I explain in detail about Pret’s micromanaging Mystery Shopper scheme which I call “Misery” Shopper for a reason.
Pret’s micromanaging Mystery Shopper scheme which I plainly call abusive:
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The Wiki link to my blog that was deleted, which I explain in above audio.
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I have run out of space/time on my free podcast and am shopping around which podcast provider is the best value before I purchase.
On the podcast I cover some other Pret issues, like the allergen situation, ongoing labelling problems etc. As I ran out of free space I post the above Mystery Shopper episode here on my blog. For Timothy Noah’s “The Enforced Happiness of Pret A Manger” and other articles on emotional labour, as well as several examples of Mystery Shopper reports, please see my page: The Dangers of Emotional Labour.
Thank you for listening.
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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. 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. 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.
I want to add 2 things, the post underneath the line below I have converted on my Anchor.fm podcast to a voice version. It’s an automated voice, not perfect, but for those who don’t like to read long blog entries. I place the episode here as well.
And the other thing is I want to place my favourite tweet of recently after a customer responded to other customers outcry of Pret making temporary pay-cuts permanent. The below blog post/voice convertion is very important for people to understand Pret’s mentality and why it remains dangerous to eat there.
The Tweet by @betty_de_brazil from 12. August 2021 reads, quote: “A while back, I saw a Pret ad that said its staff were “passionate” about making sandwiches. This kind of bullshit talk always hides ruthless practices in my experience.” End of quote.
Unfortunately reading programs can’t read screenshots of Tweets or YouTube slides. I have to keep that in mind when doing new blog entries, to write out Tweets. I was also once told by a blind person on Twitter that their programs cannot read screenshots. So, below Twitter screenshots are not read by this automated voice conversion. Apologies to all with visual impairment, I’m learning as I go.
This blog post conversion to audio file is close to under 11 minutes long. At this time the French word “manger” isn’t pronounced the French way, but the American/English way of “Jesus in a manger”. For those who love to point out unimportant mistakes, get over it. Thanks.
As this player is just a preview, please click on the title itself within the player to go to the full audio version on Open Spotify:
A few years ago I already dissected an article where Pret’s HR Director Andrea Wareham was interviewed. “Pret’s People Management Secrets” from HR Magazine. In this interview Andrea Wareham shares a lot about the typical Pret PR bla bla. But one sentence stands out to me which is typical Pret, but also dangerous.
Quote: »Pret famously recruits for behaviours, “personality rather than skills” as Wareham puts it, and these, she adds, are “relevant in every market”.«
When I worked at Pret it always astounded me how little many shop Managers knew of the job they were hired to do. Those staff members in lower positions who had more knowledge than some shop Managers due to experience and skill, were exploited and the Manager took credit for it.
It often bothered me how the “wrong” people got promoted and those who knew how to do the job where kept low.
In an unlisted video on YouTube (why unlisted?) new CEO Pano Christou even inadvertently gives away how poor the training in Pret is. He shares how when he did stock take for the first or second time, that he stayed until 4 o’clock the next morning! And that’s exactly how it is in Pret. The training is so poor and even Managers often are clueless that especially new staff have to stay long (unpaid!) hours to figure out how things work! Before I worked at Pret, I worked in many different food places, most of my life I worked in hospitality industry, in wine bars, restaurants, a canteen, a hotel. But never did I have to stay longer hours to figure out how things are done than in Pret! It was the most frustrating thing not being trained and not being given time to train others!
If people are trained and have skills, especially since Pano Christou was a Manager at McDonald’s before he joined Pret as an Assistant Manager, there would be NO NEED to stay until 4 o’clock the next morning to know how to do a stock take and other issues!
Pano should have known the job already, or at least picked it up quicker as he had previous Management experience. Unless he kissed his way up, like so many do. In Pret people also get promoted through the bedroom, and then more than few are incapable to do the job and rely on lower ranked staff to do all the hard work!
Pret is famous for their smiley staff, but since I write about it more extensively since 2018 it has become more common knowledge that this smiley culture is driven by weekly Mystery Shoppers. I wrote a few posts about it and made some YouTube slides as my blog is heavily censored on Facebook and Instagram where it is completely blocked. Even private messages are deleted automatically by algorithm when I link to my blog as Pret must have reported me, thus FB, Insta put me on a black list. But YouTube isn’t blocked.
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Journalist Timothy Noah wrote a brilliant article on Pret’s emotional labour (labor in US English) that Pret enforces low-wage employees to perform. “The enforced happiness of Pret A Manger“. I really recommend reading this article! And oh, how I remember the mental agony to have to smile, chat, present a happy facade, just to get a few more peanuts. And even during already traumatic bereavement I was expected to “leave my problems at home and wear a smile like I wear my uniform”! Real words of one of my Managers after we lost bonus for not smiling! Low-wage staff have to act like emotional prostitutes and acrobatic clowns to make Pret look good and as a happy place!
Noah wrote this article in 2013, a year after the first public “scandal” hit Pret when Andrej Stopa was fired for having started a trade union. Noah was one of the first, if not THE first journalist to take a closer look at Pret and write critical about the company when no-one dared to write critically. In fact, most journalists, even to this day write ecstatic positive articles about Pret.
Noah points out what former CEO Clive Schlee said about staff touching each other, quote: »”The first thing I look at,” Chief Executive Clive Schlee told The Telegraph last March, “is whether staff are touching each other . . . I can almost predict sales on body language alone.”«
Pret’s previous Mystery Shopper requirements even was that Pret aims to “attend to EACH customer’s NEEDS” … and aims to “connect with EVERY customer with eye contact, a smile and some polite remarks”. The weekly Mystery Shopper is then tasked to comment on how low-wage staff smile etc. and give points accordingly.
Excerpts of the old Mystery Shopper reports before Pret changed the wording but kept the expectations via Managers:
Since I write extensively about Pret’s Mystery Shopper scheme which has surprised many customers who assumed that staff give freebies out of “random acts of kindness”, while in reality staff are almost guaranteed to receive the £100 reward when giving a freebie to the Mystery Shopper, or the MS at least witnessing this “generosity”!
And Clive Schlee to me served like the Ronald McDonald of Pret. He was the friendly clown that was approachable to customers and staff alike, while in reality putting a rigorous Mystery Shopper scheme in place and manipulating staff with brainwashing slogans, and expecting touch to portray a wholesome and happy company … all to increase sales.
And yet, we all wonder how on earth can TWO customers die in Pret, a third customer narrowly surviving and at least nine more injured due to unlabelled allergen in the food. Pret IGNORED the multiple warnings to label their food, even after customers have died and got injured, Pret kept smiling and went full steam ahead doing business as usual. Pret only started slowly to implement product labelling AFTER customer deaths became public! I worked at Pret when 2 customers died and we weren’t even informed of this. Not even a HINT to be more cautious and diligent with labelling and allergen. Nothing! The emphasis was ALWAYS to drop every task, run on till, smile, serve customers fast and present a happy facade. Personality is more important in Pret than skill!
If you don’t know what you’re doing and just “look” the part, but neglect life saving issues, you shouldn’t be hired or run a business! Smiling and having a bubbly personality is a plus, but without skills it’s useless for the health and safety of staff and customers alike! Clive Schlee, the Ronald McDonald of Pret has proven time and again how clueless he was:
Alicia Turrell deleted her Twitter account, so this link is gone. But to zoom in on what former CEO Clive Schlee responded to an open letter, shows how he lacked skills and knowledge on how to approach the lack of labelling that several customers pointed out, including a lawsuit BEFORE the first customer died.
Schlee’s patronizing, appalling and plain clueless response:
»Dear Alicia, I am sitting in Gatwick Airport waiting to board my flight and I have been reading your discursive open letter to Pret. I must say you have a charming, self deprecating writing style and it was very gracious of you to mention so many good things about Pret. I am Pret’s CEO. You also make your point about allergen information. To be honest, I am not exactly sure how to respond. I think you are telling us to train our staff better. I can’t argue with that. I think you are suggesting we treat allergens more seriously. Again, fair point. Is there anything else that you would specifically like [u]s to do? With best wishes Clive«
I am not a fan of Wetherspoons or any food/drink chain at that, and at least their staff have started standing up with Unions. But I heard an interview of founder and CEO Tim Martin recently on Desert Island Discs from 2017. He said something that positively surprised me and maybe because pub business is a different animal from cafe/restaurant business in customer service to some extend, but he mentioned something on how staff present themselves.
Then presenter Kirsty Young asks Martin at around 26 minutes in the interview, quote: »And when you are chatting, as you are doing every week to managers and deputy managers and bar staff, do you ever say to them, “never ever say this to the customer?«
Martin replies: »No. And I also tell them, “you don’t have to smile either”.«
Kirsty Young: »You tell them they DON’T have to smile?«
Martin: »They don’t have to smile, no! We don’t go out of our way to tell them to be nice, because I think that puts too much pressure on people. I think when you go to a pub you get a beer, someone’s natural personality will emerge better if they are not under too much pressure, which of course they are under tremendous pressure anyway. Some of our best bar staff are quite grumpy.«
I cut out that part from the above program:
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Or in the closing words of Timothy Noah’s superb article on Pret’s emotional labour enforcement: »Now that I know Pret’s slender blonde doesn’t love me, I prefer the human contact at a D.C. lunch counter called C.F. Folks. The food is infinitely better. But I also like that the service is slower, the staff is older and grumpier, and the prevailing emotion is “Get over yourself.” Try touching someone at C.F. Folks, and you just might get slugged.«
I say it again, recruiting for (fake or even true) cheerful personality rather than skill can be fatal!
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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. 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. 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.
I start entering the conversation under @Ethical_Sailor’s Tweet. Please click “Show more replies” and “Show replies” as my account is blacklisted on Twitter due to censorship as I expose Pret. I won’t put all my Tweets here, please just read the feed on Twitter as I added some more.
Here is a screenshot of a Mystery Shopper (MS) comment when I served the MS (unbeknown to me) and I was coughing because I had a minor cold. I remember this very vividly because after we received the report that week, my boss ordered me into the office! I was intimidated at their “preaching” to be more careful when serving. I wasn’t as bold then as I am now. This was before my brother died and all hell broke lose in Pret. But comments like this can tip any person over who suffers mental health issues, let alone having a flipping cold!
And maybe the MS doesn’t know that low-wage staff are NOT paid sick day on their first and second days, even with a GP sick note. Or maybe they didn’t care. But I worked while sick MANY MANY times, having to make the decision if I should stay at home and get well, but lose money or go to work struggling, but able to pay my bills.
I don’t understand why above MS screenshot is blurred! Is there censorship on this website provider, too??
Please see the following link where the screenshot is enlarged and clear:
Pret: “We aim to connect with every customer with eye contact, a smile and some polite remarks. Rate the engagement level of the person who served you at the till.”
MS: “Team members should smile at customers and may be not work when ill, as team member was coughing whilst serving me and was therefore not feeling cheerful enough to smile that day.”
Uhm, I wasn’t even “cheerful” to smile under extreme stress and noise 8+ hours each day on a good day you arrogant, entitled prat!
Since I started writing on Pret’s micromanaging Mystery Shopper scheme, Pret has now changed the wording, they don’t say anymore “We aim to connect with every customer with …” as many customers on social media became appalled at this when I posted this.
Back to above Tweet feed, I started looking at Ms Persaud’s original Tweet on the top closer and decided to write a blog post on this. And this time I WANT Deborah Persaud to take it personal. I’m going to copy her full text into my blog as well as the screenshot above.
Quote: »Just goes to show how much difference one good person can make – went to my usual @Pret fir coffee this morning. The helpful person must be on holiday as I stood right at the counter for 5 minutes being actively ignored by the staff. So I left, lunch-less.«
Poor YOU Deborah Persaud, poor you!
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This kind of attitude and expectation is what Sophie McBain writes about in her subtitle of “How Emotional Labour Harms Us All” quote: »Workers are put at high risk of anxiety and burnout, while consumers are emboldened to behave aggressively.«
Now Deborah Persuad doesn’t seem like behaving “aggressively”, rather more passive aggressive, but comments like hers I remember reading in the weekly Emails that Pret’s head office sent out to all shops on Fridays where we, in our area would read all the positive and negative comments on shops in the area that customers sent in to Pret. Some sent it via Email, others on Social Media. Pret does this so that EVERYONE in shops can read each others’ comments to either shame us if negative comments or make others jealous if positive, so as to strive to achieve better. It’s the typical manipulative bullying behaviour to keep low-wage staff on their toes at all times.
And customers like Deborah Persuad love this, because she gets her emotional ego stroked, probably even a free voucher to keep her coming back spending more money. In the meantime the staff member whom Ms Persuad complained about PUBLICLY, will probably find themselves in the office with the equally frustrated Manager who gives the staff member a good telling off, threaten them with a disciplinary and then sends them out onto the shop floor demanding to smile for Mystery Shopper bonus. Please read this real Mystery Shopper report and put yourself just for 5 minutes into the shoes of a low-wage front-line FOOD worker.
And mind you, some customer take photos of staff and publish their names on social media, humiliating already burnt out, underpaid staff.
»Workers are put at high risk of anxiety and burnout, while consumers are emboldened to behave aggressively.« Sophie McBain
I recently had a go at a customer from Pret New York who put a photo of a female staff member whom he accused of having touched her face while serving. As the staff member was black, I equally accused the Tweeter of racism! I won’t put the screenshot here, because this low-wage worker deserves protection and dignity! And many other Tweets with photos and names of staff that arrogant, entitled, spoiled customers post.
Two YouTube slides I did on Pret’s abusive Mystery Shopper scheme. I use YouTube as well because my blog is blocked on Facebook/Instagram where the algorithm even deletes PRIVATE messages when I link to my blog! But they can’t block YouTube or Twitter! ‹^› (°_°) ‹^›
The first slide is with excerpts of Mystery Shopper reports from different years and shops. All those were from shops that I worked at. I coined Pret’s Mystery Shopper as “Misery” Shopper for a reason:
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This second slide is from one Mystery Shopper report in December 2019 that a Pret staff send me. From this report I included most of the 32 micromanaging questions Pret tasks weekly Mystery Shoppers to test staff on. Staff have to bend backwards and sideways like acrobatic clowns, just to get some extra peanuts. selling their smiles like emotional prostitutes, yet with NO guarantee to even get the bonus! If ONE Team Member “sicks duck” enough, they MAY be lucky to get the £100 reward, which happened in this report, while the whole shop lost bonus because a few food products were missing from the range:
And then of course as we are in the Internet age and also in the cancel culture pandemic, she now blocked me. As if I’d care! 😀
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The only thing that is disheartening is that customers who are the “worst” in terms of quickly complaining and completely disregarding low-wage fast-food worker’s plight, are often mental health advocates, in Deborah Persaud’s case she’s a “disability activist”. She seems to have forgotten or not know that many disabilities are invisible.
And I take offense that Deborah Persaud doesn’t think the person who didn’t live up to her expectations isn’t a “good person”.
When I read her initial complaint Tweet closer again, I read with tears in my eyes, partly in sadness and also fuming in anger. I had a clash yesterday with a Samaritan which was a scary moment for me to tip me over. I write about it here: I’d Rather Die Than Delete My Tweets. Apologies for my strong language and fuming anger, but I smiled for 10 years in Pret INCLUDING during horrific bereavement while being bullied! I have NO MORE sweet words to say to people who don’t give a sh!t while presenting themselves as “saviours”. And on a side note, the fact that the Samaritans give awards turns my stomach! Shove your awards up your asses and STOP using broken people to scratch your fucking egos!
And to any new reader, before you judge me as being a “disgrunted” former employee, please familiarize yourself with my story first and also read some of the accounts of other former and current Pret staff that I post on my blog. I wish I was “just” a disgrunted former employee! I wouldn’t go out of my way writing “war and peace” on Pret!
Dear Pret Customer, you want to go on social media and shame low-wage employees who are burnt out, depressed, some are even suicidal, others functioning alcoholics or taking medication to be able to sleep, especially during this horrific pandemic, I may come and shame YOU!
One of many GOOD and important Tweets, just yesterday by a rightfully concerned customer about how shops are SWAMPED with customers and only 1 or 2 staff at breaking point. And Pret does NOT care!
To anyone else who cares, please read the following Facebook exchange I’ve had with a former Pret staff, who described that Pret did NOTHING after a colleague tested positive for Covid-19: Pret A Manger Staff Tested Positive for Covid (and Pret did nothing).
Excerpt:
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UPDATE 30.07.2021
As there have been some more information via a Tweet exchange and then I was blocked again, I want to update this post and respond to Tweets that I cannot respond to as I’m blocked.
Please scroll up (and down) in the following Tweet exchange:
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A blind person once told me that they cannot read texts that is on the screenshots, so I type out each Tweet underneath the screenshots, and then my response to it.
