Month: September 2025

LinkedIn is an echo chamber for entitled people playing games, expecting to be respected while corporations laugh about them.

To Emma Phillips,

I rarely give space to toxic people on my blog and concentrate on Pret A Manger issues, but you topped the list of toxic people I have come across in my writings on Pret.

Here’s some FREE advertisement for you, princess.

“Freshly made” and with a genuine smile on the house.

First of all, you claim that my blog is 12 years old, are you not good at maths or just a lazy liar?

For other readers, I came across a LinkedIn post by Emma Phillips who is supposed to be some big cheese (or so she thinks) of a PR marketing company, please see screenshots and links, mentioning that she got a freebie from Pret.

She either lived under a rock these past few years or is so naïve, it takes more than a freebie to kiss her awake. But I think it really is that she works in PR, and PR support lies and façades

I did what I always do across platforms, no matter if LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook, X etc. I informed her that staff don’t give freebies because they are fond of you (which at times they are of course) but because they try hard to top up their meagre wage. And before you argue that Pret are paying above minimum wage (a few pennies to lure workers in), they fear manage their staff to work overtime for free and steal wages/hours off their work. Please research wage theft of Pret including settled lawsuits on it, as well as pay delays etc.

I linked to her the brilliant article by Timothy Noah, “The Enforced Happiness of Pret A Manger” about the emotional labour Pret force on staff. And of course princes Emma here was so upset, she launched at me, trying to justify her stupidity and naïvety about a big corporation’s façade. The joke’s on you sweetheart.

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Giving a freebie can get a staff the £100 reward. It used to be up to £200 after I gave OPs manager Sannuka Nevala ideas when she asked me, for which she never reimburse me after promising, and Pret took those ideas also without paying me, of course.

And informing people that staff mainly care about the £100 instead of being fond of the customer makes customers like Emma Phillips upset, because I basically told her that she isn’t that attractive or “kind” to have gotten the freebie.

People like Emma Phillips love to talk about kindness and frontline support, while being a selfish sucker for freebies and fake smiles to make her tummy fuzzy. She’s the kind of customer staff would laugh about once she leaves the store.

And of course, telling her about the cash incentive to smile and give freebies p!ssed her off, because she is so insecure that she developed it into arrogance and entitlement. She claims to be working for “frontline” workers, and then she blocked me after I wrote about the mental health issues of staff.

And as I can’t write to her because she blocked me, I write on my blog and make FREE advertisement for her work. I’m sure the reader will flock to her work now. 😉

She claims to not have read my blog in detail, but my statistics are through the roof. Liars be liars.

I will not put all the screenshots here because I’m tired of making a point.

But this being public, she wrote very arrogantly and careless about low-wage staff.

Why?

Only she knows. But from experience, people like her are entitled and never had a lack in their life. Emma Phillips sucks up to Pret because that is the only thing she knows how to do. She is not a trail blazer or an inventor or a courageous activist of any kind. She copies and pastes what people on LinkedIn do.

People on LinkedIn pretend “kindness” and “frontline” support while being the complete opposite (like Pret, mind you 😉 ).

I am reminded of Charles Bukowski’s poem “The Genius of the Crowd”, which I used for my slide after I chased Pret RE-co-founder Julian Metcalfe off Twitter. Never mind that he is in Jeffrey Epstein’s address book. But do your own homework.

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Maybe Emma Phillips can suck up to him as well. She certainly sucks while pretending to stand up for women and frontline workers.

As she read the front page of my blog, she has seen my trauma and bereavement, but like a faithful Pret bootlicker tried to mock me, even stating a random number of 12 years of my blog.

12 years ago my brother was alive. Maybe next time before you ignore my story, please think twice before trying to laugh about my bereavement, trauma, disability etc.

People like her got into her position the only way she got there … Figure out how.

Be assured Emma, no staff will spill the coffee beans about being “unhappy” in Pret, because they are fear managed and always anticipate the “misery” shopper. You can close your eyes about the 2 customer deaths and multiple injuries that Pret ignored until it got public, or the ASA banning Pret to advertise their food as “natural”, or the £800,000 fine after ignoring yet again safety issues when a staff got trapped inside a walk-in freezer for close to 3 hours (not 2.5 hours, but longer than that), or the £500+ million debt after JAB Holdings pumped in £200+ million (down from £700+ million debt) to RAISE the value again as Pret lost a 3rd of their value making JAB consider IPO or selling Pret … etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. ………..

