-Impossible to have work/life balance. I usually worked at either 5am or 2pm but that varied a lot. I worked most nights, weekends and all major holidays. There is no bonus for working Christmas, Mother's Day, etc. There isn't really set breaks, you just kind of grab food when you can. Shifts are usually longer than 8 hours. 10-12 is common. I even worked 18 hours once. Around the holidays, I've been scheduled 7 days a week. They try to balance that out by giving you additional days off, but it never truly balances. Our work days are just too long.
-Not enough staff. They don't pay the setup team members enough money, so we were never fully staffed. This meant I always stayed really late doing setups. Theoretically I didn't have to stay until all setup was completed, but if anything was wrong I would be blamed. And there were always things that needed to be corrected.
-Company Culture. I was warned about this before I started, and I definitely found it lacking. A lot of departments resented each other. People in leadership roles didn't seem to actually have leadership training. My director said "Good job!" a lot to our department, but that wasn't the case with all directors. I've witnessed one director make disparaging comments about another manager during a manager meeting he wasn't in attendance at. And she was on the main leadership board.
-Late nights. Late nights are expected in the food & bev industry, but cleaning up weddings/events at 2am with full flips for the next morning with not enough setup team members - that's a special kind of hell. And for whatever crazy reason they never kept a dishwasher on at night so we would fill up the entire dishroom and often had to wash more glasses and plates to setup the next day. Most people get cranky and don't want to do everything they are supposed to and then you have to be bad cop or just give up, let them go and do the rest yourself.