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Quote:
»Thank you, @FieldsHighbury. I don’t need to explain myself to strangers, and my OP wasn’t directed at you, @ExPretAManger, but my banner and profile sets out a few salient facts to help readers understand my situation, and a moment’s perusal would have helped you here.«
First of all Ms Persaud blocked again but continues tweeting @ my blocked account. So, I respond here on my blog. After the Tweet exchange with FieldsHughbury I see the figures/emoticons on your profile now. As many people on Twitter use flags, emoticons etc. it often passes me by what some signs mean or because they are very small. But of course now I can see what this means. I am a text person, I don’t like picture books, I don’t often use emoticons, but only started recently to use them more, I prefer text and #hashtags, my brain doesn’t pay attention as fast to pictures compared to text.
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2. Quote:
»For the benefit of anyone who needs my OP spelled out more clearly… My guide dog and I visit that branch of Pret very regularly and are welcomed warmly. They even know my order. This is a very nice thing.«
Yes it is. And why couldn’t you spell this out from the get go? And I have seen this MANY times that customers have had 10 experiences in Pret, 9 of the 10 experiences were super positive, and the 10th was negative. And immediately that ONE negative experience makes them go on social media and rant! Disheartening.
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3. Quote:
»This time, however, in an almost empty store, my dog and I stood at the counter repeatedly asking for help and I was ignored. This is not a nice thing and I left empty-handed. I decided to let @Pret know. I did not direct individual criticism at anyone, just a generic (emoticon of a woman shrugging her shoulders).«
And why not? Why using a general brush aimed at ALL Pret staff giving vague information? What you have experienced is unacceptable and hurtful. A fair criticism would be to openly critique, explaining what happened so that the company and the people involved can UNDERSTAND where they were wrong or made a mistake.
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4. Quote:
»If you care to track back through my historic tweets, you’ll soon see the numerous occasions where I’ve given very positive feedback on the service I’ve received. Hence the (emoticon of a woman shrugging her shoulders)«
Why would I care to track through your historic Tweets if you keep blocking me first thing, and then even write TO ME while I am being blocked, not able to read your response TO ME (except when locked OUT), and not able to respond as I’m blocked. This cancel culture to immediately “diss” people who disagree with you is tiring. I have no interest to check the historic Tweets of a person who immediately shuts the door in people’s faces because they have a different opinion or who give critique, especially while not knowing the events but vague and general criticism of staff.
You chose to write on a PUBLIC platform, without initially giving information and then expect people to immediately understand what the issue is. I am not a saviour or “advocate” or anything like that, but from my own experience in Pret where we got DAILY criticism from our line Managers, from Pret’s Head Office, from customers, and to top it and make it worse, from weekly micromanaging Mystery Shoppers commenting that basically NOTHING is EVER good enough and that EVERY LITTLE thing we do or make a mistake on is IMMEDIATELY condemned, called out, named, and shamed!
And if that wasn’t enough, low-wage staff don’t get their bonus and suffer not only mentally, emotionally and physically, but financially!
If I then see vague Tweets like your initial Tweet, I cannot just silently read it and move on KNOWING that low-wage, exhausted, bullied, overworked, underpaid, depressed, sick Pret staff have NO ONE to speak up for them! Because I KNOW how they will find themselves in the office with an equally frustrated, and by area Managers bullied shop Managers, and the staff are NOT given a chance to voice THEIR side of things! But instead they are shouted at behind closed doors in the office or kitchen or staff room, away from customers. They are fear managed to get in line or fear for their job. Then they are send out to the shop floor and ORDERED to smile and pretend to be cheery, so that the WHOLE shop Team get their bonus and the area Managers their bigger chunk of money while sitting home having a laugh!
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5. Quote:
»I know the staff are minimum wage and I have always graciously thanked them (we have no way of tipping here). So I can only conclude that @ExPretAManger is a lazy troll and I was right to block. Take your grievance out on the right person and leave me and my supporters alone.«
I’ve been called a lot of things since I expose Pret. I’ve been called “insane”, “angry”, or when people are upset because I have a different opinion they quickly call me “troll” etc. But “lazy? LOL! No, that’s not one that people call me. 😀
And yes, it is kind of you to thank staff and try to give a tip. Pret has even stopped the tip box in the USA and turned the tip boxes into charity boxes. But while tipping staff and thanking them is wonderful and boosts their spirits for a moment, what people really need to start looking at is the HEAD of the company, the SOURCE of the problem. This is why Tweets like the following has me hopeful that some customers pay attention at the REAL issues.
Screenshot with text underneath:
Quote:
»Until it changes its exploitative working practices I will not buy a single sandwich a @Pret_UK. The average worker at Pret works a 6-hour shift without a single break (breaks are unpaid) at an unstoppable pace. …« – Dr. Eunice Goes Link to Tweet
Regarding your assumption on me being a “lazy troll”, what you CAN indeed call me though is: uninterested in your historic Tweets! And that is because, if you come on Twitter and in a passive aggressive way criticize low-wage staff in GENERAL, WITHOUT giving specific details on WHAT happened, and THEN you immediately block someone who KNOWS firsthand how immensely stressful, ungrateful, toxic, fear managed, depressing … working at Pret is, where staff are FORCED to smile or they lose money and get threatened with their job security, then I have no interest whatsoever to check your history.
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6. Quote
»And I really don’t think going into a shop, standing at the counter and asking for service is being ‘emotionally needy’ – it’s just buying stuff in a shop. Most people do it most days!«
Knowing what I know now, no of course it’s not “emotionally needy”. I wrote my blog post without the information I have now because people throughout the years have complained on Twitter or via email to Pret making staff responsible for THEIR emotional needs. Pret itself even demanded from staff to “attend to EACH customer’s needs” as if staff are little psychologists or nurses responsible for customers’ emotional well-being. So, staff love-bomb customers to get extra money and avoid getting fear managed if they lose bonus.
And you wrote, quote: »I’ve become reliant on the warm welcome and consistently great service…«
Please do NOT become reliant on low-wage staff’s welcome or the lack thereof! They just sell coffee and sandwiches under EXTREMELY stressful conditions! And even if it is quiet in the shop, you don’t know how it was prior to it, and if a staff member just was bullied back in the office. That of course is NOT your problem or responsibility, but please do not put your reliance of warmness on low-wage food staff!
And especially since you have received CONSISTENTLY great service, it is upsetting that ONE incidence makes you question the “goodness” of the staff, not knowing what went on that moment or day.
I’ve read many ridiculous complaints from customers with the expectation to, figuratively speaking, be “cuddled” by low-wage food staff, but the most ridiculous and plainly upsetting complaint is this:
»@Pret Queen Street Pret at 8:10 this morning. Poor service from server named ‘Adil S’. No smile. Rushed service. Didn’t give me a warm and welcoming feeling. He should not work in the service industry if smiling doesn’t coming naturally for all your morning coffee customers!«
I responded to his appalling complaint, but now I would just put a vomit emoticon under his complaint! Pret staff including Baristas have 60 seconds to serve a customer or risk losing the WHOLE shop their bonus! I am sick to my stomach at customers like this.
»Workers are put at high risk of anxiety and burnout, while consumers are emboldened to behave aggressively.« Sophie McBain
And I won’t get bullied to take down anything I write while equally being offended. I am by all means NOT lazy at all, and for sure I’m angry and to a certain degree “insane”, but I am not interested in anyone who comes on a public platform and in a vague way “snitches” on low-staff who are at breaking point, without giving fair and specific details why you are upset or offended.
I want to end with an excerpt of an email by a current Pret front-line staff who wrote to me in tears. And believe me, Pret staff will NEVER tell you and other customers how it REALLY is for them for fear you jump on Twitter and humiliate them, or for fear they happen to speak to the Mystery Shopper, because even regular customers can be Pret Mystery Shoppers!
Staff excerpt, quote:
»I came across your blog just before applying for a job at Pret, but stupidly looked over what you were saying as I was growing desperate to work … I’m writing to you … and I wish I’d taken your warnings before applying. … Honestly, I feel like I’m drowning … I would never want to be the kind of person who gives up on things just because they’re challenging, but …. I spend most … times … crying, I don’t have enough time to eat. … I haven’t been shown where to get certain items and have to keep asking, it’s absolutely humiliating. …«
So, please complain to Pret, even publicly which is important, because it is UNACCEPTABLE how you were treated! But PLEASE complain fairly and be specific on what happened without expecting people to read every emoticon or history of your Tweets! And before you criticize my grammar or English, because that’s what people often do when they run out of arguments, please know that English is not my mother tongue and I haven’t studied. I do know about my weakness of making sentences too long. But I don’t apologize for it. It’s everyone’s prerogative to read or not.
But please do some research on what a troll actually is. If you do choose to respond, please do so in a FAIR way. Other then that I have nothing to say to you or your friend anymore. Best wishes.
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Also for the record, it’s open to me to comment on anything that is written on a public platform. To call this “harassment” is laughable and a typical accusation when people are not happy being challenged. When you call people a “lazy troll” you cross boundaries and have become extremely rude, and I would like it to stop. Thank you.
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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. 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. 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.
I want to add 2 things, the post underneath the line below I have converted on my Anchor.fm podcast to a voice version. It’s an automated voice, not perfect, but for those who don’t like to read long blog entries. I place the episode here as well.
And the other thing is I want to place my favourite tweet of recently after a customer responded to other customers outcry of Pret making temporary pay-cuts permanent. The below blog post/voice convertion is very important for people to understand Pret’s mentality and why it remains dangerous to eat there.
The Tweet by @betty_de_brazil from 12. August 2021 reads, quote: “A while back, I saw a Pret ad that said its staff were “passionate” about making sandwiches. This kind of bullshit talk always hides ruthless practices in my experience.” End of quote.
Unfortunately reading programs can’t read screenshots of Tweets or YouTube slides. I have to keep that in mind when doing new blog entries, to write out Tweets. I was also once told by a blind person on Twitter that their programs cannot read screenshots. So, below Twitter screenshots are not read by this automated voice conversion. Apologies to all with visual impairment, I’m learning as I go.
This episode is close to under 11 minutes long. At this time the French word “manger” isn’t pronounced the French way, but the American/English way of “Jesus in a manger”. For those who love to point out unimportant mistakes, get over it. Thanks.
This audio episode is close to under 11 minutes.
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A few years ago I already dissected an article where Pret’s HR Director Andrea Wareham was interviewed. “Pret’s People Management Secrets” from HR Magazine. In this interview Andrea Wareham shares a lot about the typical Pret PR bla bla. But one sentence stands out to me which is typical Pret, but also dangerous.
Quote: »Pret famously recruits for behaviours, “personality rather than skills” as Wareham puts it, and these, she adds, are “relevant in every market”.«
When I worked at Pret it always astounded me how little many shop Managers knew of the job they were hired to do. Those staff members in lower positions who had more knowledge than some shop Managers due to experience and skill, were exploited and the Manager took credit for it.
It often bothered me how the “wrong” people got promoted and those who knew how to do the job where kept low.
In an unlisted video on YouTube (why unlisted?) new CEO Pano Christou even inadvertently gives away how poor the training in Pret is. He shares how when he did stock take for the first or second time, that he stayed until 4 o’clock the next morning! And that’s exactly how it is in Pret. The training is so poor and even Managers often are clueless that especially new staff have to stay long (unpaid!) hours to figure out how things work! Before I worked at Pret, I worked in many different food places, most of my life I worked in hospitality industry, in wine bars, restaurants, a canteen, a hotel. But never did I have to stay longer hours to figure out how things are done than in Pret! It was the most frustrating thing not being trained and not being given time to train others!
If people are trained and have skills, especially since Pano Christou was a Manager at McDonald’s before he joined Pret as an Assistant Manager, there would be NO NEED to stay until 4 o’clock the next morning to know how to do a stock take and other issues!
Pano should have known the job already, or at least picked it up quicker as he had previous Management experience. Unless he kissed his way up, like so many do. In Pret people also get promoted through the bedroom, and then more than few are incapable to do the job and rely on lower ranked staff to do all the hard work!
Pret is famous for their smiley staff, but since I write about it more extensively since 2018 it has become more common knowledge that this smiley culture is driven by weekly Mystery Shoppers. I wrote a few posts about it and made some YouTube slides as my blog is heavily censored on Facebook and Instagram where it is completely blocked. Even private messages are deleted automatically by algorithm when I link to my blog as Pret must have reported me, thus FB, Insta put me on a black list. But YouTube isn’t blocked.
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Journalist Timothy Noah wrote a brilliant article on Pret’s emotional labour (labor in US English) that Pret enforces low-wage employees to perform. “The enforced happiness of Pret A Manger“. I really recommend reading this article! And oh, how I remember the mental agony to have to smile, chat, present a happy facade, just to get a few more peanuts. And even during already traumatic bereavement I was expected to “leave my problems at home and wear a smile like I wear my uniform”! Real words of one of my Managers after we lost bonus for not smiling! Low-wage staff have to act like emotional prostitutes and acrobatic clowns to make Pret look good and as a happy place!
Noah wrote this article in 2013, a year after the first public “scandal” hit Pret when Andrej Stopa was fired for having started a trade union. Noah was one of the first, if not THE first journalist to take a closer look at Pret and write critical about the company when no-one dared to write critically. In fact, most journalists, even to this day write ecstatic positive articles about Pret.
Noah points out what former CEO Clive Schlee said about staff touching each other, quote: »”The first thing I look at,” Chief Executive Clive Schlee told The Telegraph last March, “is whether staff are touching each other . . . I can almost predict sales on body language alone.”«
Pret’s previous Mystery Shopper requirements even was that Pret aims to “attend to EACH customer’s NEEDS” … and aims to “connect with EVERY customer with eye contact, a smile and some polite remarks”. The weekly Mystery Shopper is then tasked to comment on how low-wage staff smile etc. and give points accordingly.
Excerpts of the old Mystery Shopper reports before Pret changed the wording but kept the expectations via Managers:
Since I write extensively about Pret’s Mystery Shopper scheme which has surprised many customers who assumed that staff give freebies out of “random acts of kindness”, while in reality staff are almost guaranteed to receive the £100 reward when giving a freebie to the Mystery Shopper, or the MS at least witnessing this “generosity”!
And Clive Schlee to me served like the Ronald McDonald of Pret. He was the friendly clown that was approachable to customers and staff alike, while in reality putting a rigorous Mystery Shopper scheme in place and manipulating staff with brainwashing slogans, and expecting touch to portray a wholesome and happy company … all to increase sales.
And yet, we all wonder how on earth can TWO customers die in Pret, a third customer narrowly surviving and at least nine more injured due to unlabelled allergen in the food. Pret IGNORED the multiple warnings to label their food, even after customers have died and got injured, Pret kept smiling and went full steam ahead doing business as usual. Pret only started slowly to implement product labelling AFTER customer deaths became public! I worked at Pret when 2 customers died and we weren’t even informed of this. Not even a HINT to be more cautious and diligent with labelling and allergen. Nothing! The emphasis was ALWAYS to drop every task, run on till, smile, serve customers fast and present a happy facade. Personality is more important in Pret than skill!
If you don’t know what you’re doing and just “look” the part, but neglect life saving issues, you shouldn’t be hired or run a business! Smiling and having a bubbly personality is a plus, but without skills it’s useless for the health and safety of staff and customers alike! Clive Schlee, the Ronald McDonald of Pret has proven time and again how clueless he was:
Alicia Turrell deleted her Twitter account, so this link is gone. But to zoom in on what former CEO Clive Schlee responded to an open letter, shows how he lacked skills and knowledge on how to approach the lack of labelling that several customers pointed out, including a lawsuit BEFORE the first customer died.
Schlee’s patronizing, appalling and plain clueless response:
»Dear Alicia, I am sitting in Gatwick Airport waiting to board my flight and I have been reading your discursive open letter to Pret. I must say you have a charming, self deprecating writing style and it was very gracious of you to mention so many good things about Pret. I am Pret’s CEO. You also make your point about allergen information. To be honest, I am not exactly sure how to respond. I think you are telling us to train our staff better. I can’t argue with that. I think you are suggesting we treat allergens more seriously. Again, fair point. Is there anything else that you would specifically like [u]s to do? With best wishes Clive«
I am not a fan of Wetherspoons or any food/drink chain at that, and at least their staff have started standing up with Unions. But I heard an interview of founder and CEO Tim Martin recently on Desert Island Discs from 2017. He said something that positively surprised me and maybe because pub business is a different animal from cafe/restaurant business in customer service to some extend, but he mentioned something on how staff present themselves.
