Pros
Easy to be hired Upper Management is very professional 3 weeks paid vacation Good pay Gives you a ton of business experience
Cons
As someone considering this position, here's what you can expect: After a few brief, casual interviews they'll ask you to get your feet wet in a restaurant so you can "get a feel for the job to see if you like it" but really they're seeing if you're a team player and not lazy. THIS IS NOT A JOB FOR THE LAZY! You'll basically be shadowing a salesperson and washing dishes! You don't get paid for this as you're not officially hired yet. They may ask you to do this twice. I've seen a few potential managers' journey end here. Again, THIS IS NOT A JOB FOR THE LAZY! A few days to a week later they'll call you back, you'll meet the AVP in a restaurant and he/she'll offer you a salary. Mind you, this salary will be used to determine an hourly rate based on a minimum 55 hours/week. You'll also receive your training manuals and sign paperwork. A week or so later you'll start at your training unit, working directly under a Unit Manager. You'll probably start training as a Saleperson/Door Corps the first few days and then progress to the grill. You'll work approximately 10-12 hours a day cooking, cleaning, and basically doing whatever the associates don't want to do. After about the first week, you'll permanently dedicate most of your time to learning how to cook. This involves learning the marking system (placing condiments strategically on a plate to represent what order was called in). Cooks never see tickets, they know what to cook by what they "marked" on the plate. Learning this can take a matter of weeks to even months for some people. While you're learning this system and implementing it while cooking, some salespeople (who have called the order, telling you how to mark the plates) will be helpful and understanding while others may act as if you just ruined their day for inconveniencing them by forcing them to help you mark the plate. After about a week of burnt food, angry salespeople, and frustration with the marking system... things will begin to click and you'll, perhaps, hate cooking a little less! SIDE NOTE: If you can't learn to cook FAST, you'll always hate cooking... because the salespeople will always be pissed and you'll always be backed up with orders! Once you start on the grill, you'll be a cook from 7-2 and from 2-5ish you'll work in your Management Trainee book (which must be COMPLETELY filled out) and help your manager with things. As a trainee, some weeks (because of where your off days fall and when payroll closes) you'll only have 4 scheduled days to get your mandatory 55 hours. This equates to almost 14 hour days of very busy, hardly any breaks at all, work! It's doable but certainly not for the lazy. After you pass WHU in Atlanta, you'll be used as a relief manager for the stores in your area. You'll get your first taste of having to deal with call outs and what it's like to have a little more responsibility as the manager. After a month or longer, possibly much sooner, you'll get your own store. From here, it can either be great or it can be terrible for you. If you have decent employees who aren't lazy and who show up on time (if at all) the job is easy once you get the hang of it. If your employees are lazy, expect to babysit them all day, every day and repeatedly remind them of what they're supposed to do until you're blue in the face. You can expect at least one person, usually multiple people, to call out every day. Not the same person every day, but just one or more of your employees in general. When this happens, it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours on the phone until you cover the shift. Most employees just ignore your calls and texts. Mind you, if you're working at this time, you're also cooking, handling employee problems, customer complaints, doing paperwork, putting your truck order in the commissary, or any other number of things while simultaneously trying to staff the restaurant. If you're at home and someone calls out on third shift, then you now have to stop whatever you were doing to, quite likely, spend at least an hour glued to your phone... just praying that you can convince someone (who won't have OT) to work the shift. Because if you can't find someone to work it, then you have to work it! It doesn't matter if you have to work in the morning or not! The most frustrating thing about the job is definitely staffing! This is because it's almost impossible to be fired from WH and the employees know this. Even if you do fire them, your upline can simply hire them back. Due to the 24/7 nature of the business, its saturation in the market, and the rate of call outs, it requires quite a few employees to adequately run the business. This is why management is hesitant to fire people. Other than the call outs, you can expect to deal with a lot of complaining from your employees. It's been this way at every store I've ever worked. Employees at WH can't seem to get along and you are the arbiter of all their disagreements. Even if you go out of your way not to show favoritism, you'll still routinely be accused of treating this or that employee differently than whichever employee is complaining to you at the moment. One thing you have to keep in mind... most WH associates aren't exactly beacons of professionalism. WH is the brunt of many memes and youtube videos for a reason! Many of the associates are drug addicts, have extremely unstable home lives, and/or legal problems. Don't be surprised if you find out your cook didn't show up because he was in jail. I saw it happen at multiple stores in my area alone in the short time i was with the company. At WH, your pay, as well as that of your superiors, is directly tied to the performance of your restaurant. For this reason, if you're not hitting the right "numbers" a degree of pressure will be put on you to get your restaurant in shape. This can take the form of extra paperwork, extra hours spent at your unit to keep an eye on things, extra nightly shift changes, and the demand that you micro-manage your employees even more than you already do. This pressure can become quite uncomfortable over time when your unit isn't performing. Every day you report certain business analytics to your superiors. A few days of bad numbers... expect a phone call and to give an explanation as to what you're going to do to fix it. A few weeks/month of bad numbers... expect to be told what you are going to do about it and to show daily proof (pictures) you actually followed through with the instructions. Bad numbers are usually caused by employee theft. Conclusion If you're single, have a good work ethic, and can learn to handle the continuous, unexpected stresses associated with running a 24/7 restaurant, then this job may be right for you. The good days are really good but the bad days are really bad... you never know what type of day you're walking into. If you have a family the hours can take a toll on your relationship. This is because you never really know when someone is going to call out and you're going to have to spend an hour or three on the phone or possibly go in for at least a few hours. This uncertainty can ruin plans and frustrate spouses. However, it is a great company to work for, if you apply yourself you can move up quickly, and upper management is nothing but professional. Overall, I'm very thankful for the opportunity.
