Second Cup Barista at The Ottawa Hospital
Pros
Great customers and coworkers. There are periods of fast paced, busy work mixed in with slow, relaxed time periods. The customers are almost all regulars since the location is in a hospital. Customers are mainly all friendly and chatty. Plenty of break time. Unionized. Employees often became acquainted with other employees of The Ottawa Hospital which was excellent. The food and beverages are very tasty. Since this job is unionized, the pay is above minimum wage.
Cons
Management was unorganized and rude. They did not trust employees and were obvious about it. Overall, management lowered employee esteem and morale. They would threaten to not give you days off you requested if you did not work overtime. They did not respect seniority regarding hours that were assigned to employees. They would talk about former amployees to current employees in bad ways and even "gossip" about current employees to other current employees. Sub-par people skills and leadership skills. Schedule changes occured often as well as changes within 48 hours which is allowed in the collective agreement but extremely difficult to keep up with. There was limited training upon being hired and mandatory training courses were ignored. Training on how to use the cash was extremely limited but management expected you to be able to fluently use the system and know how to count cash and fill out the respective forms without ever properly explaining the system they used. Management had, at one point, prevented me from communicating with my union representative who was conatcted because members of management could not answer questions about the collective agreement. This specific Second Cup itself is owned by Compass Group Canada and they are responsible for management.