Then presenter Kirsty Young asks Martin at around 26 minutes in the interview, quote: »And when you are chatting, as you are doing every week to managers and deputy managers and bar staff, do you ever say to them, “never ever say this to the customer?«
Martin replies: »No. And I also tell them, “you don’t have to smile either”.«
Kirsty Young: »You tell them they DON’T have to smile?«
Martin: »They don’t have to smile, no! We don’t go out of our way to tell them to be nice, because I think that puts too much pressure on people. I think when you go to a pub you get a beer, someone’s natural personality will emerge better if they are not under too much pressure, which of course they are under tremendous pressure anyway. Some of our best bar staff are quite grumpy.«
I cut out that part from the above program:
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Or in the closing words of Timothy Noah’s superb article on Pret’s emotional labour enforcement: »Now that I know Pret’s slender blonde doesn’t love me, I prefer the human contact at a D.C. lunch counter called C.F. Folks. The food is infinitely better. But I also like that the service is slower, the staff is older and grumpier, and the prevailing emotion is “Get over yourself.” Try touching someone at C.F. Folks, and you just might get slugged.«
I say it again, recruiting for (fake or even true) cheerful personality rather than skill can be fatal!
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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. 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. 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.
UPFRONT: please note that in below and current Mystery Shopper reports, Pret has completely scrapped the questions on IF staff members know about allergen. After 2 customers died and only when this became public, Pret included questions to test staff on their knowledge of allergen. But while Pret keeps all the other micromanaging questions, they have stopped testing on life-saving allergen questions.
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UPDATE May 2021:
Staff tell me that the £100 reward and some other benefits are back now, so below is out-dated, but I leave it like it is to show customers how low-wage staff are pressured for a little more peanuts and fear management. If ONE staff member makes a mistake, the WHOLE Team lose bonus.
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Update 12. May 2021 on a customer seeing the exploitation in Pret and made a short video:
This is the third blog entry or YouTube slide I post on a Pret A Manger Mystery Shopper (MS) report. This 3rd report is a recent one from December 2020. Since the pandemic and all the cuts Pret has done, there is currently not even bonus being paid to staff, YET, low-wage workers are STILL expected to be acrobatic clowns tested by weekly Mystery Shoppers.
Pret show VERY clearly where their priorities are. Pret rather pays the Mystery Shopper marketing company Hopitality Guest Experience Management (HGEM) who employ Mystery Shoppers to go to Pret shops every week for their free lunch, than paying staff the living wage AND bonus. Pret continue to fear manage staff this way instead of rewarding their hard work for carrying Pret through the pademic, risking their lives. Pret CUT wages, benefits, bonus etc. while still paying HGEM.
Little side-note. HGEM blocked me on Twitter for calling them out how Pret staff SUFFER under the Mystery Shopper scheme.
I write extensively about the Mystery Shopper on several entries and walk the reader through a MS report on: Pret A Manger Service Secrets Revealed and included 2 YouTube slides (at the bottom) for those who don’t want to read long detailed blog entries. The reason it’s so detailed is to show how micromanaging and exploitative Pret is that at least now have cut the MS questions from 32 down to 20. But not paying bonus is even worse than the previous exploitation.
And you, as the reader may think ‘why do Pret staff continue and let Pret treat them this way?’ Because they are brainwashed and fear managed. I know what I’m talking about, I suffered under this having worked at Pret.
It’s very simple, Pret wear the staff out, under-staff shops so workers have NO chance to think for themselves. I was often SO exhausted that I missed my bus or tube stop when going home. I just fell asleep at 3pm in the afternoon and woke up at the last stop on the line, having to take the next bus back the other direction. Staff feel stuck, are steeped in anxiety to think straight and find the will or courage to find a better job. Most are foreign workers, easier to manipulate. And that answers your next question why Pret don’t employ more British people in shops (apart from head office). Check this YouTube slide on how Pret abuse their staff to the max.
I write this new blog entry because several customers have complained to Pret on Twitter that they don’t want to be asked again and again if they want to buy anything extra. Unfortunately customers don’t appreciate the immense stress and the target for staff to have to up-sell or lose bonus. In below screenshots from a December 2020 MS report, people can see the perfect example of a shop that lost bonus BECAUSE the Team Member (TM) did NOT up-sell the way Pret demands and the fussy Mystery Shopper expected. This particular Mystery Shopper was especially ignorant and arrogant, expecting staff to stretch in all directions.
One of several recent customer complaints not realizing staff have no choice:
The following sheet is an example of a weekly rota or plan on which item to up-sell on which day and time of day. Pret staff send me all these pieces of information as my blog is the only “link” between their silent ordeal behind the scenes and the public (and press).
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And part of a leaked Zoom call video I was sent and passed on to the BBC that later reported on Pret’s “job situation” when it was announced that employment cuts were coming up. In this clip I cut out from the full video, UK Managing Director Clare Clough explains the “Attachment Rate” which is where customers buy extra items when they get a coffee on a subscription service, or in this case with the “20 coffees for £20” voucher. Since the pandemic and loss of profit staff HAVE TO up-sell because that’s where the money comes in.
For some reason the sound is off-sync. Not sure what happened there. I cut this part from the full Zoom call I was leaked to from a Pret employee, some technical glitch happened there. Apologies. But what Clare Clough says is clear.
Also, pay attention to the psychology in wording that Pret HQ always use. Quote “We’ve asked shops to start encouraging people to treat themselves to a croissant or cookie …”
No, Pret DEMANDS staff to upsell or they don’t get bonus as seen further below in the Mystery Shopper report where ONE staff member serving the MS did NOT upsell in a SPECIFIC way.
If the 1 staff member does not upsell specifically, the whole shop Team get penalized by not getting bonus, which in turn adds to bullying, silent treatment, shame, peer pressure etc. (And this is why I name and shame Pret millionaires so publicly and so loudly!)
It is disheartening that people do not understand how low-wage staff have to be like acrobatic clowns, kiss butt all day, smile no matter what, during bereavement, depression, illness etc. in order to get just a few extra peanuts and the shop Manager a bigger cut of the quarterly bonus. Low-wage staff don’t realize they have to go on strike to stop this exploitation and abuse by companies like Pret.
Staff get heat from all sides: customers complain, bosses bully to get more profit, Mystery Shoppers comment on the tiniest issue which I scrutinize in detail below. And staff get more depressed, disheartened, careless. It is a wonder that not more customers have died and who knows if or how many staff have caught the virus or even died that Pret keeps under the carpet. We have forgotten that TWO customers have died in Pret and Pret got away with it. Full steam ahead, business as usual. Let the exploitation and carelessness continue.
Mystery Shopper Screenshots: (I highlighted and marked in yellow or red a few things to explain the horrible expectation by multi-millionaires to squeeze the last drop out of workers to present a happy facade).
I cannot enlarge the screenshots, so please press “Ctrl & +” to enlarge the picture and “Ctrl & –” to decrease it again (Ctrl & plus / Ctrl & minus). But I quote under each screenshot what I marked to point out the micromanagement and humiliating expectations.
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Marked in yellow:
»Until further notice, Bonus and Star Team awards are not payable«
Bonus used to be £1 per hour worked. So if a TM worked 40 hours that week and the shop gets the bonus, they earn extra £40 that week. An individual TM can get extra £50 or 100 (even if the bonus for the whole team is lost) if the TM is extra nice and kisses butt extra hard. This is called an “Outstanding Card” (OC) £50. If the overall shop scores are perfect, the TM gets the “Super Outstanding Card” (SOC) = £100. Giving a freebie most likely gets the TM the £50 or £100 cash reward. An Outstanding Card is not literally a card, but just the name of the cash reward for smiling extra hard. A Star Team Award is when within a quarter a shop consistently gets outstanding cards, bonus and high scores. HQ then gives the shop a few hundred or thousands of pounds to go out to dinner or bowling or whatever. Might sound great, but the high pressure, stress and bullying environment to constantly get high scores defeats the mood to then also go out in your private time. I was always so exhausted from work and the horrible work atmosphere that I didn’t enjoy spending my private time with colleagues and the bullying boss.
So, until further notice staff still have to act like acrobatic clowns and bend in all directions with a big non-stop smile and chatty attitude, yet currently don’t get any cash rewards until further notice. If staff want to continue getting exploited like this, there’s no hope for change!
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If the reader wants to understand the full Pret blow a low-wage Team Member suffers through day in, day out, please read my extensive post on each step of above MS questions and the system behind this on: Pret A Manger Service Secrets Revealed. If even just ONE category is in the red, the whole shop Team lose bonus and get fear managed. If only ONE staff member makes a mistake or doesn’t kiss butt of the Mystery Shopper enough, the whole team can lose bonus if the Mystery Shopper wants to, as it happened in this MS report. Mystery Shoppers seem to enjoy the power they have, and I renamed them to “Misery Shopper”.
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Quote on the top left under “Outstanding Card”:
»Was any ONE member of our team very helpful,extremely charming and/or outstanding?«
No 😦
This is the question about any ONE Team Member’s service, regardless if the whole Team got the bonus or not. The added 😦 emoticons are to increase the “disappointment” and stress that staff didn’t kiss butt enough. My colleague can lose us all the bonus by their “poor” service, but I individually can get the £50 Outstanding Card reward if the Mystery Shopper notices me being extra special nice kissing butt. If the shop gets the bonus and all scores are perfect, it would double my reward to £100. But again, since the pandemic not until further notice does Pret pay any bonus or rewards while still sitting on billions. So, instead of getting cash rewards staff get brainwashed and continuously fear managed to keep performing a happy facade.
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Mystery Shoppers have to check if staff wear masks or an exemption badge. Yet, many customers on Social Media complain about the lack of wearing masks and exemption badges. Some shops have ALL staff not wearing masks. The MS is tasked to probe into this because Managers don’t enforce mask wearing.
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I highlighted this to explain to customers that staff have 60 seconds to serve a customer and 60 seconds to hand over the hot drink from the time the customer paid. Mystery Shoppers time it to the SECOND which is extremely patronizing to staff who are rushed off their feet ALL day and then customers complain that their coffee was half empty, cold, too much froth etc. and worse of all Mystery Shoppers complain about “robotic” service! The speed of service is just for ONE purpose, to get customers in and out of shops as fast as possible for fast money flow.
Quote: “I was served in 32 seconds and was happy with this.” “I received my coffee in 36 seconds and was happy with this.”
But later in their last comments (at the bottom) complain that, quote: “there was a lot of coffee grounds in my drink“. (Idiot!)
Pret wants fast service with a smile, but not robotic!
Pret wants perfect products, but within seconds!
I am not a fan of Whetherspoon or Tim Martin the boss, but I apprentice that he does NOT demand his bar staff to smile. I put an excerpt on Soundcloud of the Desert Island Interview from years ago with Kirsty Young where Martin mentioned this. He even adds that some of his best bar staff are quite grumpy making Kirtsy Young giggle. I appreciate his approach here:
I always told my colleagues that the best way to describe Pret A Manger’s work expectations and conditions is, that they bind the feet of staff and then demand them to run. And if they fall, they get penalized. I keep saying again and again to join a Union and strike. If McDonald’s and Amazon workers and maybe soon NHS workers can do it, Pret staff can. They just need to find the strength and courage to look beyond the brainwash and fear management. But maybe they’re not angry enough yet.
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Here is where the up-sell question comes and where this particular shop lost the bonus because ONE Team Member was probably too exhausted to up-sell a specific item. Quote:
»How did the team member suggest a product to complement your purchase?«
No product suggested (1) “The team member asked me if I would like anything else in a robotic manner but didn’t suggest a particular product.”
Staff are expected for low wage, NO bonus, fear management and brainwash to bend themselves over day after day and then get reprimanded for being robotic. This is one of the worst types of abuses in the workplace that employees suffer.
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Quote:
»How well did your server or any member of the team end the transaction by thank you and/or giving apleasant parting comment?«
Parting Comment/Thank You Given (3) “The team member said thank you but didn’t say anything else. I felt that she could have said enjoy or have a nice day.”
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These kinds of comments I have read hundreds of time in my years in Pret. Extremely patronizing, unemphatic, and the power that Mystery Shoppers enjoy to want to have a conversation with and attention of a low-wage staff member who is burnt out. Depending on the business of a particular shop, but from my experience, a Team Member EASILY serves 300 – 500 people per day. And Pret expects them to smile, chat, give eye contact, kiss butt all day every day, and now even for no extra money. If staff don’t join Unions and go on strike they will continue to be degraded like this.
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And these are non-scoring comments by the Mystery Shopper. The yellow highlighted I have quoted in red below. Dear Reader, please tell me how you would feel reading those comments after you have sweated day in day out for low wage, now no bonus, no rewards, just humiliating comments! And please don’t make it too easy on yourself by saying that staff can just find another job! Read this email a current Pret staff sent me: Pret don’t Care About Anyone.
Remember, the Barista or Coffee Maker has 60 seconds to get the drink ready into the customer’s hand or risk losing the WHOLE Team their bonus! This Misery Shopper was happy to be given his coffee in 36 seconds and then complains that it wasn’t well made! I wish I knew this particular MS, I would slap this Misery Shopper the report at his feet (I say “his” because the photo he took with the receipt in his hands clearly showed a male hand. Sounds like an arrogant, entitled, power-loving fathermucker!
Only one of many customer complaints on Twitter regarding long queues and only 1 or 2 staff members behind the counter:
The MOST poignant staff review that painfully explains a day in Pret. I can underline every dot and comma of this review. I highlighted a view things and put the link underneath.
I still don’t know how I survived this stress! And even without having become suicidal, the pure stress and anxiety feels like can kill you! But I will never ever work in these kinds of conditions again! I’d rather be poor for the rest of my life and work in silence somewhere than in this exploitation:
Dear Reader, put yourself into the shoes of this particular Team Member (or any TM!) who served this Misery Shopper as the TM’s name will appear on the report.
You worked for hours that day, your Manager shouted at you in the office for little things and threatened you with a disciplinary because you aren’t fast enough making sandwiches, while being called from the kitchen to the tills constantly to serve customers as shops are ALWAYS under-staffed. You lost a loved one recently and have no choice but to work.
You worked already 8 days straight without a day off as there aren’t enough staff members and you feel manipulated to come to work on your day off. You feel too vulnerable to say no. You started at 5am everyday and this day until 3 or 4pm, now with unpaid breaks. So you cut your break short to not lose money and hope to get home as soon as possible.
You went through an intense morning coffee rush, and are now (after 1pm) in the middle of the extremely busy lunchtime rush. You are sweating, tinnitus screaming in your head, trying to concentrate, holding back the tears when thinking of the loved one you just buried a few weeks ago … you serve the Misery Shopper but don’t know it. You know you won’t get bonus or anything extra and ESPECIALLY no positive feedback whatsoever from your Manager or Team Leader. In fact, you(collaborative as a Team) are told to leave your problems at home and are expected to “wear a smile like you wear your uniform” (true story, actual words by a Manager I had!) …
And then you read comments like this after this particular Misery Shopper was “happy” that his coffee was ready in 36 seconds that he even timed on his stop-watch (phone) from burnt out low-wage staff:
“I would recommend based on the food only as the service was just average and the coffee wasn’t well made. I didn’t think the coffee had been properly prepared, because as I got to the last half of it, there was a lot of coffee grounds in my drink and I was unable to continue drinking it.”
You leave your shift going home. You head for the bridge.
Further reading on the Emotional Labour practices of large companies, please go to: The Dangers of Emotional Labour (how it harms service workers’ mental health). There I’ve listed some excellent articles by journalists and former service workers who became journalists.
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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. 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. 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.
I found a brilliant article on Pret’s enforced emotional labour practices. This article is next to Timothy Noah’s article “Labor of Love – The Enforced Happiness of Pret A Manger” my favourite article on this subject. Having worked at Pret experiencing this abuse as I call it, I more than underline both articles. I’m grateful for true journalism compared to the majority of media people sucking up to Pret.
The article is from 2011 but worth the read to take a peek behind Pret’s smiley facade. Some of the things mentioned, like “shooting stars” and other brainwashing, micromanaging things Pret has stopped now, especially since private equity came in, wanting faster money than already squeezed out of low-wage staff.
I borrowed the title for this post from my friend Anton of Generation Bubble, who forwarded me a link to this NYT article by Stephanie Clifford about Pret à Manger, sort of the Target of sandwich shops, assuming Subway is the Wal-Mart. If you want to see a horrific application of all the principles of immaterial and affective labor, Virnoesque virtuosity, lateral surveillance, obligatory reflexivity, emotional management, gamification and so on, you need look no further.
How does any company encourage teamwork? At Pret a Manger, executives say, the answer is to hire, pay and promote based on — believe it or not — qualities like cheerfulness.
There is a certain “Survivor” element to all of this. New hires are sent to a Pret a Manger shop for a six-hour day, and then the employees there vote whether to keep them or not. Ninety percent of prospects get a thumbs-up. Those who are voted out are sent home with £35 ($57), no hard feelings.