You demand low-wage workers to smile; well, you blocked me, THAT’S how much you are willing to smile and be “kind” you hypocrite!

And this is all I want to share with this toxic woman who claims to be for women and frontline workers. I do not want to continue to “throw pearls before swine” as the saying goes.

I responded to her 2 comments to me with a sound bite of Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin saying he does NOT demand his staff to smile, from a Desert Island Discs interview with Kirsty Young:

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And further linked to her my favourite ex staff review about the mental health problems staff suffer in Pret. And then she blocked me in her kindness.

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Loose Women presenter Nadia Sawalha’s stern words to Pret after Pret made “temporary” wage cuts permanent. And to answer her question if the executives also took a cut, nopes. of course not. CEO wage increases year-on-year plus bonus raised to over £5 million now, not to mention the £50 million the government gave to Pret during the panemic.

Please note, Nadia made a mistake here saying that Pret cut from the £8.91, but Pret cut down TO £8.91, the national minimum-wage at the time (2021). She just made a numbers mistake. Pret usually pay some pennies above minimum wage to appear generous while then forcing staff to work overtime for free, make them do iPad “training” on their breaks etc. But during the pandemic Pret cut down TO the minimum wage while the CEO Pano Christou and shareholders cashed in of course.

Also, Nadia mentioning that she hears how much people “love to work at Pret” and how fast they work. No, they are indoctrinated to “love” working at Pret and have the 60 seconds rule to serve customers and clear tables. If ONE staff doesn’t smile, or takes more than 1 minute, NO-ONE in the shop gets their weekly bonus. That staff then is penalised, reprimanded by the manager and gets the silent treatment for a week. More on the 60 seconds rule of excerpts from Pret’s strict and micromanaging weekly mystery shopper reports. Nadia at the time of her video just didn’t know that until I informed her. I call Pret’s mystery shopper requirements “misery” shopper for a reason.

Nadia was the ONLY celebrity to speak out. And that via Instagram where she has half a million followers. It made an impact. Thank you again, ma’am. ❤

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And before you say that Pret are so generous, the former CEO Clive Schlee announced £1000 to all staff in 2018. Do your homework! He made that announcement in the night he and Pret learnt about my blog here. It was his typical panic-move to try and counter my experiences with this toxic company.

The Day Clive Schlee had a Bright “Idee”

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Screenshots:

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My response seen in the screenshot aren’t visible anymore because she blocked me. So, I put them here.

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Here’s my favourite part of Emma’s response:

I do not know nor care who “people like her” are, but I love how she outed herself to NOT care about hospitality workers.

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One of my favourite articles on emotional labour, the labour that Emma loves so much because “after all” it’s what’s expected of low-wage hospitality staff:

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So, Emma Phillips, here’s my advertisement for your work on the house. People like you need it. Desperately.

Go and “power” frontline workers you hypocrite little people like you.

P,S. like your sorry mathematics, were you meant to write “empower”?

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And here’s some more food poisoning on the house, despite customer deaths and injuries:

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I worked at Pret A Manger and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee. Schlee has been appointed CEO of itsu in 2024 by Julian Metcalfe who gave him the CEO spot at Pret many years ago.
I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit “My Ordeal with Pret A Manger”. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.
An incomplete list on what other Pret staff say about Pret’s bullying environment: Caught in the Act Bullying at Pret and What shop MANAGERS & HQ staff say about Pret incl. CEO Pano Christou.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote two articles in the Scottish Left Review as well as mentioned by the BBC.

Please also see the MEDIA page for more on my work with the press.

NEW LinkTree

PayPal.Me

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Thank you for reading/listening.

©2017 – Present: expret.org

Interview:

(Please be aware that the player shows 0:00 but just press play)

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Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.
©2017 – Present: expret.org unless otherwise stated. All Rights reserved. Disclaimer.

I wrote a few posts about Pret’s debt (over £700 million) as well as Pret’s owners JAB Holdings having written off a third of their value. JAB injected over £200 million to lower the debt, not for the sake of lowering debt, but to raise their value again.

