Pret A Manger Employee Review
Bad Management
It used to be a very good company, but since they started growing it been changing a lot. Poor Management, no opportunities to expand your knowledge. A shame that such a big company is becoming so bad day by day.
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I have worked in different stores in Pret and the company follows high standards from food preparations and employees behaviours. Mostly the teams are very friendly and collaborative. It maybe demanding in busy time and if you do your best you won’t have any complaints. Almost all Managers in Pret are very kind and flexible. They look after the team members and company got good benefits. I loved to work there.
Pros
Kind managers, food allowances
Cons
Might start early if fully flexible as 5 am.
So I understand that in a large chain every manager is different but I will just talk about my own experience. For some background I am a hard worker and have never left a job without a fair reason and sufficient notice.
When you start working at Pret you get placed in the kitchen for 2 weeks. This involves a 5.30am start. You prepare the food in a way that quickly makes you feel like a factory worker. I knew I was doing a good job at keeping to time constraints, keeping up with the team even though I was new yet I recieved NO PRAISE the entire time I was there. The only things I was told by management was negative - things I could improve on. Understandable criticisms but when this is given to you with no positive feedback it quickly felt souless.
There are some good benefits - paid breaks, food on shift etc but I felt the stress of the kitchen work and a 5.30 start meant I should have been paid above a basic wage when there are many easier, less stressful retail jobs for the same wage.
Another problem was that all of the staff are Spanish. I do not mean to sound racist at all, they were lovely, but they would all speak in Spanish during shift which is understandable but felt isolating to be the only non-Spanish speaker and in terms of training there were language barrier issues where the members of staff training me didn't always know the terminology or how to explain things in English
I terminated my contract during the probation period because I found the manager to be a bully. I was then owed some money by cheque - when I went in to collect this she didn't - more...
- Bad Management