The crucial factor is gaining support from existing employees. Those workers have skin in the game: bonuses are awarded based on the performance of an entire team, not individuals. Pret workers know that a bad hire could cost them money.
All the joys of tournament labor markets like those that exist in academia, with none of the “life of the mind” rationalizations. And instead of solidarity against management, each worker becomes the face of management, another Stasi spy for the happy police.
But that is not nearly enough surveillance to allow Pret’s management to discriminate among workers:
Pret also sends “mystery shoppers” to every shop each week. Those shoppers give employee-specific critiques. (”Bill didn’t smile at the till,” for instance.) If a mystery shopper scores a shop as “outstanding” — 86 percent of stores usually qualify — all of the employees get a £1-per-hour bonus, based on a week’s pay, so full-timers get around $73. “There’s a lot of peer pressure,” said Andrea Wareham, the human resources director at Pret.
DARE sessions in school taught me that peer pressure was bad, but I suppose peer pressure, in this context, is good. It is the vaunted power of worker collaboration and cooperation turned inside out and made into a coercive management tool. One’s very ability to get along with others is alienated and quantified, made into something you would only do for money rather than from basic human solidarity. Pret rejects the sort of human sociality that might thrive outside of capital, that is possible in environments where making a profit by selling commodified service experiences isn’t the overriding goal. Instead Pret chooses to incentivize human feeling and turn the point of exchange into an explicit, quantified moment of affective labor while turning worker cooperation into a reified shadow of itself. That policy is carried out all down the line, apparently, with no sociality left unincentivized and thus unexploited:
Pret reinforces the teamwork concept in other ways. When employees are promoted or pass training milestones, they receive at least £50 in vouchers, a payment that Pret calls a “shooting star.” But instead of keeping the bonus, the employees must give the money to colleagues, people who have helped them along the way.
There are other rewards. Every quarter, the top 10 percent of stores, as ranked by mystery-shopper scores, receive about £30 per employee for a party. The top executives at Pret get 60 “Wow” cards, with scratch-off rewards like £10 or an iPod, to hand out each year to employees who strike them as particularly good. Pret has all-staff parties twice a year, and managers get a monthly budget of £100 or so to spend on drinks or outings for their workers.
“Rewards, through bonuses or ‘outstanding’ cards, affect behavior,” Ms. Wareham says.
Wow cards, I suppose, are the Scooby snacks of the service industry. It’s always nice to be recognized, but there seems to be something backhanded about making even that a lottery scenario. And in the end, it’s just Pavlovian manipulation, not genuine recognition of the worker as a human. The incentivizing of feeling leaves no space for the employees to be recognized in and of themselves. Everything about them as feeling creatures has been subsumed by the wage relation. That’s what is so creepy about going into a Pret — you know they are being forced to be nice to you and are being carefully watched by other fake-nice bosses and informers. It feels like those moments in movies about people in a mental asylum, where the patients try to maintain a facade of controlled politeness in hopes of demonstrating their newfound sanity. This sounds sort of insane to me, anyway:
Every new employee gets a thick binder of instructions. It states, for example, that employees should be “bustling around and being active” on the floor, not “standing around looking bored.” It encourages them to occasionally hand out free coffee or cakes to regulars, and not “hide your true character” with customers.
Can a boss really force you to display your “true character” without driving you into an insane spiral of endlessly recursive reflexivity? And is one’s “true character” nothing more than picking random lottery-winner customers to hand a cake to? Are human interactions so conditioned by the imperative of exchange that giving and getting something for nothing is the best way to simulate genuineness, or sincere benevolence? Perhaps the looting in London was just a big expression of love.
The article should put to rest any ideas that the implementation of such concepts as gamification and the general intellect are inherently benevolent or subversive. Instead, they can be deployed by management to create a kind of affective Taylorism, where emotional experiences are assembled under hurry-up conditions and energetically concealed duress. Unless you believe that it’s more fun to be forced to pretend to be having fun while working a deli counter — maybe the findings that people who are forced to smile report being happier apply here also. Clifford notes that Pret’s “annual work force turnover rate is about 60 percent — low for the fast-food industry, where the rate is normally 300 to 400 percent.” Stockholm Syndrome is a powerful management tool.
The emotional labor being extracted from Pret employees exemplifies the way tight labor markets give employers the chance to cement expectations of a more pliant disposition from workers. The new normal is a grotesque sycophancy sugarcoated as a fun, cheerful workplace where “teamwork” rules. In an email, Anton says Pret’s approach elicits an “unprecedented self-relation — instrumentalization of mood and affect as a way of producing surplus value. It can only end in a psychotic break.” I’m inclined to agree.
I’ve put a YouTube slide together with a real Mystery Shopper report where a staff member received £100 for giving the Mystery Shopper a freebie, while the whole shop staff lost bonus because there was some selection of products missing.
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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. 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. 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. Thank you for reading/listening.
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. 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.
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.
Thank you for reading/listening.
And I speak from a former Pret A Manger perspective. Having been frozen in fear under little dwarfs of people whose only legacy is money, nothing else but money. I have survived Pret A Manger. And only those who care for low-wage workers will understand and support small independent businesses.
An established journalist questioned some people sometime in 2013, when I was in the middle of smiling for my wage and to avoid getting fear managed. Timothy Noah wrote, because he was at a distance from these greedy “leaders” called Clive Schlee, Pano Christou, David Carter & Co.
I was too close to the elephant to smell the rat.
And that’s why I love the below article, because Noah writes from a distance what I experienced up close.
Mr. Timothy Noah, thank you for being a true journalist.
For a good long while, I let myself think that the slender platinum blonde behind the counter at Pret A Manger was in love with me. How else to explain her visible glow whenever I strolled into the shop for a sandwich or a latte? Then I realized she lit up for the next person in line, and the next. Radiance was her job.
Pret A Manger—a London-based chain that has spread over the past decade to the East Coast and Chicago—is at the cutting edge of what the Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls “emotional labor.” Emotional because the worker doesn’t create or even necessarily sell a product or service so much as make the customer experience a positive feeling. Labor because, as Hochschild wrote in The Managed Heart (1983), the worker must “induce or suppress [his or her own] feeling” to achieve the desired effect in others. Creepy as it sounds, emotional labor is a growing presence in this economy, coming soon to a fast-food outlet near you.
The British journalist Paul Myerscough flagged Pret’s reliance on emotional labor in a fascinating recent essay for the London Review of Books. (He called it “affective labor,” a phrase borrowed from Marxist scholarship.)1 Pret workers, Myerscough noted, are required to master what the company calls the “Pret Behaviours,” which in addition to the usual requirements—courtesy, efficiency, etc.—include “has presence,” “creates a sense of fun,” and “is happy to be themself” [sic]. (A list of the Pret Behaviours, posted on the company website before the London Review article appeared, has since been removed.)
Pret doesn’t merely want its employees to lend their minds and bodies; it wants their souls, too. It will not employ anyone who is “here just for the money.” Noting that one Pret worker in London got fired soon after he tried to start a union—the company maintained it was for making homophobic comments—Myerscough suggested the worker’s true offense was being unhappy enough to want to start a union, since “Pret workers aren’t supposed to be unhappy.” The sin commenceth with the thought, not the deed.
Emotional labor is not itself new. Prostitutes have faked orgasms for millennia. With greater sincerity (one hopes), undertakers calm the grieving, nurses comfort the sick, and migrant nannies lavish on other people’s children the love they aren’t present to furnish back home. Flight attendants, in the pre-feminist era, calmed jittery flyers by being pretty, friendly, even a little bit flirtatious; this ended with deregulation in the early ’80s as airlines stopped competing on service and started competing on price.
In all these instances, emotional labor served (legitimately or not) identifiable emotional needs. That’s not true at Pret. Fast-food service is not one of the caring professions. The only imperatives typically addressed in a Pret shop are hunger and thirst. Why must the person who sells me a cheddar and tomato sandwich have “presence” and “create a sense of fun”? Why can’t he or she be doing it “just for the money”? I don’t expect the swiping of my credit card to be anybody’s vocation. This is, after all, the economy’s bottommost rung.
Pret keeps its sales clerks in a state of enforced rapture through policies vaguely reminiscent of the old East German Stasi. A “mystery shopper” visits every Pret outlet once a week. If the employee who rings up the sale is appropriately ebullient, then everyone in the shop gets a bonus. If not, nobody does. This system turns peers into enthusiasm cops, further constricting any space for a reserved and private self. And these cops require literal stroking. In other workplaces, touching a co-worker may get you fired, but at Pret you have to worry about not touching co-workers enough. “The first thing I look at,” Chief Executive Clive Schlee told The Telegraph last March, “is whether staff are touching each other . . . I can almost predict sales on body language alone.”2
In the three decades since Hochschild published The Managed Heart, the emotional economy has spread like a noxious weed to dry cleaners, nail salons, even computer-repair shops. (Think of Apple’s Genius Bars—parodied by The Onion as “Friend Bars”—where employees are taught to be empathetic and use words like “feel” as much as possible.) Back when she wrote her book, Hochschild estimated that about one-third of all jobs entailed “substantial demands for emotional labor.” Today, she figures it’s more like half. This is, among other things, terrible news for men, who (unlike women) are not taught from birth how to make other people happy. Perhaps that explains why men are losing ground in the service economy.
What’s driving this growth? Hochschild thinks it partly reflects a class-based change in consumption patterns. As income inequality reorients the consumer marketplace toward luxury services for the rich, like “destination clubs” and “concierge medicine,” consumer expectations change and trickle down. The new services “set the standards for lower-cost versions” that cater to the merely affluent. Pret shops are typically located in neighborhoods that bustle with busy professionals whom Pret fusses over like the maître d’ at Alain Ducasse. The more the rich get used to fawning service, the more the rest of us—or rather, the rest of us who can afford to buy a sandwich rather than brown-bag it from home—find we rather like it, too. Eventually everybody will have to act like a goddamned concierge. I don’t want to believe this, but I fear it may be true.
Why do Pret workers accept the customer’s emotional state as their personal responsibility? For some, we may presume an extremely sunny personality that has merely found a serendipitous outlet. (They are selected for this quality, after all.) But what about the rest? In England, the vast majority of Pret workers are foreign immigrants, but that seems less true here. “My only thought,” says Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown, “is that it is such a buyer’s market in the labor market—because of so many unemployed workers per job—that employers can get away with a lot of demands on their workers that ordinarily wouldn’t be possible.” In other words—shhhh!—Pret clerks love-bomb customers for the money (which isn’t bad by fast-food standards).
Now that I know Pret’s slender blonde doesn’t love me, I prefer the human contact at a D.C. lunch counter called C.F. Folks. The food is infinitely better. But I also like that the service is slower, the staff is older and grumpier, and the prevailing emotion is “Get over yourself.” Try touching someone at C.F. Folks, and you just might get slugged.
Specifically, the idea of “affective labor” came from the Italian Autonomists. One of the central texts, apparently, is Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, published in 2000. Don’t ask me what this book says because I don’t speak Marxist.
The last thing Schlee looks at, to judge from my own experience, is whether the company returns calls from the press. I phoned Pret HQ twice, twice pushing “0” for “operator,” and twice got a recording. I twice left messages saying I was on deadline with a story about Pret, and in the second message I specified that the story was critical. My call was not returned, and I’m not convinced anybody ever even heard my messages. So much for the personal touch.
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. I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather starve and 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.
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: 1. “Late Night Girl’s” Story with Pret and 2. Pushing Back Against Pret.
Thank you for reading/listening.
I came across a person on Twitter who complained to Pret that their baguette was over-salted. Now I don’t run to the rescue of Pret to defend them, by all means, but having worked at Pret and having had to deal with countless fake complaints of “customers” who were fishing for a cash refund and/or freebie, or even attention, and stress staff unnecessarily via HQ or Twitter complaints, I explained to this person that Pret does not put “plain” salt in this baguette, or any products at that. And also she said that she “ordered” a baguette in Pret, I explained to her that products are not ordered in Pret! These 2 things gave her away as it being a fake complaint!
She had no photo of the baguette and refused to describe how the over-salted baguette looked like, before then diverting to my spelling because she didn’t know what to say anymore! 😀 I’ve had customers who put a heap of salt on a product, from the salt sachets Pret provides by the sugar and cutlery, then came to me and demanded a refund. When I was new at Pret I fell for it, because I didn’t know that Pret doesn’t put salt like this on products. I was informed by a colleague and later worked in the kitchen for a few weeks to learn how the products are assembled. Since then this number didn’t work with me anymore.
I explained to her that it would be better to find a REAL and truthful reason of complaint to get a freebie.
And then I checked her Tweets and Replies and found the most professional complainer, who also has an “accomplice” who “likes” most her Tweets 😀
Let’s take a deep breath and start this blog entry with some positivity and some heartwarming quotes which this professional complainer either posted or retweeted (lol!). Let’s start with a grateful attitude, shall we?!
“Never be ashamed of who you are” – Yeah, but let’s shame others publicly who work their butts off, hey!
So, here’s a handkerchief for poor poor Rosie Gillard
And it is fitting that you see a bunch of toilets on her current (5th January 2020) Twitter profile as it goes well with the fact that some people are so full of shit!
Now to business. THIS is how Rosie Gillard “lives” the above quotes she quoted or RT’d, and then it makes a whole lot more sense what Sophie McBain wrote in her excellent article on emotional labour, quote:
»Workers are put at high risk of anxiety and burnout, while consumers are emboldened to behave aggressively.«
From The NewStatesman“How Emotional Labour Harms us all” by Sophie McBain.
I hope you’re sitting down and not eating or drinking anything that may get stuck in your throat! This is THE worst “customer” complainer I have ever come across, and I’ve seen a lot as a Team Leader / MOD especially! It’s the frequency and that she seems to be looking for things to complain about, with such coldness, naming and shaming service workers, what makes this so bad. And even where she compliments a staff member, it comes across very manipulative and insincere. I shudder at people’s behaviour like this! And I frankly don’t believe many of her complaints, or the “severity” of her complaints. Apart from the 2 Toilet complaints with photos, there are no photos, just public naming and shaming staff of various businesses.
From the above hypocritical quotes, to this verbal brutality and rudeness towards hard-working, low-paid people. It’s one thing to have a genuine complaint, it’s another to do it seemingly professional and with such coldness and attention seeking towards overworked staff. If this girl was in my business, I would throw her out in a heartbeat! And I’m sure in a small independent business she would not DARE to put this bahaviour on, she would find herself outside faster than she entered! She takes advantage of the political correctness and the aim for profit in large businesses. But low-wage workers are paying the price for her disgusting conduct.
In chronological order starting with a Tweet she tweeted into the atmosphere without explanation or tweeting as a response to someone, just an insult into air, like as so many of her Tweets by her “accomplice” who equally is looking for fault and wants to go the “extra mile” in customer service:
Look it the mirror cupcake, look in the mirror!
I don’t blame them, bunny, or are those pigs ears?
Here she RT’d someone complaining about OTHER people’s selfishness who gave HER a GIFT and wrote her a note on the gift tag! 😀 The ungratefulness and appalling, really embarrassing rudeness to call the gift giver “selfish”, because they wrote a note on the tag of THEIR gift to her!
I am rarely for loss of words, but this one did it! And Rosie RT’d this, as this rudeness and ungratefulness is just up her alley!
I have never even seen or heard a Pret customer being so disgusting and rude! And some are bad! But this gal tops them all, hands down!
Link to my conversation with her. Her complaint is fishy for many reasons! 😀
And I finish with how I started, with her words to hit home the appalling hypocrisy and viciousness she portrays. Absolutely disgusting!
Well smile Rosie Gillard customer police! Smile!
And in case she deletes the feed, here are the screenshots. My conversation with her was before I saw her professional complaining feed to different companies:
For new readers of my blog, please read on Emotional Labour. I collected articles and write on it myself of the abuse by companies and customers alike. I know from having lived and worked with many people, in many places, that sooner or later this kind of attitude will bite her in the butt. I hope she’ll learn her lesson sooner rather than later, because otherwise she would make a bitter old woman should she continue on this path.
A collection on Emotional Labour articles from my own experience and from brilliant journalists and researchers:
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The above slideshow is just a selection, the list goes on in → Pret Staff Complaints and extensive accounts of Pret’s systemic bullying behind the facade, even witnessed by customers:
How to guarantee a return to the business with vibrant, consistent service and a generous approach.
As recommendations of Pret A Manger customer service has increased lately, with praise for the great staff who with smiles, helpfulness and generosity are impressing customers, after I spilled the beans on why staff are so “happy”, I want to put into one blog entry the secrets for this. Why are staff who earn £8.25 an hour, always seemingly so “happy”, chatty and smiley in a highly intense, noisy, hot and stressful work environment for 8 – 10 hours daily?