Private Equity WANT debt on the company. But when the company loses value, they’re in a pickle. (More about this below).

Pret even got RE-co-founder Sinclair Beecham back to help CEO Pano Christou, despite Christou being in Pret for over 20 years having started as assistant manager.

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Link

From the Financial Times:

“The accounts for the year ended January 2 2025 also show JAB has injected a further £250mn into the company, which was used partly to repay debt as well as to increase the group’s cash on hand and unused borrowing facilities to about £100mn.”

So, Pret are down to plus/minus £500 million debt.

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In my simple language, and forgive me for such comparison, but I call Private Equity firms “pimps”. They buy companies, suck the life-blood out of them, make huge returns and then sell the company to a new Private Equity pimp to squeeze some more.

But with Pret, JAB Holdings might have bitten out more than they can chew! 😀

Someone on Twitter regarding Pret’s debt, asked how a company can be allowed to accumulate so much debt.

First of all, several things:

1. Pret had debt of £700 million (or now a £500 million +/-, after JAB injected a further £200+ million).
   
2. Pret lost a third of their value (or JAB over-estimated Pret’s value in 2018 😉 ). The debt and the loss of a third are two different things.
   
3. It is very typical private equity (PE) to dump debt on the company they buy to maximise the largest return of their investment. (More below)
   
4. JAB are considering either selling Pret or getting investors (IPO). My bet is they FIRST get investors as JAB lost a third of their investment, and THEN sell Pret to a new p!mp.

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Also worth mentioning that JAB entered the pet market and aggressively buy out veterinarian clinics and pet insurance to the detriment of pet welfare and pet owners’ pockets. The pet market is much more lucrative, especially since the pandemic where many people got pets during lockdowns. While the coffee market struggles due to high costs and repeated boycotts, the pet market is more safe for investment. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren is coming after JAB for that reason.

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I found a few good videos that explain in just a few minutes how PE works and why PE love to suffocate companies with debt.

But don’t let Pret off the hook, they CHOSE to sell out to PE. Pret first flirted with sales by giving McDonald’s a 33% non-executive stake to get their feet into the U.S. market. This happened under Sinclair Beecham and Julian Metcalfe, the RE-co-founders of Pret. Once in, they divorced their marriage of convenience.

Latest when Pret hooked up with McDonald’s should alarm bells have rung and a huge hint that Pret will hook up with anyone to get bigger as well as more quick cash.

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Why companies sell out to PE is obvious, the CEOs get juicy pay-outs and bonuses.

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Link (Pano Christou’s bonus and salary is now higher, the above article is from 2022)

Pret’s original founder was the late Jeffrey Hyman who opened the first shop in Hamstead in 1983. It didn’t go well and in 1986 Sinclair Beecham and Julian Metcalfe bought the name, rights, concept etc. and RE-founded Pret, but they refuse to mention and honour Hyman.

A tweet exchange between me and a friend of Hyman:

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Since Hyman now cannot be deleted off Wikipedia anymore as the editor has an eye on it, Pret just put “London 1986” on cups and shop fronts to keep brainwashing the public about their supposed original year.

In 2008 Pret then sold out to British PE firm Bridgepoint. Bridgepoint acquired a majority stake in Pret for £345 million and ten years later sold Pret to JAB Holdings for £1.5 billion.

Katchink!!!

I started in Pret in 2008 and from the get go felt it was a complex and overly strict company. People who worked before 2008 told me that since Bridgepoint’s take-over, it has become worse, even though Pret were always micromanaging.

Bridgepoint then sold Pret in 2018 to current majority owners JAB Holdings under Germany’s 2. richest family, the secretive Reimann family with an extensive Nazi slavery past. But that’s a post for another day. Important to note that JAB is based in tax haven Luxembourg and that the heirs have given up German citizenship and taken on Austrian citizenship for tax reasons. I found an amazing documentary on the Reimanns on YouTube a few weeks ago (summer 2025) but by September 2025 the video has been deleted or the account suspended.

Even the best German investigative journalists are biting their teeth out on this family. The few things that are known is that the heirs upon turning 18 years old sign(ed) a kind of non-disclosure agreement to never show their faces or do interviews.

