PizzaExpress Reviews

The company appears to hate the staff that work in the restaurants. Complaints going beyond the restaraunt manager (including those about the RM) are met with character assassinations of the complainee, studiously ignored, or "forgotten about", and when they are acted on it is done in a lackluster manner and grudgingly. 16 people walked from our branch in the space of two months due to issues of bullying by a manager, and the response from higher up was essentially invisible to those of us that remained. The company seems entirely incapable of hiring managers who are actually good at dealing with people (see above). The admin team coordinating beyond the restaurants seem incompetant at best, and backstabbing and uncaring at worst. Also, the markup PE has on its food is ridiculous, all the customers are being completely taken for a ride, price wise. Bullying seems ingrained into the structure of the company.

Workload is far too high for the rate of pay, particularly if you were understaffed which we regularly were. Expected to take orders, remember all 10 steps of service, run food, make drinks at the bar, make teas/coffees, and make desserts for your sections, and complete daily cleaning duties. All of this for £5.85 an hour. Spent the entire shift being stressed due to this as there was so much to do. If you have a large table that all order desserts/coffees you can be away making those for 10/15 minutes while no one else is looking after other customers in your section. Lacked any real training. Was shown how to make coffees once and then was expected to do it. My training was just forgotten about and I felt pushed to the side. This meant I was a "Trainee Waiter" for NINE MONTHS before anyone bothered to give me the tests in order to become a waiter. During these 9 months I had to give away all of my card tips, trainee waiters don't get them. Had asked for 10/12 hours a week as I am at university, was regularly given 20+ hours a week which put extra stress on my studies that I didn't need. Spoke to manager about this and it still did not change - part of the reason I left. Closing shifts are a bit rubbish, they have you down for finishing half an hour after the restaurant closes but that's quite unrealistic, very rarely get away on time and can't leave until you have done all the closing down tasks. Eg restocking the bar, cleaning coffee machine, cleaning dessert fridges, defrosting desserts for the next day, dating everything etc. Made to feel like you're not good enough if you don't get a near perfect score on Mystery Guest. I got 87% when I had only been there 2/3 months and apparently that was terrible and it was all my fault our restaurant lost out because I didn't get over 90%. (Perhaps give better training in that case) Manager was absolutely horrible, belittled you behind your back to other staff and made you feel like you were rubbish at your job. Didn't value you if you stayed extra to help, was fine for him to go against brand standards but not anybody else. If a customer left without paying apparently that was the waiters fault and he expected you to pay for their meal out your own pocket. Would sometimes only put one waiter on on a busy Friday night - then blamed the waiter when he got a complaint about the service being slow. Eventually made me cry due to the way he spoke to me and this was also partly why I left.