In short: Mystery Shopper cash incentives and fear management.
I put a YouTube slide together with some of the questions weekly Mystery Shoppers (MS) are tasked by Pret to test staff on in every shop. In the slide I concentrate on the smiley service.
UPDATE: 28. October 2019
A customer witnessed a bullying incident that usually happens behind closed doors! In this post, scroll down to the screenshots of reviews and Tweets on what many staff experience behind the scenes:
When the MS visit has been successful, all the staff in the shop receive their weekly bonus, which is £1 extra per hour worked that week. BUT, those who are sick that week, even just for one day, and those who come to work late, will not receive the bonus. Many Managers use this for fear management. If a Manager doesn’t like a particular Team Member, and that TM is late even just 5 minutes while usually being on time mostly, the boss cuts their bonus. No mercy. I worked with colleagues who even got their bonus cut when they came to work unshaven. Or I myself was threatened with a bonus cut when I forgot something banal. So, if a staff member received bonus and worked 40 hours that week, they get an extra £40 on top of their wages.
Additionally, if an individual staff member, including the manager do “outstanding” service and impress the MS, for example by giving free coffees or other items, this individual employee can get an extra £100 or even £200 if all the scores are perfect.
I write extensively about the free coffee “myth” in Pret and why many customers never get a free coffee in years, while others receive free items weekly, some even daily:
Managers receive their bonuses each quarter on a variety of issues like profit, how much/little waste they have, how much they managed to save on labour, cutting hours (Pret under-staffs throughout the board to maximize profit and Manager’s bonus), routine health and safety checks etc.
But the biggest chunk of Managers, upper Managers and regional Leaders bonuses is the Mystery Shopper results. That’s why staff are stressed intensely about this.
I had one Manager take me aside as I was the Team Leader and say to me: “I close my eyes to everything, but not the Mystery Shopper”. Meaning, if I made mistakes or even did dodgy things with health and safety, the cashing up, the Team etc. he would close his eyes and not get me in trouble. But if the Mystery Shopper results were poor, I would get in trouble, as part of Team Leader’s responsibility is to “engage” the Team to always smile etc. Like a cheer-leader. The above YouTube slide shows this clearly.
Not floating my own boat, but I had most of the time excellent MS results and still even kept the MS reports for my protection as one Area Manager targeted me alleging I didn’t engage the Team, while Mystery Shopper after Mystery Shopper and even regular customers said otherwise and constantly commended my Teams. Quite sad that I had to keep those reports for my protection. But for me, even if Pret would have scrapped the Mystery Shopper scheme, I would have still worked the way I worked as I love people and customers pay a lot of money for products.
I did not “push” my colleagues to smile, be friendly etc. I encouraged my Teams, I asked them how they were, I gave them extra breaks if they were exhausted, sick or depressed, I supported them and cared about them. And that reflected on their service and in interacting with each others and the customers. But the general tone in Pret is to “force” staff to smile, at times threatening them with disciplinary and even job loss. I’ve seen, heard and witnessed it all and had to console many many times Team Members crying in the staff room or on their way home.
Only two of the many Mystery Shopper comments below. The MS commented on both individual Staff Members and all the Teams as a whole in our service.
Excerpts from two different Mystery Shopper and shops/team: (Ctrl & + to zoom in)
So, shops are tested on if they have a certain amount of selection set for a certain time of the business times, are tested on cleanliness, how the overall atmosphere of the shop is, if the service doesn’t take longer than 1 (one) minute etc.etc. etc.
But the most important thing that shops are tested on is customer service. Are individual and all staff smiling, seem happy, chatty etc. The above YouTube slide goes into detail on this. Pret does not care how staff feel, if they are bereaved, depressed etc. I was traumatically bereaved and was bullied and targeted when the Mystery Shopper commented that I didn’t smile. I did smile most of the time and have that in black and white (sad to say!), but there is no mercy, no empathy as profits are more important.
An excellent article about this I found and commented on: “How Emotional Labour Harms us all” is about the increasing competition in the service industry and how low-wage workers are forced to perform emotional labour and a big hype to create the impression they are so happy in the company.
So, people seem to have been “recruited”, even on the Pret USA Twitter feed, to tweet about the smiley and great staff calling them by name and the shop. All these Tweets sound similar and seem to have been organized. It’s also easy to see that they are recruited because hardly anyone responds to my Tweets, so they know about my writings 😀 . But my response is important as new readers find these Tweets who don’t know about Pret’s Mystery Shopper scheme.
UPDATE November 2019 / February 2020
And here’s the proof that Pret recruited people to tweet! 😉
With the collections I do of staff reviews, of course Pret stole the idea to collect their own customer reviews. YET, Pret keeps missing to have genuine staff reviews on Twitter as they don’t want me to confront recruited staff Tweets.
These “recruited” Tweets have massively increased since the beginning of October 2019 like I’ve never seen before since I read Pret Tweets from 2018. These customer Tweets started at about the second week of October 2019, after I increasingly blog and tweet about the Mystery Shopper in Pret. It’s also clear they have been recruited as hardly anyone responds to my Tweets about the Emotional Labour and Mystery Shopper incentives, meaning these people who tweet know about me and my writings.
Also, knowing Pret and how they “respond” indirectly to my writings, they will NOW (compared to before) pass on these Tweets to the shops, so that staff think Pret cares. Pret has lost lots of staff, of course many apply for jobs, but my blog and others is a sore in Pret’s sight. So, the idea is now to encourage staff, which is good, but work conditions remain the same while staff continue to get brain-washed.
And here’s the first Tweet on 20. November 2019, in this case by Pret’s USA Twitter account of the “recruited” customer Tweets. Pret again steals what I’ve been doing, keep on keeping Pret! 😀
Of course it is better that customers go on Twitter & Co to commend staff (many wordings are similar 😀 … come on people, at least make an effort and get more creative!), than to complain about low-wage workers publicly, who in turn cannot defend themselves as they are unaware that they were just negatively called out, even by name on Twitter.
Yet, I respond as a former Team Leader having survived this abuse and fear management, that the reason why staff, some of whom are depressed, even suicidal, seem so happy, is the reality of Mystery Shopper cash incentives and fear management. People need their jobs, have kids to raise and Uni tuition to pay. And the staff reviews on Glassdoor and Co including YouTube, Twitter etc. give a grim reality how depressing it is to work like this.
One such review is THE most poignant report on behind the scenes in Pret. It’s from a kitchen worker who also had to jump in to do customer service with fake smiles, as shops are always understaffed.
The review is the one that starts with the large red letters in below slide show: “This job can annihilate every piece of humanity inside of you.”
and ends: “You will lose everything that makes you human.”
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The above slideshow is just a selection, the list goes on in → Pret Staff Complaints
So, dear Pret Customer, if you have been recruited to leave recommendations of Pret staff or not, only you know, but I am writing to make people aware of WHY low-paid employees in a high intense, stressful work environment, with often bullying managers (NEW incident caught by customer), smile so much against their true emotions. I was recommended many many times by customers and Mystery Shoppers on my professional, friendly, generous and smiley service. But no-one knew that at times I left my shift headed for the bridge. My story is in the below audio player in an interview on a podcast based in California.
There’s a reason why CEO Clive Schlee “retired” with such poor scores on Glassdoor & Co and the general Pret staff scores, as staff dare to speak out anonymous more than on the often rigged annual Pret questionnaires.
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. I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather starve and 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.
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: 1. “Late Night Girl’s” Story with Pret and 2. Pushing Back Against Pret.
Thank you for reading/listening.
To avoid repeating words in Tweets, I put this in a blog entry.
I mention in my other blog entry already that Pret seemed to have recruited Tweeters to post on the smiley customer service and freebies. This started around the first week in October 2019. Knowing Pret’s little tricks, I want to post for any new reader oblivious to why Pret staff always seem so “happy”, while in reality they smile, are “generous” etc. for Mystery Shopper £200 incentives and to avoid getting fear managed.
I put a few questions that weekly Mystery Shoppers are tasked to test staff on in a YouTube slideshow. I concentrated mainly on the smiley service questions and the Barista 1 minute rule. I left out other questions like Mystery Shoppers counting the product lines – how many products at certain peek/off peek times are on display, or how clean the shop is etc.
If staff fail on ANY of those points, the whole team loses bonus. If ONE staff member doesn’t smile enough or isn’t chatty, the WHOLE Team is in danger of losing the bonus. If the Team get the bonus, or even if the Team does NOT get the bonus that week, but ONE Team Member does “outstanding service”, that Team Member can get extra £100 on top of their wages and bonus. If the overall scores of the shop is perfect and the 1 Team Member blows the Mystery Shopper away with their “outstanding” service, then the TM can get £200 on top of their wages.
That’s why throughout Pret shops worldwide customers wonder why staff are always so “cheery”, even while low paid, stressed, loud shops etc.
UPDATE November 2019 / February 2020
And here’s the proof that Pret recruited people to tweet! 😉
With the collections I do of staff reviews, of course Pret stole the idea to collect their own customer reviews. YET, Pret keeps missing to have genuine staff reviews on Twitter as they don’t want me to confront recruited staff Tweets.
For visually impaired readers, I put some examples below on what Mystery Shoppers are tasked to test staff on. I concentrate mainly on Emotional Labour.
Just a few reviews from staff on Glassdoor, Indeed & Co., there is much much more, but to not get the blog too long again, I just post a few. For an extensive, but not exhaustive list that has to be updated, please visit: Long List of Pret Staff Complaints
A few customer Tweets:
There are many more Tweets from customers / the public on this, but I try to keep it short.
Here are some of the questions the Mystery Shopper tests staff on, in particular on the service. I used comments from different Myserty Shoppers: (Some of the words I underlined to highlight)
Pret: We aim to create an enjoyable atmosphere in all of our shops. Taking into account how busy the shop is, please rate the atmosphere in the shop at the point of entry. Mystery Shopper: The atmosphere was enjoyable. The staff members that I came into contact with were helpful and polite.
Pret: We aim to keep the exterior of our shops looking inviting at all times – this includes: the outside seating area, the outside signage, outside windows and door frames and outside entrance area. Please rate how inviting the shop was from the outside, bearing in mind how busy the area was. MS: The cleanliness of the exterior was exceptional. The windows, door frames and signage were very clean.
Pret: We aim to serve our customers within 1 minute of joining the queue. Were you served in a reasonable time, bearing in mind how busy the shop was and the number of open tills? MS: I was served very quickly, after 15 seconds, very quick service.
Pret: We aim to serve our customers their hot drink within 1 minute of payment. Did you receive your hot drink order within a reasonable time, bearing in mind how busy the shop was? MS: I received my hot drink very quickly, after 30 seconds, quick service.
Screenshot of comment:
It took 30 seconds in above and 20 seconds in below screenshot to get the drink. And then customers go on Twitter complaining why they received a half empty cup, or their coffee is too cold etc. I wrote in the YouTube slide that customers are happy to wait 10 minutes at Starbucks, but are not willing to wait 2 minutes at Pret. Pret has spoiled customers and the speed of service is to have a fast customer flow = money flow.
Pret: We aim to connect with every customer with eye contact, a smile and some polite remarks. Rate the engagement level of the person who served you at the till. MS: Team members should smile at customers and may be not work when ill, as team member was coughing whilst serving me and was therefore not feeling cheerful enough to smile that day.
Screenshot of above comment:
Pret staff not only lose a day’s wages when sick per day, but also the whole week’s bonus.
A Tweet by a Pret staff on this sickness policy forcing her to work while having the flew:
Another upset staff member on the sickness policy, losing income:
Pret: We aim to be attentive to each customer’s needs. Rate the engagement level of the whole shop team during your visit. MS: The team member was friendly but to be engaged and positive, the team member could have made small talk or a friendly remark.
Pret: Was any one member of our team very helpful, extremely charming and/or absolutely outstanding? MS: No.
If there was outstanding service, then the MS would briefly describe and this 1 Team Member or Manager would get the “outstanding card”, which is not literally a card, but the £100 or if perfect scores the £200 cash reward. That’s why staff compete for this and “bounce” around like seemingly happy bunnies on speed!
This is what an MS wrote about a TM’s outstanding service:
Pret: Was any one member of our team very helpful, extremely charming and/or absolutely outstanding? MS: [Name of TM] was the team member who served me. I thought that she offered a charming service. [Name of TM] is female, about 5′ 6″ tall, with medium length, blonde hair worn in a ponytail, and was not wearing glasses. She went out of her way to be friendly and engaging, and even brought over my toastie for me. I was made to feel as though my custom was valued.
In this case the TM got the £200 because the overall scores of the shop was perfect. If some points were missing, the TM would have gotten £100 reward. Even if the whole shop Team lost the bonus, the TM could still get the cash reward of £100 as their individual reward if the Mystery Shopper is blown away by their service.
If Team bonus is lost, whoever responsible for losing the bonus because that person didn’t smile for example, this person will get fear managed and peer pressured.
I was told of by my boss because I coughed while the Mystery Shopper as I was sick. The Mystery Shopper commented on this that staff should stay home when sick as I wasn’t feeling cheerful enough to smile while sick. What the MS doesn’t know nor seems to care about is, that staff are not paid sick leave the first 2 – 3 days, depending on age.
So, we had to constantly decide if to stay home and lose income, ro go to work and risk losing Mystery Shopper bonus for the whole and then get in trouble.
To cut this short, I write and collect on the subject of forced Emotional Labour on low-wage staff in the service industry. It is amazing how people don’t want to accept that low- paid workers are forced to smile all day and most people seem to enjoy getting “stroked” in their own emotions by low-wage staff. What the former staff member called “humiliating” I go a step further and call this “emotional prostitution”. Staff who have to top up their low pay, compete for Mystery Shopper cash rewards and recognition.
I was bullied during bereavement when I couldn’t always smile. But when I did smile while being traumatized and on autopilot, my bosses never bothered to encourage me whatsoever. Only when a negative comment came, did they see it fit to warn me and my colleagues.
Mystery Shopper bonus count towards the largest chunk of Manager’s and Upper Managers’ quarterly bonuses. So, the pressure on this fake happiness is the biggest on staff.
If anyone who regularly goes to Pret really cares about this, I collected writings on Emotional Labour: The Dangers of Emotional Labour
And I continue to ask for independent investigation into Pret staff suicides.
Timothy Noah quote, highligths by me:
»For a good long while, I let myself think that the slender platinum blonde behind the counter at Pret A Manger was in love with me. How else to explain her visible glow whenever I strolled into the shop for a sandwich or a latte? Then I realized she lit up for the next person in line, and the next. Radiance was her job. …
Pret keeps its sales clerks in a state of enforced rapture through policies vaguely reminiscent of the old East German Stasi. A “mystery shopper” visits every Pret outlet once a week. If the employee who rings up the sale is appropriately ebullient, then everyone in the shop gets a bonus. If not, nobody does.This system turns peers into enthusiasm cops, further constricting any space for a reserved and private self. …
Why do Pret workers accept the customer’s emotional state as their personal responsibility? … In England, the vast majority of Pret workers are foreign immigrants, but that seems less true here [USA]. “My only thought,” says Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown, “is that it is such a buyer’s market in the labor market—because of so many unemployed workers per job—that employers can get away with a lot of demands on their workers that ordinarily wouldn’t be possible.” In other words—shhhh!—Pret clerks love-bomb customers for the money…«
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The above slideshow is just a selection, the list goes on in → Pret Staff Complaints
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. I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather starve and 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.
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: 1. “Late Night Girl’s” Story with Pret and 2. Pushing Back Against Pret.
Thank you for reading/listening.
I’d like to post an article by Timothy Noah from 2013 on the “Labor of Love – The enforced happiness of Pret A Manger”. This is a great article from an outside and a customer point of view, lucky enough who’s a journalist with a discerning eye. I want to highlight a few things, but the whole article can be found on the New Republic site. I will highlight in bold what I feel is important. But really worth reading the whole article!