Little fun fact, remember when former Pret CEO Clive Schlee made the announcement on Twitter to be giving all the 12,000 staff £1000 each upon JAB’s take-over? A little over £800 after tax and only for staff who worked at Pret a minimum one year. He made that announcement in the night he found out about my blog. 😀

I write about it here, The Day Clive Schlee had a Bright Idee

(No, “Idee” is NOT a typo 😉 )

Little info on Bridgepoint, Bridgepoint is now the main owner of itsu, Pret RE-co-founder Julian Metcalfe’s company. And Metcalfe made Ex-Pret CEO Clive Schlee CEO of itsu in 2024. Schlee also owns at least 10% of itsu and is also still in the background of Pret, at least the Pret Foundation and is Pret CEO Pano Christou’s mentor.

More on the four executives, Pano Christou CEO of Pret, Sinclair Beecham back in Pret, Metcalfe and Schlee, itsu:

The Arrogance of Pret & itsu Execs

I want to add that not only does PE add debt to maximise returns, but they also lower quality and chop off every- and anywhere to save costs. This shows very obviously in Pret’s loss of quality, switching to cheaper ingredients, cutting corners everywhere they can, which all results in further food poisoning and hygiene issues. More on this below.

A few videos that I find easy for a 5 year old to understand how PE works, starting with what “Goodwill Impairment” is, and over to:

Why do Private Equity Firms put debt on an Acquisition?

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Link to same account adding a few things.

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The following short explanation is super important to make sense on what’s happening to Pret:

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Private Equity explained

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And here is just PART of why Pret selling out to PE keeps hurting customers. Ongoing food poisoning reports, despite customer deaths and injuries. Customers also in other countries still end up in hospital. These are NOT updated, but complaints continue. These are taken from the website IWasPoisoned .com only, I didn’t even include Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram etc. complaints. IWasPoisoned is being updated constantly as customers leave reports there.

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I worked at Pret A Manger and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee. Schlee has been appointed CEO of itsu in 2024 by Julian Metcalfe who gave him the CEO spot at Pret many years ago.
I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit “My Ordeal with Pret A Manger”. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.
An incomplete list on what other Pret staff say about Pret’s bullying environment: Caught in the Act Bullying at Pret and What shop MANAGERS & HQ staff say about Pret incl. CEO Pano Christou.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote two articles in the Scottish Left Review as well as mentioned by the BBC.

Please also see the MEDIA page for more on my work with the press.

NEW LinkTree

PayPal.Me

.

Thank you for reading/listening.

©2017 – Present: expret.org

Interview:

(Please be aware that the player shows 0:00 but just press play)

.

.

Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.
©2017 – Present: expret.org unless otherwise stated. All Rights reserved. Disclaimer.

… or were over-valued in 2018.

Via podcast

Opens in new window.

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/expretdotorg/episodes/Pret-A-Manger-LOST-Value-e380rjl

I also forgot to mention in above podcast episode where I share that when Pret make a big announcement, especially PR announcement, to have the antennas up, I forgot to mention the £1000 announcement former CEO Clive Schlee made in 2018 upon the purchase from JAB. He made the announcement in the night he learnt about my blog. 😀

I write about it below with evidence, that him and Pret learning about my blog led to him quickly making the £1000 announcement for the press to appear generous and kind in the public. This was to serve as a counter to my blog. But in the long run it didn’t work!

I called the post:

The Day Clive Schlee had a Bright Idee
(Idee is NOT a typo 😉 )

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Link

Link

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I worked at Pret A Manger and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee. Schlee has been appointed CEO of itsu in 2024 by Julian Metcalfe who gave him the CEO spot at Pret many years ago.
I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit “My Ordeal with Pret A Manger”. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.
An incomplete list on what other Pret staff say about Pret’s bullying environment: Caught in the Act Bullying at Pret and What shop MANAGERS & HQ staff say about Pret incl. CEO Pano Christou.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote two articles in the Scottish Left Review as well as mentioned by the BBC.

Please also see the MEDIA page for more on my work with the press.

NEW LinkTree

PayPal.Me

.

Thank you for reading/listening.

©2017 – Present: expret.org

Interview:

(Please be aware that the player shows 0:00 but just press play)

.

.

Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.
©2017 – Present: expret.org unless otherwise stated. All Rights reserved. Disclaimer.