Pros
Very structured, incredibly thorough training program, mostly friendly staff and management. My location was very busy, and they are also backed by a huge corporation so there's job security.
Cons
I responded to a Bartender job posting on Craigslist, was told to come in and interview. After sitting down with the manager I was informed they do not hire bartenders outright, and they offered me a server position. Despite having a lot of bar experience, I was in a bad situation and needed steady work so I accepted their offer. Little did I know that this was going to be the most frustrating server positions I've ever worked. First off, training takes a long time. I completed their program in about two weeks. There are tests every day and "spiels" where you're required to recite your guest interaction speech to about 6 different people (management, trainers, bartenders, other servers, etc. Thorough training is great but it was pretty excessive. I'll add though, through my entire training experience, not once was I given the chance to try the food. I actually spent my entire time working there not knowing what any of the food even tasted like and lying to my guests about how entrees were. On that note - you actually have to pay for your employee discount. They take money out of your check every month for the right to use it. Despicable. They managed to spoil one of the few tiny benefits you get in the restaurant industry. After completing training I was a certified "C-wait" which is the lowest ranked position in their server hierarchy. This meant that I was the grunt - I was given the worst sections in the restaurant (either right next to the front door or right next to the kitchen) and smaller ones to boot (often only two tables), as well as the worst sidework (most labor intensive janitorial stuff). Makes sense, everyone's gotta start somewhere... ...but I remained a C-wait for two months, and another employee had told me she had been a C-wait for six months! This gets aggravating very quickly, especially with the two-table sections. In fact, on multiple occasions they would use one of my tables to join into a bigger table for another server leaving me with one - and after expressing why this was problematic for me financially to management, I was just told to "deal with it". So what do you do in your downtime when it's a busy Saturday night and you're limited to one table to serve? You run food. You bus other servers' tables. You help make salads, desserts, and drinks. You bust your butt for no extra compensation in the hopes that you'll look good when they redo the rankings. I did all this happily and dutifully for two full months and when the rankings were updated, I got skimmed over. I was disappointed but I kept working. I wasn't making good money. Every shift was BRUTALLY exhausting. It was getting harder and harder to come to work every day. Finally I hit a breaking point when my car was having issues and I called the restaurant to tell them I couldn't make it, and the manager just said "Take a taxi. We need you here." So I quit on the spot.