Quote:
»For a good long while, I let myself think that the slender platinum blonde behind the counter at Pret A Manger was in love with me. How else to explain her visible glow whenever I strolled into the shop for a sandwich or a latte? Then I realized she lit up for the next person in line, and the next. Radiance was her job.«
»Pret A Manger—a London-based chain that has spread over the past decade to the East Coast and Chicago—is at the cutting edge of what the Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls “emotional labor.” Emotional because the worker doesn’t create or even necessarily sell a product or service so much as make the customer experience a positive feeling. Labor because, as Hochschild wrote in The Managed Heart (1983), the worker must “induce or suppress [his or her own] feeling” to achieve the desired effect in others. Creepy as it sounds, emotional labor is a growing presence in this economy, coming soon to a fast-food outlet near you.« …
»Pret doesn’t merely want its employees to lend their minds and bodies; it wants their souls, too. It will not employ anyone who is “here just for the money.” Noting that one Pret worker in London got fired soon after he tried to start a union—the company maintained it was for making homophobic comments—Myerscough suggested the worker’s true offense was being unhappy enough to want to start a union, since “Pret workers aren’t supposed to be unhappy.”«
»Emotional labor is not itself new. Prostitutes have faked orgasms for millennia. With greater sincerity (one hopes), undertakers calm the grieving, nurses comfort the sick, and migrant nannies lavish on other people’s children the love they aren’t present to furnish back home. Flight attendants, in the pre-feminist era, calmed jittery flyers by being pretty, friendly, even a little bit flirtatious; this ended with deregulation in the early ’80s as airlines stopped competing on service and started competing on price.«
»In all these instances, emotional labor served (legitimately or not) identifiable emotional needs. That’s not true at Pret. Fast-food service is not one of the caring professions. The only imperatives typically addressed in a Pret shop are hunger and thirst. Why must the person who sells me a cheddar and tomato sandwich have “presence” and “create a sense of fun”? Why can’t he or she be doing it “just for the money”? I don’t expect the swiping of my credit card to be anybody’s vocation. This is, after all, the economy’s bottommost rung.«
»Pret keeps its sales clerks in a state of enforced rapture through policies vaguely reminiscent of the old East German Stasi. A “mystery shopper” visits every Pret outlet once a week. If the employee who rings up the sale is appropriately ebullient, then everyone in the shop gets a bonus. If not, nobody does. This system turns peers into enthusiasm cops, further constricting any space for a reserved and private self.«
Bingo! I want to add something here, one of many customer Tweets regarding the “smiles” and “cheer leading” that has even those business people and marketing gurus fooled:
etc.
This “cheer leading” or what other people called “mandatory smile” and “smile by contract”, apart from the Team bonus for everyone, can also bring ONE Team Member what Pret calls an “outstanding card” (OC). An OC is not literally a card, it is a cash reward of now £100 or even £200 if the overall shop scores are perfect. So, even if the shop/team lose the bonus, because the shop was dirty or there wasn’t enough selection in the fridge (the Mystery Shopper COUNTS the product lines!), even with a lost bonus for the team, ONE individual Team Member can still get £100 reward if the Mystery Shopper is blown away by their extra kindness, smiles, generosity, chatting etc. It’s basically kissing butt all day in extreme stress for extra cash.
If the bonus is lost, the person or persons responsible for the loss get fear managed, at times even threatened with their job security. Even bereaved staff will find little mercy as I share my story at the very bottom audio player in an interview.
Welcome to Pret A Manger.
Further in the article:
»And these cops require literal stroking. In other workplaces, touching a co-worker may get you fired, but at Pret you have to worry about not touching co-workers enough. “The first thing I look at,” Chief Executive Clive Schlee told The Telegraph last March, “is whether staff are touching each other . . . I can almost predict sales on body language alone.”«
Yep, Clive Schlee’s manipulating approach for profit!
Further in the article:
»In the three decades since Hochschild published The Managed Heart, the emotional economy has spread like a noxious weed to dry cleaners, nail salons, even computer-repair shops. (Think of Apple’s Genius Bars—parodied by The Onion as “Friend Bars”—where employees are taught to be empathetic and use words like “feel” as much as possible.)«
»Pret shops are typically located in neighborhoods that bustle with busy professionals whom Pret fusses over like the maître d’ at Alain Ducasse. The more the rich get used to fawning service, the more the rest of us—or rather, the rest of us who can afford to buy a sandwich rather than brown-bag it from home—find we rather like it, too. Eventually everybody will have to act like a goddamned concierge. I don’t want to believe this, but I fear it may be true.«
»Why do Pret workers accept the customer’s emotional state as their personal responsibility? For some, we may presume an extremely sunny personality that has merely found a serendipitous outlet. (They are selected for this quality, after all.) But what about the rest? In England, the vast majority of Pret workers are foreign immigrants, but that seems less true here. “My only thought,” says Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown, “is that it is such a buyer’s market in the labor market—because of so many unemployed workers per job—that employers can get away with a lot of demands on their workers that ordinarily wouldn’t be possible.” In other words—shhhh!—Pret clerks love-bomb customers for the money (which isn’t bad by fast-food standards).«
Bingo!
»Now that I know Pret’s slender blonde doesn’t love me, I prefer the human contact at a D.C. lunch counter called C.F. Folks. The food is infinitely better. But I also like that the service is slower, the staff is older and grumpier, and the prevailing emotion is “Get over yourself.” Try touching someone at C.F. Folks, and you just might get slugged.«
Beautiful! 😀
»The last thing Schlee looks at, to judge from my own experience, is whether the company returns calls from the press. I phoned Pret HQ twice, twice pushing “0” for “operator,” and twice got a recording. I twice left messages saying I was on deadline with a story about Pret, and in the second message I specified that the story was critical. My call was not returned, and I’m not convinced anybody ever even heard my messages. So much for the personal touch.«
I created a list of links to articles that deal with “emotional labour” (or “labor” for American readers): >>> The Dangers of Emotional Labour
I made a YouTube slide with only a few of the many questions weekly Mystery Shoppers are tasked by Pret to test low-wage staff on. Mystery Shoppers tests staff on things like the amount of selection during certain times, cleanliness of the shop, the overall atmosphere etc. But I concentrated mainly on the smiley and service questions.
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. I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather starve and 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. 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: 1. “Late Night Girl’s” Story with Pret and 2. Pushing Back Against Pret. Thank you for reading/listening.
How to guarantee a return to the business with vibrant, consistent service and a generous approach.
As recommendations of Pret A Manger customer service has increased lately which look like recruited Tweet, with praise for the great staff who with smiles, helpfulness and generosity are impressing customers, after I spilled the beans on why staff are so “happy”, I want to put into one blog entry the secrets for this. There has been an increase of Tweets about the “great” and smiley staff in Prets, calling them by name etc. These are obviously RECRUITED Tweets as I have been exposing Pret A Manger on their bullying culture and the forced happiness.
Anyone can research and see that these Tweets started increasingly around mid October 2019 with 2 – 5 Tweets like these daily. How much did Pret pay those recruits? A free coffee? A £5/$5 gift card? Pret has no courage to respond to me, so they do their typical tricks to continue to fool the public.
UPDATE November 2019 / February 2020
And here’s the proof that Pret recruited people to tweet! 😉
With the collections I do of staff reviews, of course Pret stole the idea to collect their own customer reviews. YET, Pret keeps missing to have genuine staff reviews on Twitter as they don’t want me to confront recruited staff Tweets.
Why are staff who earn £8.65 an hour, always seemingly so “happy”, chatty and smiley in a highly intense, noisy, hot and stressful work environment for 8 – 10 hours daily?
In short: Mystery Shopper cash incentives and fear management.
I put a YouTube slide together with some of the questions weekly Mystery Shoppers (MS) are tasked by Pret to test staff on in every shop. In the slide I concentrate on the smiley service.
UPDATE: 28. October 2019
A customer witnessed a bullying incident that usually happens behind closed doors! In this post, scroll down to the screenshots of reviews and Tweets on what many staff experience behind the scenes:
When the MS visit has been successful, all the staff in the shop receive their weekly bonus, which is £1 extra per hour worked that week. BUT, those who are sick that week, even just for one day, and those who come to work late, will not receive the bonus. Many Managers use this for fear management. If a Manager doesn’t like a particular Team Member, and that TM is late even just 5 minutes while usually being on time mostly, the boss cuts their bonus. No mercy. I worked with colleagues who even got their bonus cut when they came to work unshaven. Or I myself was threatened with a bonus cut when I forgot something banal. So, if a staff member received bonus and worked 40 hours that week, they get an extra £40 on top of their wages.
Additionally, if an individual staff member, including the manager do “outstanding” service and impress the MS, for example by giving free coffees or other items, this individual employee can get an extra £100 or even £200 if all the scores are perfect.
I write extensively about the free coffee “myth” in Pret and why many customers never get a free coffee in years, while others receive free items weekly, some even daily:
Managers receive their bonuses each quarter on a variety of issues like profit, how much/little waste they have, how much they managed to save on labour, cutting hours (Pret under-staffs throughout the board to maximize profit and Manager’s bonus), routine health and safety checks etc.
But the biggest chunk of Managers, upper Managers and regional Leaders bonuses is the Mystery Shopper results. That’s why staff are stressed intensely about this.
I had one Manager take me aside as I was the Team Leader and say to me: “I close my eyes to everything, but not the Mystery Shopper”. Meaning, if I made mistakes or even did dodgy things with health and safety, the cashing up, the Team etc. he would close his eyes and not get me in trouble. But if the Mystery Shopper results were poor, I would get in trouble, as part of Team Leader’s responsibility is to “engage” the Team to always smile etc. Like a cheer-leader. The above YouTube slide shows this clearly.
Not floating my own boat, but I had most of the time excellent MS results and still even kept the MS reports for my protection as one Area Manager targeted me alleging I didn’t engage the Team, while Mystery Shopper after Mystery Shopper and even regular customers said otherwise and constantly commended my Teams. Quite sad that I had to keep those reports for my protection. But for me, even if Pret would have scrapped the Mystery Shopper scheme, I would have still worked the way I worked as I love people and customers pay a lot of money for products.
I did not “push” my colleagues to smile, be friendly etc. I encouraged my Teams, I asked them how they were, I gave them extra breaks if they were exhausted, sick or depressed, I supported them and cared about them. And that reflected on their service and in interacting with each others and the customers. But the general tone in Pret is to “force” staff to smile, at times threatening them with disciplinary and even job loss. I’ve seen, heard and witnessed it all and had to console many many times Team Members crying in the staff room or on their way home.
Only two of the many Mystery Shopper comments below. The MS commented on both individual Staff Members and all the Teams as a whole in our service.
Excerpts from two different Mystery Shopper and shops/team: (Ctrl & + to zoom in)
So, shops are tested on if they have a certain amount of selection set for a certain time of the business times, are tested on cleanliness, how the overall atmosphere of the shop is, if the service doesn’t take longer than 1 (one) minute etc.etc. etc.
But the most important thing that shops are tested on is customer service. Are individual and all staff smiling, seem happy, chatty etc. The above YouTube slide goes into detail on this. Pret does not care how staff feel, if they are bereaved, depressed etc. I was traumatically bereaved and was bullied and targeted when the Mystery Shopper commented that I didn’t smile. I did smile most of the time and have that in black and white (sad to say!), but there is no mercy, no empathy as profits are more important.
An excellent article about this I found and commented on: “How Emotional Labour Harms us all” is about the increasing competition in the service industry and how low-wage workers are forced to perform emotional labour and a big hype to create the impression they are so happy in the company.
So, people seem to have been “recruited”, even on the Pret USA Twitter feed, to tweet about the smiley and great staff calling them by name and the shop. All these Tweets sound similar and seem to have been organized. It’s also easy to see that they are recruited because hardly anyone responds to my Tweets, so they know about my writings 😀 . But my response is important as new readers find these Tweets who don’t know about Pret’s Mystery Shopper scheme.
These “recruited” Tweets have massively increased since the beginning of October 2019 like I’ve never seen before, since I read Pret Tweets from 2018. These customer Tweets started at about the second week of October 2019, after I increasingly blog and tweet about the Mystery Shopper in Pret. It’s also clear they have been recruited as hardly anyone responds to my Tweets about the Emotional Labour and Mystery Shopper incentives, meaning these people who tweet know about me and my writings.
Also, knowing Pret and how they “respond” indirectly to my writings, they will NOW (compared to before) pass on these Tweets to the shops, so that staff think Pret cares. Pret has lost lots of staff, of course many apply for jobs, but my blog and others is a sore in Pret’s sight. So, the idea is now to encourage staff, which is good, but work conditions remain the same while staff continue to get brain-washed.
Of course it is better that customers go on Twitter & Co to commend staff (many wordings are similar 😀 … come on people, at least make an effort and get more creative!), than to complain about low-wage workers publicly, who in turn cannot defend themselves as they are unaware that they were just negatively called out, even by name on Twitter.
Yet, I respond as a former Team Leader having survived this abuse and fear management, that the reason why staff, some of whom are depressed, even suicidal, seem so happy, is the reality of Mystery Shopper cash incentives and fear management. People need their jobs, have kids to raise and Uni tuition to pay. And the staff reviews on Glassdoor and Co including YouTube, Twitter etc. give a grim reality how depressing it is to work like this.
One such review is THE most poignant report on behind the scenes in Pret. It’s from a kitchen worker who also had to jump in to do customer service with fake smiles, as shops are always understaffed.
The review is the one that starts with the large red letters in below slide show: “This job can annihilate every piece of humanity inside of you.”
and ends: “You will lose everything that makes you human.”
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The above slideshow is just a selection, the list goes on in → Pret Staff Complaints
So, dear Pret Customer, if you have been recruited to leave recommendations of Pret staff or not, only you know, but I am writing to make people aware of WHY low-paid employees in a high intense, stressful work environment, with often bullying managers (NEW incident caught by customer), smile so much against their true emotions. I was recommended many many times by customers and Mystery Shoppers on my professional, friendly, generous and smiley service. But no-one knew that at times I left my shift headed for the bridge. My story is in the below audio player in an interview on a podcast based in California.
There’s a reason why CEO Clive Schlee “retired” with such poor scores on Glassdoor & Co and the general Pret staff scores, as staff dare to speak out anonymous more than on the often rigged annual Pret questionnaires.
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. 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.
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.
Thank you for reading/listening.
At first glance this may look like an article about the “emotional labour” in relationships and families. But this will not be anything in the direction of women multi-tasking, caring, “juggling” all the responsibilities and keeping their men happy. This is about emotional labour in the service industry.
I have commented on several articles about emotional labour and written my own experience with Pret A Manger. I list a collection of articles in The Dangers of Emotional Labour with the emphasis of my own and ex-colleagues experiences.
One of the articles that covers the “extreme” emotional labour Pret A Manger expects is an essay I found on academic-master.com “The Enforced Happiness of the Pret A Manger Employee“. Unlike the other articles I found, the author quotes from International Labour Review “that the females will be given preference for interactive services because of their expertise in managing emotions.”
This reminded me again on how Pret used a majority of women against me in grievance hearings, which I explain in “Pret A Mathematics – 10 Hearings – 20 People – 17 Women – 3 Men”. All these women, in leadership roles, were used to manipulate and gaslight me. Where especially the male bullies failed to mob me out of the company with their open aggression, Pret used females to do the “job” in a subtle way, with the ultimate perversion of using a female Development Manager from Head Office, who supposedly had the same loss as I had! My full story with Pret is at the bottom of this page in an interview in the audio player.
Quote from the Academic Master article: “Another impact of emotional labour in the retail industry that is mentioned in the given case study is that the females will be given preference for interactive services because of their expertise in managing emotions. It will result in the dominance of women in the service economy.
Women show higher sensitivity and politeness in their speech. Their conversational style has been categorised as cooperative, unlike man whose conversational style has been classified as competitive, assertive and direct. These traits of female language play an important role in emotional labour.
Moreover, unlike men, women are taught to conform and compromise for the happiness of the other from their childhood (CLAES, 1999).”
This in itself can fill books, but I remember one particular manager in Pret who would task young, often blonde, female Team Members working on the shop floor greeting customers. The rest of the Team would make jokes about the manager’s preference of who’s going to be the FO (Floor Organizer) during lunch time.
The advertisement industry use mainly women to sell their product. Sexual images, that don’t make any sense in regards to the products, are used for ads, women’s (soothing) voices are recorded for public transport announcements, women’s hands, smiles etc. etc.
One funny but ridiculous ad that Pret did on social media is from December 2018, when Pret advertised the gingerbread man, using a female hand with very unappetizing finger nails. Again, like in other situations, I pointed this out and Pret photo-shopped the image and re-posted a few weeks later. But it shows the lack of professionalism and efficiency of this company.
10. December 2018 lack of manicure, this photo literally turned my stomach!
A more recent ad isn’t the best manicure either, but I won’t waste more space on this here.
But the fact that women are preferred for emotional labour in the service industry and are sooner reprimanded when they don’t live up to expectations, also shows in many of the customer complaints on Twitter. I don’t have a list here, but the majority of complaints about poor customer service mainly mentions female staff members compared to male servers.
It is particularly unfair when customers mention the names of staff publicly on social media, at times using foul language. It shows what Sophie McBain writes in her article about the harm of emotional labour, “Workers are put at high risk of anxiety and burnout, while consumers are emboldened to behave aggressively.”
