By Mike D.
An account of my experiences working at a Wetherspoons bar over 10 months, 2016-2017
Working in a shitty job is like living life in a time loop. But unlike Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, who eventually realised that the world was his oyster – a world and life that he could bend to his own will, in which he could essentially do anything, like some sort of deity – being over-worked and underpaid in a dead-end job on a zero-hours contract is a special kind of time loop that I wouldn’t wish on anybody. One that is just different enough with each shift or loop iteration, that you could never learn its intricacies. One you could never master or manipulate to your own will. One in which you would always be entirely subject to the ever-changing laws of the pub, its staff, its patrons, its managers, and the corporation.
This loop is so toxic that it begins to manifest in every other aspect of your life; breaking the continuum and line that exists between a job and personal life. There is no personal time now, in fact. There is only time you’re at work and time you’re not at work. You can go see a movie with a friend. But at some point in the flick, your mind is going to wander and you’ll end up thinking about the fact that in a few hours time, you’re gonna have to go back to that hellish loop again.
You could be getting a nice cup of tea ready, about to sit down with that novel you’ve been wanting to read for years, but you’re still thinking about your next loop where Frank the regular is going to be there waiting. As he always is. The loop that lasts too long and comes again so soon. One you’ll go to tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. Forget the things you like. Forget cultivating skills or pursuing interests. There’s no time for that now. Your shift finishes soon – then you get a few hours to eat, sleep, have a few beers, whatever, then it’s back to the loop again for another shift. That’s the reality of zero-hours contracts – it’s not the fear that you won’t receive any contracted hours this week or over the next few days, it’s the fact that each shift you’re given will be completely different from the last in terms of start time and duration. There is no routine. Each irregular shift becomes an exhausting slog that leaves you too tired to plan any other aspect of your life. The days blur together. You live life in limbo.
Benefits Street
After university, I was unemployed for a long time. And when I first got a job at Wetherspoons, I was pretty happy. Having been on the dole for a while and feeling like a burden on my family and society and somewhat of a criminal because of it (probably due to shows like Benefits Street and just the generally-perceived view of being a scrounger), I finally felt like I was a part of society again. I’d have an income I could earn. One that I could feel proud of.
How wrong and stupid and naive I was…knowing nothing about the working world, or how good my parents had had it during their own youth, this was trully, trully bottom-of-the-barrel shit I was stepping into. I think maybe this was in the back of my mind when I started. But the elation of finally finding work – any work – was clouding that little nagging doubt I had. I tried to tell myself I was being pessimistic by thinking that way. That it wouldn’t be that bad, and that if I made the most of it, it could be quite rewarding.
But quite quickly, that little worry I had about the job became the main thing I thought about all day, every day. One that stopped me sleeping. And one that eventually brought me into something like absolute despair. As I realised that no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t going to be able to gain anything positive from working there. That it wasn’t a real job. There was no control I had over it in any way, shape or form. There were no perks or benefits that outweighed the negatives. Nothing. The job existed because there was someone there willing or desperate enough to fill it. Me.
When you first join as an employee at Wetherspoons, you’re made to sit a series of ‘exams’ to say you understand the basics of carrying boxes, not leaving food out, keeping the bar clean, etc. Just general health and safety stuff really. You even watch a video of the CEO, Tim Martin, talking about the franchise, his history, and your time working there. The whole thing is made to feel that you’re part of a team. Part of family with humble beginnings.
But the reality of working there is far from that. You are on your own from day one. Anybody telling themselves otherwise – something I did initially – is fooling themselves. All the videos and ‘training’ are just part of the illusion; that Wetherspoons is a credible, caring corporation with safety and your satisfaction in mind – whether you’re a patron or employee. You come to learn quite quickly that most of that goes out the window when you’re actually working there.
Juggling speed, efficience, health and safety
When an average employee is trying to juggle speed and efficiency with health and safety, one always becomes impossible. And then no matter what, it becomes the fault of the employee for whatever was lacking. It’s set up in this way so that the franchise can never be blamed. It always comes down to the individual.
It doesn’t matter how you dress it up. No matter how many personalised articles they put up in each establishment – displaying the history of the building you’re currently enjoying your battery-farm reared eggs-benedict in; cooked by an overworked chef that got off her previous shift eight hours ago because the new guy was sick today and she needed some extra cash; while you sip on your pint of cheap Fosters; cheap because the barrel was sold to Wetherspoons at a reduced price because it was about to turn and Wetherspoons was the only distributer that was willing to buy and able to sell it before it did.
This is what Wetherspoons really is. A company willing to cut every corner, and every cost to maximise revenue. That it’s nothing more than the McDonald’s of booze. Underneath that facade of being your humble local pub, in reality, it’s nothing more than a faceless corporate chain motivated solely by profit.
Have you been to a Wetherspoons and wondered why that barman is always grumpy? Or why your order is wrong…again? Or why the bacon is overcooked, even though you specifically asked for it to be done otherwise? Or why – for the 3rd time – when you asked for that meal without the beans, it came with? Or why the bar is so crowded and there aren’t enough staff working? Or why your meal isn’t as advertised on the posters outside?
