Pros
While I am rating this job as a 1-star, there were a couple of good things, but the cons heavily outweigh these pros. So, I do want to be fair and completely transparent by mentioning everything, good and bad. First of all, I loved the people who worked for me as their Unit Manager, which is the industry equivalent to a general manager of a single store. I cared about them and they cared about me. During training I worked at multiple stores and I witnessed that from from each store. Show that you genuinely care about them and they will care about you. I also loved my customers, especially the regulars; as they become part of your every day life. You work 6 days on and 1 day off. So your day off is not the same every week. You get 3, 10 day vacations a year. Fair warning about that though. They make you take those 10 days all at once. There’s no using one day here and another day there. So be prepared for that. I was an outside hire, but they do like to promote from within when people are qualified and interested. The highest level of management are visible, and if you work there long enough, you will probably meet the CEO. I thought that was pretty neat, and I’ve only ever experienced that in one other company I worked for in the past.
Cons
Now onto the cons. You work each and every holiday. You will never have one off. If you call off, you will most likely not have a job afterwards. In fairness, they warn you about that when you’re getting hired. You work 6 days a week, 6am to 2pm (don’t always expect to get out on time though). What they don’t tell you is that twice a week, you are expected to come in on the evening shift and count the money in the unit. This basically makes two of your evenings completely ruined and you cannot make plans on these days after work. So your already strained work-life balance is even more strained due to this. This is something they do not warn you about ahead of time. Another thing they don’t tell you about. There will be “bonding” events with your fellow managers in the districts. This would be fine on an irregular basis, but they happen often enough to be disruptive to your life. They were mandatory to attend, even on your day off. So that’s another evening or day off you have to devote to this company instead of yourself or your family. Now onto management. As I said in the title, you don’t quit your job, you quit your managers. My district manager was great. He was my direct boss and oversaw multiple stores. His supervisors, the division manager, is the level of management where I saw the most problems. Having seen multiple division managers, the behavior was the same with all of them. That’s where they start caring about profit more than people. One example is where I discovered that the division manager did something to my store in order to fix a problem that we had been having. When I came in the next day, I saw the patchwork job and thought that it was a dangerous fix that could possibly bring harm to people. It was a fix that was very visible to the customers who also brought up concerns to me. I gave the benefit of the doubt to the division manager who made the fix, as I figured he simply made the fix in good faith and was ignorant to the danger, as well as the legal implications. When I brought up the concern to him, I was told “I’ve done it before, and it’s only illegal if you get caught”. I told them that I was uncomfortable being put in this situation. I was informed that they didn’t care, as the proper fix was too expensive. I did end up going to the legal authorities who did agree with me. They told me if they had discovered the issue themselves, that they would have shut the store down and taken legal action. But since I was the one who brought it to their attention and they hadn’t discovered it themselves on a random audit, that they would allow a short grace period to get the proper fix done. So, Waffle House magically found the money to get it fixed. After this, I was treated extremely poorly. I was told that I was directly responsible for my unit being over budget due to the fix, and that I should have kept my mouth shut and waited for the next fiscal year when it would not have affected the district as much. I did end up talking to the district manager’s boss at one point. He talked to me for over an hour and seemed to genuinely care and actually said they agreed with me. The problem was, nothing was done about the inherent issue and I was still treated poorly by the division manager. Lastly, I ended up going to the state labor department, specifically the whistleblower department. They agreed with my actions and told me to document absolutely everything, and that if any retaliatory actions happened, that they would take legal action against the company on my behalf. It was only after I informed the company that I did this that the poor treatment stopped. Thankfully, no legal action ever needed to be taken as I left the company shortly after and I didn’t need to find out. I may sound like a disgruntled ex-employee, which is why I wanted to address the good things in detail as well. Waffle House’s mission and core values are great, but when the highest level of management do not project those values, it ruins the experience for everyone else, and you will not keep a good employee. I was dedicated to this company, my staff, and my customers. But Waffle House was not dedicated to me, and in the end, I left because of that.