I remember many times when customers rebuked us and even cussed at us, and our managers wouldn’t stand up for our protection. Instead, they apologized to the rude customers and gave free coffees to avoid complaints, as Pret does not protect their staff for the sake of profit.
So, being female and having survived this abuse of emotional labour during the darkest time of my life, I have experienced the truth of the saying that “what doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger”.
Having worked with suppressed emotions, holding back tears with the loss of my brother and all the trauma I have survived; having smiled while giving my sweat, blood and tears in a company that isn’t worth the dirt under my soles, I turn this emotional labour around with my honest anger and unashamed exposing of a company that is toxic and hurtful to people’s mental and physical health, and plainly dangerous to their very lives!
I’m still doing emotional labour, but this time on my terms!
Pret A Manger has underestimated the power of females.
Clive Schlee, having refused to listen to customer warnings to label his products to save lives, has underestimated a woman he labelled his “late night girl”.
I worked at Pret A Manger for almost 10 years and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee. I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather starve and 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.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote an article in the Scottish Left Review.
Thank you for reading/listening.
Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org, poetrasblok.com, LateNightGirl.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.
Upfront, Pret staff will NEVER spill the beans on why they are so cheery! They remain professional because they fall for the Pret trap like everyone. They only out themselves anonymous on review websites, YouTube etc., further below. Just very few speak out publicly. Even during the darkest period in grief and being bullied, I NEVER EVER even hinted to a customer what was going on! I was complemented on my professional service, smile, giving free coffees, and no-one knew that after my shift I went to the bridge at times.
Here is the short version in a nutshell why ALL (most) staff members EVERYWHERE in Pret are ALWAYS so smiley, cheery, friendly and helpful. No matter how busy and stressful it is.
The magic word: Mystery Shoppers
Mystery Shoppers (MS) are tasked to probe into a list of things every week in every shop, like if there is an adequate amount of selection during certain times, or if the shop incl. toilets are clean and so on. The most important thing the MS have to probe is customer service. I call them the “Misery” Shopper because many times they were so micromanaging pointing out the smallest stain on a table or a smudge on the window!
For Team Members there are two “motivating” factors for the smiley customer service:
Cash incentives. Overall bonus for the whole shop team which is £1 per hour worked. So if a Team Member (TM) worked 40 hours that week, they will get an additional £40 on top of their contracted wage for that week, provided the MS report was all in the green area and then gave the bonus to the whole team. Managers’ bonuses are given quarterly. But a TM can individually also earn extra cash on top of the bonus (or even if the bonus for the whole team was lost).
This is called an “Outstanding Card” (OC) which is £50 extra if the MS is super happy with a particular TM or even General Manager (GM), Assistant Manager (AM) etc. Meaning, if the TM “kissed butt” especially hard, gave a freebie etc. they can earn that extra cash on top of their wages and team bonus. If the report is 100% perfect scores and the MS awards an OC to a staff member, that TM earns double = £100. So, that one staff member gets their weekly wages, the weekly bonus PLUS the extra £50 or £100 cash. £50 OC (Outstanding Card) or £100 SOC (Super Outstanding Card).
Side note: An Outstanding Card is not literally a card, it’s just a name for the extra cash award. There are no cards given, “just” the money. So, when a TM is EXTRA SPECIAL nice, it is often (not always!) that they assumed they’re serving the Mystery Shopper!
Fear Management. If any TM or several of the Team messes up in any way resulting in bonus being lost for the whole team incl. GM (bonus not awarded by the MS), the angry manager will have a word with them. Depending what the bonus was lost on, this often is done in subtle or direct fear management where staff are made to fear for their job or position.
Link The reason why she got the Outstanding Card and with it the extra £50, or £100 if the shop had perfect scores, is the white writing on the red background. The Mystery Shopper rewarded this TM for this reason, quote: “I noticed that the avocado in the remaining veggie box salads were brown and I asked if there were any fresher ones. The team member said she would ask the kitchen to make me a fresh one. She telephoned them and said if it was okay she would take the veggie box to the kitchen and they would replace the avocado for me.”
Other times a TM gives a free coffee to the Mystery Shopper but does NOT get an Outstanding Card. It is completely up to the MS what blows them away and what not.
And here comes the long version.
I cover mainly the “smiley” culture of Pret in: “How Companies force Emotional Labour on Low-Wage Workers“, but I want to take the reader through a typical day in Pret A Manger, and why this MS scheme is dangerous for mental health, not to mention patronizing and humiliating. This Tweet is by PAMSU (Pret A Manger Staff Union) who got fired in 2012 for starting a Union under the pretense of having made homophobic remarks ten months (!) before:
First of all I want to start off by saying that I don’t think a Mystery Shopper scheme is a bad idea, I think it can be helpful to improve customer service where needed. The problem with Pret is, they take this to intense levels which I find abusive. The extreme “perfection” staff have to reach is done to create a picture to the public, that staff are so happy to work in Pret. In reality they are tasked to “perform” emotional labour (or “labor” for American readers!). It opens the door to abusive leadership, bullying environment forcing staff into “unnatural” behaviour they would normally not do, unless they “feel” it. And with many other abusive situations, like even domestic violence, bullying etc. people get conditioned to it, accept it as norm, but suffer internally and in silence also because it is systemic and seems acceptable. Everyone is subjected to this, so they feel they go out of line if they complain. At least that’s how I often felt, because everyone “is doing it”, it must be okay or normal to keep smiling even while bereaved. I share in my interview at the bottom of this page the horrific time I went through while already traumatized after I lost my brother.
Even journalists “get used” to abuse and accept it as the norm:
I want to share a rough timeline of activities on a day-to-day running of a Pret shop, as well as a little bit of the kitchen to paint a true picture of the immense stress staff are under on a daily basis. I was a Team Leader of the shop or also called Floor Leader (FL) and know working in the shop inside out. I can’t speak much about running a kitchen, but will briefly touch on the kitchen. The shop and the kitchen are like two separate businesses that need two separate leaders. Both have their own separate challenges as well as positives.
For example in the shop staff HAVE TO smile and perform a cheery presence, while in the kitchen they can just be themselves. In the kitchen they have no windows, have to work super fast assembling products WITHOUT time to breathe until their break. In the shop there are windows to take a breath, while still having to clean, stock up etc. I often “mediated” between the teams when they were at “war” pointing fingers where the kitchen felt the shop team is lazy or the shop felt the kitchen team have it easier. I always pointed out to both teams that each team have their challenges as well as good parts, but that EVERYONE works hard and has a lot of stress, just differently.
Shop hierarchy: General Manager (GM) and Assistant Manager Floor (AMF) are in plain business attire
Floor Leader (FL) Baristas/Coffee Makers Hot Food Chef (HFC)
Team Members (TM)
And whatever other position Pret comes up with, as they sometimes add job roles. But these are the main roles distinguished in their colours (belt, name badge) so outside teams can quickly identify who’s who. The most important who does most of the hard work is the Team Leader. They really are the ones that run the shop, if they are good and don’t imitate most GMs who like to sit in the office, don’t help and just shout like slave masters.
Kitchen hierarchy:
Again the same General Manager (GM) but a different Assistant Manager Kitchen (AMK), plain business attire Kitchen Leader (KL) Team Member Trainer (TMT)
Team Members (TMs)
Kitchen TMs, the sandwich makers who are called “chefs” by Pret to make them feel better and portray to the public as if there was some real cooking going on in the kitchen! Lots of patronizing and fooling slogans like “Lovingly made in this kitchen today” bla bla…
In reality all the food comes already cooked, except the frozen bread, croissants etc. But all ingredients are ready cooked and delivered daily from factories. Hence also “Ready to Eat”. The soups come in large plastic bags and are heated in water baths. All other ingredients are like we have at home after getting the shopping from the supermarket. There’s no cooking involved, just heating up and assembling a sandwich. Even the “poached” eggs that do come raw, are just heated in sealed plastic pouches in a water bath. There are no pots and pans and stoves in Pret kitchens!
One recent staff review:
Link Under Show more: “The food isn’t fresh, it’s shipped already cooked in plastic bags and reheated. A joke.”
As the shop and the kitchen are like two separate businesses in each shop, the AMF and/or FL run the shops and do the ordering for the shop, look after the Team, customers etc. The AMK and/or KL do the ingredient ordering for the kitchen, look after the Team etc.
As all Prets I’ve worked in are under-staffed to maximize profit and managers’ bonuses (incl. area managers and upwards) many TMs are pushed to multi-task. If a shop is lucky, they have 3 TMs on the tills in the mornings if there are 6-7 tills. They have 1 Barista with the GM doing coffee as well, as this is easier than customer service at the tills! GMs don’t like to work on the tills! As there aren’t enough staff, they ring the bell for one or two of the kitchen staff to then come out and help serve the queues during the morning rush. This puts an immense strain on the kitchen staff, who then get behind on their production, where they are expected to do a certain amount of products per hour. If they fail to finish in time, including cleaning etc., again they will be motivated through fear management and are bullied (subtly or openly) to work overtime, unpaid.
“It is clear they have little to know training and have absolutely no training or experience in employee relations or even customer relations for that matter. Every manager I have worked with – I have worked with 6 – will immediately try to belittle you. Not sure exactly why this is such a common practice among managers but it is an intrinsic behavior within the company itself. …Very, very sad reality of Pret. -Company culture….”
Link 2014 “Manager at my shop treated everyone really poorly. Expect you to stay longer to complete your job for free when not enough time is given. Constantly missing hours from extra shifts taken. Have to ask every week to see if they have repaid those hours and in some cases takes months to chase back.”
NOTE: The “for some reason” is more systemic than this and many other TMs realize. I had to chase my money CONSTANTLY.
Pret had to settle two class action lawsuits in NY within 4 years on wage issues. In the UK people never do a Class Action, but it would be high time for Pret staff to go to court on wage issues!
MS: “Team members should smile at customers and may not work when ill, as team member was coughing whilst serving me and was therefore not feeling cheerful enough to smile that day.”
I coughed while serving the Mystery Shopper as I had a cold. But I chose not to stay home as we were not paid the first 2 days even when we have a sick note.
The £45 Mystery Shopper bonus she’s talking about is that she would have worked 45 hours that week. Each hour is £1 bonus, as Pret cuts the weekly bonus even when staff are sick for 1 day that week. And the rest £55 she means is the hours she lost for that 1 day. And Pret only responds to her Tweet because it’s public. In reality Pret does nothing and doesn’t care if staff are sick.
A recent Tweet to the CEO by a frustrated Team Member:
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The above slideshow is just a selection, the list goes on in —> Pret Staff Complaints
A typical day in Pret
Main “Crunch” Times based on an average shop:
5AM
6AM
Between 8-10AM
Between 12 Noon-2PM
Afternoons until closing time.
I share these times from all the shops I worked at, with an average of 6 – 8 tills and a team of about 25 – 35 staff.
5AM start of shift. The first TMs come in and hopefully no-one called sick, as even ONE person missing puts incredible stress on the rest of the team because every team is tightly staffed.
Between 5-6AM there are around 6-8 TMs and later from 6 or 7AM onwards more people start coming in.
Kitchen TM starts preparation of slicing vegetables.
Shop TM, often the HFC but can also be the Barista, starts baking frozen croissants and baguettes. Every shop decides their own way who starts the shifts.
A Team Leader, can be KL or FL, should be starting first with Health & Safety checks, like taking the temperature of all cooling systems in case any fridge/freezer broke down over night warming the food which has to then be thrown away to avoid food poisoning. They also start checking the huge delivery of ingredients and products to make sure that nothing is missing, which then has to be re-claimed from the suppliers.
But reality in Pret is, because they like to staff very tightly, the first 3 – 6+ people from 5AM have 1 hour to get everything ready for 6AM opening time. It is extremely stressful to get everything done in time for opening, especially when the evening shift before left the shop in a bad state.
Many who are new make the mistake and start before 5AM UNPAID!! Because when they can’t finish in the unrealistically short time they’re given, the GM pushes them in pretense that they were not working well or fast enough. It’s psychology that happens in most Prets! But most of the Teams I’ve worked with are extremely hard working and work very fast, but are fooled and manipulated by managers who come in at 8 or 9 o’clock pressuring the Teams via the Team Leader or AM. And because the Team Leader wants to move up fast to escape this culture, they become bullies and only spare those that make friends with them.
Most shops have the HFC who starts all the baking and also preps the coffee machines, brings the milk out etc. Depending on how the evening Team left the shop, this often is a nightmare when the previous shift didn’t close properly, didn’t stock up etc.
At times this is due to lack of staff etc. But often it is simply due to laziness, where the evening Team Leader sits in the office all night, while the 2 people outside slave away without support! As a FL it was important to me to not do that, but to support my Team and we mostly finished in time leaving an immaculate shop for the morning Team. The next shift then had a clean and easier start. But many shops don’t care for the next shift, which in turn comes back to them when they take over from the morning team who retaliate to the evening Team… vicious circle and it adds to the stress that’s already there.
But I always changed that behaviour in every shop I worked in. This created a relaxed atmosphere where the teams started to work together instead of against each other, because they realized that this actually became much easier to work in support of each other instead of a cliquish environment.
6AM opening the doors
Again, if the Team had a good start and nothing went wrong, no delays etc. the shop can be open smoothly and customers can be served in a relaxed way.
Between 7:30-ish and 9-ish depending on the shop and which area they are in, the shop then becomes humongously busy with the coffee rush. But still there are only 2-3 TMs on the till if they are lucky and 1, maximum 2 Baristas. This forces the HFC to interrupt their hard, hot and sweaty work, to constantly having to jump in to “bust” the queues as the Teams have 1 minute to serve each customer which the MS probes them to the second!
A Mystery Shopper report excerpt (I added the blue writing and yellow marking):
Pret: “We aim to serve our customers within 1 minute of joining the queue. Where you served in a reasonable time, bearing in mind how busy the shop was and the number of open tills?”
MS: “I was served very quicly, after 15 seconds, very quick service.”
Pret: “We aim to serve our customers their hot drink within 1 minute of payment. Did you receive your hot drink order within a reasonable time?”
MS: “I received my hot drink very quick, after 30 seconds, quick service.”
And yet, the MS gave 4 out 5 points on each question as if 15 seconds wasn’t good enough. The point system is important mainly for managers. The more points the more bonus. So, even when the Team gets the bonus, but the points are not as high, GMs still stress and pressure the Teams because the manager’s quarterly bonus depends also on the point score. Managers are rewarded their bonus based on all the different results: profit, waste, labour, cleanliness etc.
But the Mystery Shopper reports and bonus system counts towards the largest chunk of managers’ bonuses! One GM was happy with his Team to cheat on everything, but the Mystery Shopper results. As a Team Leader new in his shop, he took me aside and said to me, “I close my eyes to everything, but not to the Mystery Shopper.” In other words, if I as a Team Leader failed to engage my Team and this resulted in poor MS results I’d get in big trouble. But on other things, even Health & Safety issues, he would have closed his eyes. … I’m not going to elaborate what my response was, but I communicated that he shouldn’t close his eyes to anything. I said that also because I was penalized for the smallest things in a previous shop. So, I made sure I covered all my basis and not let a greedy GM sabotage my job.
The MS being the biggest contributor of Managers’ bonuses creates even more stress because the Team get the message, “It is NEVER good enough what you achieve”. And I have countless example of how managers stressed us even when we got the bonus and even when someone got the OC. It’s never good enough unless it’s 100% perfect EVERY time. And even then, one slip, one mistake and all hell breaks loose!
This is the reason why so many customers complain on Twitter with half empty cups of cappuccinos, or a milky Americano where they asked for a black one. Because staff are so robotic, fast and on autopilot.
Only one of countless Tweets with photos like this:
This is St. Pancras, one of the most busiest shops in Pret!
Amy Sharpe from the Sunday Mirror went undercover into Pret (after having read my blog I’m proud to say!!) and writes about a conversation she had with a Barista during coffee rush. Quote (I added the bold):
“Undercover reporter Amy Sharpe worked inside the scandal-hit chain and discovered a potentially fatal blunder with labelling and staff who are hugely over-stretched. …
I am at a central London branch, where 10 staff vie for space, muttering apologies as we collide and stretch across one another to grab pastries and bags.
I shout orders to a barista while dashing to a beeping toastie machine to retrieve a baguette.
I make green teas and filter coffees while my other drinks orders are prepared. It’s stressful and confusing and the queue makes it even more so.
All the while, staff must be alert to the issue of allergens.
One barista tells me the cramped service area is a “nightmare”.
He says: “If I’m next to you, you have to shout. If you don’t shout I can make a mistake. A person can grab the wrong coffee. Make mistakes and the customer gets mad. You’ve got to focus, stay calm.”
When the bonus is lost, the boss will give the Team or the individual a good telling off. At times directly and loud, other times subtle manipulation threatening with the job security.
