IHOP reviews

As a manager (salaried employee), they require grueling schedules, 14 - 18 hour shifts, often for 6 day runs, with one "day" off. While they "say" a manager can expect to work 50 - 55 hours a week, the truth is, managers are required to work 68 - 75 hours a week. What this means to the managers is that regardless of what you think your salary is, for the hours you are required to work, your salary is only about 60% of what you think. This company steals from the employee this way. Not only are they stealing money by not paying fairly for the real hours forced to work, but they are stealing the time/life of the employee from their family/personal life. Senior management refuses to be proactive in anything. Example: replacing junior managers (MOD's) as needed, the store manager and assistant manager must "cover" the schedule. Many times a junior manager will tell their store manager or assistant manager of their intentions (better job offer, personal reason, school schedule etc) to leave the job and the senior management refuses to ever hire a replacement so that the change can be smooth. The senior management is totally non-responsive to requests in advance of a departure. The employee must actually quit and be gone before regional/district managers will even BEGIN to look for a replacement. By the time a replacement is found, hired, trained, and ready to be placed, the store has been limping along for 30 - 45 days with the store manager and assistant manager (with only the occasional "borrowed" manager from another store) covering all the shifts of a restaurant that is open 24/7. The store manager and assistant manager have to work 75 - 85 hours a week until the corporate office decides to send a replacement. District/Regional managers and Tech support are unresponsive. They do not answer their contact numbers, even during "business" hours, and rarely even return calls left on voicemail. There is never any feedback on messages left on their voicemail. This leaves the store manager/ assistant manager to "guess" if or when their issue will be addressed. It usually is not addressed. If the problem persists for an extended period of time or threatens to close down the store, it may be looked into by senior management, even then it can be hours before a response is made. Example: the registers in a store stopped processing credit card sales. The store manager took all the appropriate steps, rebooting terminals, cycling the protocols, trying to get the terminals to process the credit cards, to no avail. The cards had to be manually process (using the hand machine to imprint the card, for the customer signature). It was still happening the next "day", when another store called and asked how to reboot because they could not process credit cards. Upon calling tech support (8 calls unanswered, 5 urgent voice mails left, all during day time business hours) finally, hours later, a "last effort" to contact tech support was actually answered by a tech whose only response was, "Uh, yeah, we know, the whole server for the credit card processing is down, not a problem with your terminals, but with the card server" When asked if they had any intention of TELLING the stores so they could prepare for the manual handling of the credit card orders the answer was "Well, gee, I guess I'm telling you now, what's your problem? We'll get it fixed as soon as we can, so just chill." Oh, and the tech department made NO calls when the server was back up. The effected stores had to just sort of guess and try it every so often to see if it was back on line. The lack of communication between Senior Management and the store management is horrible. There are programs put into place to "fix" problems, that not only do not fix the problem, but instead create other problems. Imagine: the corporation notices that they do not have the expected/projected revenue from beverage sales that they want, so what do they do? They come out with a new policy : the server (waiter/waitress) MUST show a certain "quota" of beverages ordered/sold every shift. If a server does NOT meet the quota on a shift, they are given a "write up" in their file, if they get 3 write ups they are fired. How stupid is that?? Making a SERVER responsible for what a customer does or does NOT order?? Imagine the store manager who has a really good server, but whose drink orders don't always meet quota? The manager is obligated to fire their GOOD workers because there were not enough beverages ordered on that servers shift. I could continue with bad examples, but why? Bottom line: Regional Managers, District Managers and up in this company have little or no clue what it takes to really build a company, improve the profit, enhance the work experience, improve retention and build a positive workplace image and reputation.

Some of the people that get hired dont have any experience in the restaurant field. They become frustrated in the kitchen & often dont last long when hired.