bye to her. From this personal experience, you can clearly see how much pressure I was in because there wasn’t enough people helping in the deli.
Unable to collaborate as a team at work for most jobs is what causes everything to fall apart. Some people at work get mad very fast and this affects us all. We get behind in what we were working on and it gets more difficult the next day when we didn’t get to finish what we should do during our working hours. With not enough people helping customers, the customers sometimes get inpatient waiting and decide to leave. Take a moment to realize how annoying it would be if you were a customer at a restaurant. You ordered your food and was sitting for more than half an hour waiting for your food just because the person who was cooking your food decided to be playing on his phone. A store or job company’s goals is to make money yet provide a good service to people that buy products. If a store company has an environment where not just one person doesn’t do their job but more employees as well don’t do their job, people won’t want to visit that store for the low quality provided to the customers. Then the profits that are going into the store might not be enough to continue the company which then may lead for the store to go bankrupt. Therefore, people would not be able to shop at that store and the whole community will get affected because of the unfit workers at stores. This can be seen in any other company that rely on their workers to sell their products. I am sure that you would not want to leave the store to begin working at another store getting paid the minimum wage. It all comes down for the workers to take responsibility of their job so the whole community where we shop our groceries benefits from the services provided.
Sincerely,
Unanimous Employee
