Friday, March 18, 2005

Wagamama decline to offer my mcjob

Unfortunately I was away when the refusal call came. For some reason I was surprised they could afford to turn me down even though I managed to create salads that are siimultaneously too big and too small, they had surprisingly found little else to find fault with me. According to the message left on my answering service there was another candidate they had not told me about who they felt was better - presumably he just the right size salad!

I can't understand how they can refuse me, after all I am charming, witty, urbane aswell as being capable of doing a semi-skilled job for almost nothing, infact literally for nothing during the 10 hour "training" ordeal.

I can't take no for an answer so after licking my wounds I decide to challenge their decision. When I call and ask for Bill I discover he has moved on. I hope he has been sacked but suspect he has gone off to humiliate the next bunch of aprentices wherever they open next. In any case I am lucky as his replacement sounds like he has the opposite temprament. Unfortunately he want me to go through another "training day" because they have "lost my file".

Back to square one.

11 Comments:

Blogger C said...

Please can you give examples of how wagamama is being run by accountants, fiddling tips and exploiting employment law?
Lottie

2:53 PM GMT  
Blogger Tom Coady said...

Can you please give me an example of where I mention accountants? I don't deny it, I just can't find it on this page or elsewhere on the blog.

Regarding the tips & employment law, I believe this is already explained in its context, but feel free to ask more.

3:00 PM GMT  
Blogger C said...

Sure, sorry Tom I realise that you said this quite a long time ago now! You mentioned it in your reply to another post on the blog for Sunday, March 20, 2005.

Can you tell me what the tips arrangements are for Wagamama? I know they're terrible for several other chain restaurants.

As for employment law, were there any things in particular that management did that was unethical?

thanks for replying so quickly!

3:06 PM GMT  
Blogger Tom Coady said...

OK no worries - as you say this all goes back a while and my memory is not that great so I forget the details about how the "tronc" worked. Apparently the overall tip were invariably less than 10% which I guess may well be true, but it was not divided equally between staff.

I just looked at my pay-slips and see I got about £25 over 220 hours in tip share - that has to be wrong by any calculation.

I also notice I was charged for my uniform and this was not refunded.

Unethical is the word as the can and do legally provide only 20 minutes break in an 8 hour shift.

3:29 PM GMT  
Blogger C said...

wow! i have just finished reading your letters to wagamama... how did the saga end? what are you doing now?

3:56 PM GMT  
Blogger Tom Coady said...

Gosh - so happy you took the time to look at it. I have a very thick binder of correspondence with wagamama that I could scan in, so the blog only covers a small percentage of it all.

I'm now a web-tart.co.uk so I work for myself. It doesn't pay specially well but its more than wagamama and I love the work. The happy ending is that I hope I will never fail to be grateful that I no longer work there and that almost anything in life is a huge improvement on that nightmare.

The only reason I stayed there so long was to annoy them with my presence and to return the pain by forcing them to go through the required dismissal procedures.

I think the final disciplinary was because they gave me the wrong payslip by mistake and when I returned it they accused me of taking it without permission and failing to return it sooner or something!

4:03 PM GMT  
Blogger C said...

thanks for the quick replies Tom. It was eye-opening to read your blog.
Do you know if wagamama changed anything, as a result of your letters?

4:13 PM GMT  
Blogger Tom Coady said...

Just added http://wagarama.blogspot.com/2009/03/postscript.html

4:15 PM GMT  
Blogger Tom Coady said...

OK no worries, thanks for your interest. I really doubt they would make any changes, as long as they know they can get away with paying close to minimum wages not to mention their vicious management style. I can't recognise anyone from my time working there now, so I guess it costs them a bit in training - maybe that's where the tip money goes?

May I ask why you took an interest? I won't publish your answer if you prefer.

4:22 PM GMT  
Blogger C said...

Hi Tom

You inspired some pgraduate research on this stuf... but i have a few questions i hope you wouldn't mind answering:

what made you take the job in the first place?
at what point did you start blogging about your experiences? from day 1?

thanks xx

3:29 PM GMT  
Blogger Tom Coady said...

Good question! It was partly greed and a curiosity about how the food was prepared, and partly a research exercise as I had just done a course in journalism and wanted to get some material to write about macjobs in the tradition on Ms Toynbee, so I think the blog was made at the start.

3:32 PM GMT  

Post a Comment

<< Home