It’s because you get what you pay for – and that extends right through the franchise. From the patrons, to the barmen, to those in head office. As for the poor staff who worked there – we didn’t care about your service, or your complaints. It’s nothing personal. We were just numb too it by then. We had to be, to do our job. Perhaps we cared at one point. But when we realised that the odds were rigged against us, it became harder and harder to do so. You put up a barrier to it. Try to blot everything out. Because no matter how hard you try to please everybody, you won’t be able to. It simply isn’t possible when you work in a Wetherspoons bar. There wasn’t a single person I worked with who enjoyed their job. There will always be someone or something that will ruin your day. And that thing – whatever it is – will occur again. You come to learn that. The truth is, if you work in a poorly paid role, if you are overworked, if you are on a zero-hours contract; you are treated as such by both your employer and patrons. You realise that they don’t really care about you. Your soul will shrivel up. Your inner child will want to weep.
But nobody will see that if you need to work. They will see nothing more than the blank stare and the wooden smile on your face when they reach the bar. To them, it’s a day out with the family, or an evening meal, or a Friday night. To those that work there, who worked there the day before, and the one before that; who will work there tomorrow and the day after; it’s a tiring, depressing Mobius strip. One in which you are on your feet the whole time. One where you are paid minimum wage. One where you cannot get a break unless you work over six hours (in which case you are entitled 15 minutes – over eight hours gets you an hour break…wow!), one where people will get angry if they don’t feel they’re getting the service that Mr Wetherspoons promised them. It’s your fault. Wetherspoons has no part in the terrible service patrons receive from the staff, right? Sure, people will be asked to leave by managers, and assistant managers, and shift managers if they get angry or aggressive. But it doesn’t stop the fact that if you’re a person who works there, you have to be the face of the establishment who receives that barrage day in, day out. Perhaps if the wage or hours reflected this, it wouldn’t be so bad.
It’s not the patrons’ fault for our misery either. Not really. The ones I dealt with – the regulars – as they were known to us, were pretty lost people themselves, I thought. ‘Regular’ was really just a polite corporate term for alcoholic. There were – in some cases – people who turned up at 9am (when we were legally allowed to sell alcohol) and who left around 4pm. Others turned up in the evening and stayed until closing. For some, you came to learn, they did this every single day. Why? A bad marriage? Divorce? A shit job? No job? No family or friends or interest to spend their pension on? Boredom?
Cheap for cheap
Who knows. But the convenience of location in town and the cheapness of the drinks there certainly allowed them that – whether they knew it or not. It attracted that crowd. Cheap for cheap. But that was their choice, right? Tim Martin and Wetherspoons has no part in the choices of the people that came for the drink, or the people that chose to work there at his pubs with their cheap alcohol and long opening hours. It’s not his responsibility what they do with their money or time.
At Wetherspoons you use a fob to clock in. We were told that it was used to properly and fairly pay employees and that our wage would be docked to the minute if we were late. But we were advised against clocking in early – it was too confusing for the franchise, maybe. If you did work a few minutes early, you could be damn sure you weren’t getting paid for it (your shift hadn’t started yet, of course). We had a screen that monitored how long it took the food to reach a table from the time of order. If we managed it within a given time, it might appear in a shared miniscule bonus. But again, the odds were against us, if the place got busy (which it frequently did), and only the minimum number of staff were contracted to work that shift to save on expenses. It was set up in this way so that you worked as hard as you could in the hope that a few extra pounds might come your way at some point.
One lady I worked with – heavily pregnant at the time – was still working to within a few weeks of her due date because of Wetherspoons appalling maternity leave policy. I saw a colleague get his tooth chipped and another get her arm broken by someone when they tried to stop a drunken coke-fuelled brawl. We kept a baseball bat in the office in case things got out of hand. I witnessed a man yell in my face that I shouldn’t take his drink away despite the fact that he was almost paralytic and had fallen asleep in the pub with a lit cigarette in his hand. I heard my manager make racist remarks about Turkish people. I saw colleagues who took cocaine between shifts to maintain some kind of energy and social life in the hours they weren’t working. I was reprimanded for taking a day off after getting the norovirus. I watched a regular have a stroke (and later die, I found out); perhaps from being in a place that enabled his unhealthy daily habit. All in all, despite the lovely signs of great food and great drinks adorning the place, and promises of a family-orientated, caring business, I mostly saw the complete opposite. What I mostly saw was people who felt they had no hope, no purpose, no future, whiling-away their time in a terrible place, trapped there…wondering when the loop was going to end. It didn’t seem to matter which side of the bar they stood on.
Why work there then, you might think? I’d say that working in a Wetherspoons on a zero-hours contract is a fool’s game if it weren’t for the fact that fools still have to eat. Wetherspoons understands why staff turnover is so high for those that don’t get stuck in that loop working there for years. But why would they care? There’s always someone else willing or desperate enough to step into your shoes the moment you step out of them.
April 16, 2018