I survived this during bereavement! There was no mercy!
Link by @terry_mcparlane Twitter of a typical cramped Barista working area.
The psychology of “group incentive” is actually peer pressure and what a recent reviewer called “blame culture” which I totally underline. I spent a lot of time building my team member UP when they messed up the Mystery Shopper after our manager put them DOWN, because putting down is counter productive and leads to mental health problems. If I had buckets of the tears that were flowing after the harsh telling off when the Mystery Shopper wasn’t happy …
Between 7 and 9AM or even later, the GM starts to come in. Depending on the GM, some come at 7AM, others at 9AM etc. Some sit in the office during intense stressful morning rush. Others help. But if they help, almost all GMs prefer to be at the coffee machines with their backs to the customers, as customer service is extremely stressful with the demand to SMILE CONSTANTLY … for the Mystery Shopper. This is the frustrating thing for the Teams, because the GM pressures staff to be perfect for bonus, while themselves “hiding” at the coffee machines!
When I was bereaved and wanted to get away from customer service as I could not afford to stay at home unpaid, having lost all my savings. I begged the GM at times when I couldn’t hold back the tears, to please let me work in the kitchen for a day because I was tearing up at times on the shop floor. But because I wasn’t used to the pace in the kitchen, the GM denied this. I stopped asking then. But at times I asked the GM or AM if I can please be at the coffee, as I was really fast at the coffee and wanted to get away from facing customers in tears. Again, it was denied because most GMs are selfish and always choose the easiest job, no matter how a TM or even I as a leader, was doing!
A rare observation and even rarer comment by a customer who noticed that the manager is always sitting in the office during busy times. Pret tasks the Mystery Shopper also to record if they see a manager on the shop floor and what the manager was doing. Pret leaves all this to the Mystery Shopper instead of having regular visits from the Operations Managers (OPs – area managers). OPs often themselves sit in the pub during busy lunch times, pretend to be busy and mostly communicate via email. I know this for a fact, I’ve seen it.
Here I want to paint the picture and would ask the reader who is a regular customer in Pret to take a morning out of their work routine if they can, go to Pret, sit closest to the till area where they can observe BEHIND the counter all the TMs. Sit down and JUST WATCH for 30-60 minutes during the most busiest coffee rush. Just sit there, quiet and concentrate without any distraction or phone, reading… Just observe for a solid hour and then ask yourself HOW staff can smile, have eye contact and make polite conversation with EACH customer!
They can, but only because of the above mentioned cash incentive and fear management via the Mystery Shopper.
MS excerpts:
Pret probing on the INDIVIDUAL Team Member:
Pret: “We aim to connect with every customer with eye contact, a smile and some polite remarks. Rate the engagement level of the person who served you at the till.”
MS: “I was not greeted at the till or given a smile. The conversation was what was necessary for the transaction. To be welcoming, the team member could have greeted me and smiled and be engage[d] and positive.”
(No concern if the TM was extremely busy and may have gone through person tragedy, depression etc.)
Pret probing on the WHOLE Team:
Pret: “We aim to be attentive to each customer’s needs. Rate the engagement level of the whole team in this shop during your visit.”
MS: “The team members were focused on their jobs but were not welcoming customers. This could be improved by the team members smiling at customers when they entered the shop, and making friendly remark or small talk, where possible.”
ANY and ALL the Team are under CONSTANT observation and fear of being watched and rated! All the time. Every moment. Not only from the CCTV all over the shop and office, but managers, customers and Mystery Shoppers.
Yes, Pret states “reasonable time” and depending how busy it was etc. And the above MS contradicts themself by saying “where possible”. But the Teams are so conditioned and robotic, they always rush and the GMs stress them even during the quiet periods. If they can’t finish a task, they have to often stay longer unpaid. If they DO finish the task, they are criticized for not kissing the Mystery Shopper’s butt sweet enough when they enter the shop! It is always a lose-lose situation and NEVER good enough!!
And here is the perversion of Pret’s Emotional Labour abuse, and I call this perversion and abuse!!
Because this is what it is, PERVERSE, ABUSIVE, BULLYING and EXPLOITING!
Put yourself in their shoes.
A low-paid TM (£8.65 per hour in London) serves between 100 – 200+ customers before lunchtime going through the hellishly hectic coffee rush!
While they slave away like this, they have to smile, make eye contact, some conversation and go the “extra mile” give freebies etc. AND remember all the coffee order, hear the Barista call out the coffees that get constantly mixed up. They have to answer questions, especially on allergens, be polite to rude customers ETC! ………. and be like acrobatic clowns so that Clive Schlee CEO alone can pocket £30 million after JAB purchased Pret.
And customers remain fooled to think staff are so happy in this hellish environment forced to be like clowns because they have kids to feed!
“The kitchen staff is treated like slaves. They are expected to do the impossible. … Everything is over priced and you are forced to act like a happy jack-ass or your pay is cut. You don’t get paid your full hourly rate if you don’t impress the “mystery shopper”. This place is what hell must be like.
Advice to Management: Quit your jobs and go back to England and stay there.”
It’s not the first time that an American reviewer angrily wants Pret to go back to the UK.
I could add countless reviews like this also from YouTube, Twitter, FB and other sites, but to shorten this, the smile behind Pret is forced via Mystery Shopper’s bonus / cash incentives and fear management.
Anyone who falls for this facade that staff are so happy to work in Pret can remain lulled in if they want to.
I have to also say that staff truly love to give freebies and help customers, they really do. I did, my teams did etc. BUT becoming conditioned to this and then being bullied when personal tragedy hits you like it did me and many others, will add to mental health problems, even depression.
I was leaked an email recently which the Director of HR wrote to all the shops that two staff members died within a month. I was told by the people who leaked the email to me that one was a suicide. They don’t know the circumstances of the other TM.
But I know of an AMK who died by suicide in 2017 and I may have learned about her turmoil before she died.
I almost went over the edge with what I’ve been through in Pret. If I would have gone through, my death would be the third suicide in Pret. And my suicide would certainly be related to Pret A Manger’s bullying environment. I explain in full in below interview.
So, dear reader, if you have an hour to spare in the weekday morning, go to your local, or even better, another Pret where they don’t know you, sit close to the counter where you have a good view of all TMs. And just observe WITHOUT being distracted. But observe in a subtle way as TMs will assume you are the Mystery Shopper if you “stare” at them. But then again, you may get a free coffee or even breakfast if the Team thinks you are the MS! 😀
If you read though all this, thank you for reading and caring! Please know, I never take people’s time lightly. I know I write a lot, it’s my passion. But I always appreciate people’s time with difficult subjects and when their perception is crushed. I always say, if something looks too good to be true, especially in profit-driven multi-billion pound business, please take a closer look.
The Clever Marketing of the Free Coffee give a way, and why Pret may not be doing a Loyalty Card Scheme: FREE Coffees in Pret A Manger.
I worked at Pret A Manger for almost 10 years and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee. I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather starve and 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.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote an article in the Scottish Left Review.
Thank you for reading/listening.
Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org, poetrasblok.com, LateNightGirl.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.
I found an article on Emotional Labour that is a must-read! This and other articles are from researchers and journalists. I add my comments to their publications from the perspective of staff having experienced what they write about.
»How emotional labour harms us all« »Workers are put at high risk of anxiety and burnout, while consumers are emboldened to behave aggressively.«
To read the article, readers have to register, but it’s quick and worth it!
I just want to quote a few things that I underline, having survived forced Emotional Labour in Pret A Manger even during bereavement.
Quote from article: »According to the Office for National Statistics, 80 per cent of the UK labour force is now employed in the service economy. In London, it’s 91 per cent. These days, high street coffee shops and fast food chains compete for customers by trying to offer the quirkiest, bubbliest service«
Yes, in Pret they call it having a “buzz” and it always got on our nerves how we had to pretend to be buzzy, and with a smiling cramp “happy” bouncing around all day! Pret also likes to have LOUD music in shops saying this creates a buzz, in reality it is also annoying customers who then leave the shop quicker and don’t get comfortable. And that exactly is the plan, the reason for the loud music across the Pret business everywhere.
This then brings in more customers and the money flow is faster than when customers linger in a quieter, cozy atmosphere. I got in trouble many times by managers for putting the volume down after customers and staff complained, and my head was exploding! Bottom line is, the music is loud on purpose, this creates an uneasy atmosphere and “chases” customers out faster, making room for new customers and so on. My observation often was that those who sit the longest in Pret are students on laptops with earplugs in their ears to study or play games or were chatting. Younger people often have a greater tolerance, even desire, for noise and distraction.
So, buzz? Fun? Think again! It’s always about money! And reality is, we had headaches and tinnitus from the noise and stress! We had to be like cheerleaders, pushing each other to smile yet again, after just coming out of the intense busy morning coffee rush. It felt like, no it was, suppressing your true emotions (exhaustion, fatigue, depression, grief…) like perverting your inner core.
Quote from above article:
“… in The New Republic, Timothy Noah observes that the sandwich shop chain Pret A Mangeraggressively monitors its employees’ displays of enthusiasm. If any worker at any particular store seems insufficiently pleased to see their customers, he and all of his coworkers could suffer the consequences. Pret CEO Clive Schlee even monitors whether his employees are making enough affectionate physical contact with each other.”Link
Mystery Shopper excerpt: “Team members should smile at customers and may not work when ill, as team member was coughing whilst serving me and was therefore not feeling cheerful enough to smile that day.” (Staff are not paid for sick leave for the first 2 days, even with a sick-note!)
One customer even observed this cheer-leading and enjoyed it, while not realizing that staff pushed each other to not lose Mystery Shopper bonus and with it get penalized and fear managed. I write extensively about this in “The Truth Behind the Pret A Manger Smile” and talk readers through a typical day in Pret.
Quote from article: »In a 2015 article for the journal Organizational Behaviour a group of psychologists presented the “modest proposal” that employers should abandon emotional labour requirements at work and instead focus on reforms that promote genuine well-being. The authors, led by Alicia Grandey, an expert in emotional labour based at Pennsylvania State University, wrote that “emotional labour violates basic human rights for decent work”.«
This quote gives me hope that more and more people, be it researchers, journalists, teachers … raise this issue that warps the inner core of a person:
»emotional labour violates basic human rights for decent work«
! ! !
Quote from article: »Research has shown that workers in jobs that demand emotional labour are at high risk of anxiety and burnout…«
Yes, and Pret even puts one question in the “return to work” interview sheet when a staff member starts work again after sick leave. The question they ask is, if the employee suffered anxiety due to work. I have never seen a question like this in any previous employment, and I have worked in the catering industry and customer service all my life. At Pret I suffered anxiety, but I never ticked the box because I thought they ask this to “sieve” out staff and replace them with “fresh blood”! I thought if I tick this, even though I have anxiety issues due to work and the bullying environment, they would find a way to get rid of me. (And they did get rid of me later, my full story in the interview player at the bottom of this page.)
Some of the many staff reviews shows this as well (more in the slideshow, also at the bottom of this page):
Link“If you want to know what Depression is work at Pret A Manger is the best place for that…Toxic environment”
One of the most poignant Pret staff reviews, where a former staff member went out of their way after giving everything they had, now almost writing a book, describing the inhumane work environment, fake smiles, having to take pills and drink to cope. They mainly share about the kitchen, but also doing customer service. Nothing needs to be added to this review, every dot and comma I underline! This person certainly cares a lot, and those people are many in Pret, but Pret doesn’t care for them, they lost immense quality and caliber of people that Pret really doesn’t deserve, and these people don’t deserve Pret and what this reviewer describes. Pret can be summed up in this one review.
It is like a film or a book that’s starts: »This job can annihilate every piece of humanity inside of you.«
And ends: »You will lose everything that makes you human.«
Another recent review from a Hot Chef (the hardest job on the shop floor) mentions, quote, “I started taking antidepressants and having to see a therapist because of this job. The stress and mental anguish is definitely not worth it.“May 2019 review on Indeed
Or another review from April 2019, quote, “Physically, emotionally and spiritually draining. I would never recommend any young person to work there. Like seriously mate, DONT DO IT! You will get sick like i did and lose valuable months of your young life“. Team Member on Indeed
A Glassdoor review, quote, “I’m mentally sick of Pret A Manger and then I have to change to many things on my life”Glassdoor Feb. 2019
Clive Schlee leaves Pret with this overall score mid July and Pano Christou starts before the September handover, probably to avoid more negative scoring. But Christou won’t be different towards low-paid and demanding work conditions, having been longer in Pret than Schlee:
Glassdoor July 2019 overall rating.
I can recommend to everyone to register with The Stateman and read the full article. Take a closer look into Pret or any company at that, where you see staff smile ALWAYS, EVERY TIME in high stress, noisy environment. Ask yourself if low-paid workers really are happy or WHY do they smile so much under intense stress?!
Some customers’ Tweets on this can speak for itself. But it is disheartening how most are fascinated by the “mandatory” smiles by “contract”, which is enforced via weekly Mystery Shoppers in cash incentives and fear management. I explain in detail in the “The Truth behind the Pret Smile” and “Emotional Labour” articles.
Just few people look deeper:
Pret: “We aim to connect with every customer with eye contact, a smile and some polite remarks. Rate the engagement level of the person who served you at the till.”
Mystery Shopper: “I was not greeted at the till or given a smile …”
Line Manager to the person having served the MS: “I need to see you in the office!”
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The above slideshow is just a selection, the list goes on in → Pret Staff Complaints
Two Pret Staff have DIED recently One is said to be a suicide. It’s not the first suicide in Pret. I survived. If I would have gone over the edge, mine would be #3 and it would be in connection to Pret!
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. I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather starve and 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.
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.
Thank you for reading/listening.
The psychology of “group incentive” is actually peer pressure and what a recent reviewer called “blame culture” which I totally underline. I spent a lot of time building my team member UP when they messed up the Mystery Shopper after our manager put them DOWN, because putting down is counter productive and leads to mental health problems. If I had buckets of the tears that were flowing after the harsh telling off when the Mystery Shopper wasn’t happy …
Or the “happy family” trap and the pressure on ONE person who loses the bonus for the whole team turning the team against that one person. Again, I had to many times step in-between the 1 person to protect them from the group and the bullying mentality Pret encourages.
Pret: “We aim to connect with every customer with eye contact, a smile and some polite remarks. Rate the engagement level of the person who served you at the till.”
Mystery Shopper: “I was not greeted at the till or given a smile …”
Line Manager to the person having served the MS: “I need to see you in the office!”
Pret A Manger Reality behind the Smile:
1. On average a Team Member does between 300 – 500 transactions per day. Some less, some more if they work a regular 6 – 8+ hours shift (many work 12 hour shifts!), and depending on how busy it is and if working in the rush times. 300 transactions are NOT 300 individual people! 1 transaction can be serving 3 people for example. 1 transaction is ONE sale/payment that goes through the till/system, no matter how many people. It can be a group of tourists, families, colleagues who order together and often pay together, but each person will be spoken to about the order that they place. So, on average a TM communicates with 500 – 800+ PERSONS, plus colleagues, line managers etc. PER DAY/shift. The exhaustion staff members go through, not to mention depression is something the public doesn’t want to know about. I was complemented many times by the Mystery Shopper and customers for my friendly service, attentiveness, professionalism… but they did not know that several times I left my shift headed for the bridge.
Link (It makes the employee feel even weirder not to mention shamed and humiliated crying in the staff room later!)
2. If the TM is successful and the MS is happy with the overall atmosphere and requirements of the shop, the whole team receives the bonus. If the TM messes up, doesn’t smile or whatever the MS may not be happy with, the whole team loses bonus, and the TM will find themself in the office being told off, at times manipulated with fear management, threatened with a disciplinary and/or job loss… Even during bereavement, I was summoned to the office and my non-smiling was one part of a list of (small) things I was targeted with.
One of many such staff reviews, quote:
“Better salary than McDonalds or Costa as long as you keep your fake smile up … (A lot of people cry in the staff room especially in their entry period) … if you have seen the film “Compliance” then you know what type of person you will become if you stay there for longer.”
“… in The New Republic, Timothy Noah observes that the sandwich shop chain Pret A Mangeraggressively monitors its employees’ displays of enthusiasm. If any worker at any particular store seems insufficiently pleased to see their customers, he and all of his coworkers could suffer the consequences. Pret CEO Clive Schlee even monitors whether his employees are making enough affectionate physical contact with each other.”Link
I can verify that. Being summoned to the office myself or consoling a crying team member in the staff room who just received a file note (now called “note of concern”), after coming from the office where the manager used fear management on them for not having smiled while serving the Mystery Shopper. The team member then was sent out from the office to the shop and demanded to smile. Clive Schlee himself sent me to th
