Flying chairs and customer brawls could also be commonplace for Waffle House staff, but meal breaks apparently should not.
Employees on the Southern dine-in chain see a sizeable chunk of change faraway from their paychecks each week for food consumed — even in the event that they didn’t eat it, reported The Messenger.
Atlanta-based cook Gerald Green, who claimed he hardly eats in-house, told the outlet that the restaurant has docked him $39 for untouched food within the last three weeks — and “there’s no strategy to opt out.”
Now, “fed up” staff are rallying in picket lines, and 13,000 signed petitions to push Waffle House to carry the charge.
They’re also on the lookout for other guarantees regarding higher wages and higher safety protocols amid vicious customer brawls on the eatery which were widely reported in recent times.
Many Waffle House employees don’t eat their price of the meal charge, the employees say.Union of Southern Service Employees
“Waffle House staff from across the South are fed up,” reads the petition from the Union of Southern Service Employees.
“We’re sick and uninterested in making poverty wages, the constant threat of in-store violence, and mandatory meal deductions – whether we eat a meal or not while on a shift.”
One South Carolina server finds the meal policy especially unfair since she hardly has a moment to bask in their menu items.
“I’m often the one server working second shift, so I’m running around and don’t have time to eat a meal,” said worker Summer Schoolmeester-Cochran.
“But Waffle House still makes me pay for it.”
She’s not alone, says Georgia-based employee Cindy Smith.
“Eighty-five to 95 percent of us don’t even eat the Waffle House food,” she told Today.com. “We’re still having to pay for it.”
The mandatory charge has also increased of late and staff weren’t notified, Smith claimed.
Today @WaffleHouse staff delivered THIRTEEN THOUSAND petitions to corporate headquarters in Atlanta. Our demands are clear:
✅ Minimum wage of $25/hr for ALL staff
🔒 24/7 security in all restaurants
❌ End to mandatory meal deductions
1/3 pic.twitter.com/G6ZJhPi49x
— Union of Southern Service Employees (@RaiseUptheSouth) November 8, 2023
“The meal deductions have at all times been taken out, however it was only, like, $1.50 per shift. Then they decided to start out bumping it up. Each day that you just work now, it’s $3.75 that comes out of your check. That’s greater than I make an hour.”
The Post reached out to Waffle House for comment.
Smith also said the charge makes it harder for her to afford the food she actually eats and that, paired with a scarcity of security, has her fuming.
“At one point, probably 2011, I used to be robbed at gunpoint,” she said. “Waffle House didn’t reach out, and I needed to work my entire shift.”
Waffle House staff protested a meal deduction policy and issues of safety on the chain.Union of Southern Service Employees
When Smith joined the recent rally outside Waffle House’s headquarters within the Atlanta area, she said the bosses dismissed their concerns.
“All of us stood on the market. We were very quiet. We weren’t rude. We weren’t disrespectful,” she told “Today.”
“We only sent three people in to deliver 13,000 signed petitions for them to inform us if we didn’t get off the property, they were going to call the police, they usually threw all 13,000 petitions within the trash.”
