Swensons Reviews

Before I get into my review of the cons, let me credential myself a bit by listing the variety of perspectives I have. I have worked a wide variety of jobs over the years. I've worked at a government owned fitness center, worked as volleyball official, food deliverer, street performer, worked for a professor, and am currently a software engineer thats has worked at startups as well as enterprise. Swenson's by far has the worst leadership (in terms of employee experience), hierarchy, and ultimately culture that I have witnessed and it honestly should not be abided. Do not eat at Swenson's Drive-in. Do not let it open in your city. I will start by corroborating every single comment here about abusive language, fear culture, trust-free culture, and so on. There is no need to fully detail it, as others have done this. You can bring your A-game, effort, and energy, but, for the most part, only shortcomings will be pointed out. Expectations will be sky high starting around day 2. They have essentially created a Panopticon culture and you will be spied on, monitored, and chewed out. I guess management is reading a little too much Michel Foucault. At the end of the day, it is burgers and fries and there is no need to have a huge ego about it. I received more training on rules than on how to add value to the customer or perform procedures. Colleagues talked to me as if I had zero awareness or intelligence. They were genuinely surprised that I could perform arithmetic and brought skills to the job. I'm an engineer now. Colleagues don't "stay in their lane" either. I was called out by an older member of the cook staff for having a little 5 o'clock shadow (it's just my natural face). How about fixing your 100+ food safety issues before optimizing my face and delivering a lecture on it? You're liable to get injured on the job. This is almost never worth it, even if it is "just" a sprained ankle. Employees are used to drop off money at the bank and receive no additional compensation. There may actually be a wage theft claim situation here. It is 100% risk and performed at night. Swenson's operates at the scale where they can afford to contract an armored car service and be done with it. I cannot see how the liability is even worth it for them. One day, this could end poorly. Relies on the ignorance/desperation of Midwestern college students for labor. The work is honestly worth much more, but many do not know better. There is even a sales component to the role. Swenson's works hard to portray the image of a family business. It's time to dispel the fiction: Swenson's is extremely corporate and wants to become a huge franchise so badly. I was asked by a cook staff member for a ride home and he had me stop by his dealer - not management's fault, but this is who you'll work with. **easy fix** Phones to take call orders have several issues, starting with placement. I was at one point taking calls adjacent to a milkshake spindle. These are incredibly loud machines that run near-constantly. This leads to customer frustration, because you are constantly asking them to repeat themselves. The result: the customer thinks you are stupid or the manager thinks you are stupid when the order is incorrect. There is little awareness to this situation, because it isn't based on rules. It's based on customer value and ease of employee experience (not something they care about). Solution: physical phones need to be upgraded to the 21st century and perhaps a high quality headset option (noise cancelling?) could be introduced, in addition to placing the phone in a sane location for phone conversation. Make it a headset that is easy to take on and off to avoid too much isolation. I'd bet one week of increased morale, efficiency, and decreased order errors would return this investment. I'm providing free consulting here. While it is inherently an uncreative job, I felt my options to go about the work were stifled to the point where I was making suboptimal decisions and becoming less intelligent in general. It was like my brain had shifted in to neutral. Managers padding Glassdoor reviews with 5 stars. This is extremely tacky and people know it is a red flag in 2018. "I have life long friends and consider them family". No, you do not. This statement is either false or I feel bad for this person's family. ****eyeballs here please**** Desperately needs more frequent health inspection. I was literally screamed at for mentioning that a customer had a dead fly in their fry bag too loudly. I'm not ashamed for bringing up an unacceptable situation and never will be. If the health inspectors were as hard on Swenson's as Swenson's is on its staff, they would be shut down yesterday. Health inspectors need to do the right thing, even if it is unpopular: shut it down. I was disallowed from wearing gloves to handle trash. The reasoning was that it "signals that we are carrying something dirty out of our restaurant". I believe it was either to save money on gloves or indulge in sadism. It's a trash bag full of old sauces, meat that has sat out in the heat, half eaten food, and all sorts of things that flies have touched and it gets all over your hands. Of course it is dirty! Let's not pretend. Gloves + hand washing, please! Remember, customers: your food is being handled by people that use their bare hands for trash work. You're trusting that they clean their hands properly, even when food safety is not a metric managers were looking at closely. Food safety is low priority for the sake of efficiency. I'm baffled that food safety inspectors haven't declared a shutdown yet when the number of violations is significant and often repeated. Is someone getting paid off? To quote some inspectors: "The person in charge was unable to demonstrate proper knowledge of food safety and prevention", "Observed metal shavings and tiny pieces of paper label on edge of open can of hot fudge which was in use in hot water near the milkshake machine", "Foods were not being held at the proper temperature. Observed foods in the small preparation cooler to be above 41*F... salad 52*F, cooked eggs 50*F, shredded cheese 51*F. Thermometer of unit read 50*F", "Observed chlorine sanitizer that was over 200 ppm" (dangerous!), "Equipment food-contact surfaces are dirty. Observed interior of ice machine to be dirty", "Observed the presence of live insects. Observed several flies throughout the facility as a result of the sever doors being propped open". This list goes on.