Lazy and Hypocritical Ex-friend/New Manager

aife

As some one else already pointed out , you're basically helping a man con the immigration authorities - personally , I would be more worried about this than whether or not a phoney business is opening it's advertised hours. your friend knows this and is exploiting the situation. the owner doesn't care , so why should you ?
Stop doing extra shifts , look for something else , leave messages for your manager and the owner telling them you'd like a reference now as you know they're closing soon and you want to be prepared.
You mentioned other nearby business owners - can you ask any of them to help ? perhaps they know of jobs coming up , or they might be willing to write a recommendation , even if they can't do a full reference.
Why not ask if they can call you if they need the occasional shift covering , or register with an agency and do the odd shift . That will give you more contacts and you should get paid without all the arguing
You owe these people nothing

Mika134

Mika you write in quite an engaging manner - I wouldn't normally last an entire OP of that length but I managed yours.

Perhaps you should think about writing and not serving coffee?

Thank you very much! I do enjoy writing, and will take your advice on board! Had a few blogs back in the day, but they didn't really go anywhere sadly. I do a little illustration/design work free-lance, but it is very hard to get enough work to pay the bills a lot of the time. Plus very time consuming and my laptop is incredibly slow - need to invest in a new one.

As something to contemplate, she will hopefully give you a reference, but who will give her one?

That is a good point! I believe she will get a job at the local sandwich shop where her friend works, but can't see her pulling her weight there either. She doesn't even have a CV and has very bad grammar, so I don't think she will ever get a job which isn't minimum wage. One of the reasons I'm still doing my share of the work, is so that after I leave she will realise how much I was doing in comparison to her. And it might make her treat other future colleagues better instead of taking them for granted.

If you have "tons of experience" then I imagine any jobs in your field will be more interested in the references you get from that than how well you did working in a fake coffee shop for a few months.

Thanks, my issue at the moment is I need money for rent and bills. I've been saving £100 per month but it's not quite enough just yet. Also whilst I am good with customers, I am so bad at interviews despite having had loads of them. It's like my brain blows them way out of proportion and I often start panicking, hyperventilating, and they usually ask if I'm okay or want to stop. I've got one every single day this week though! So going to try!

scd3scd4

You don't do any extra shifts from now on...............this means you don't have to argue about money anymore and who covered what. Since you are not getting paid its no loss.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

Mika134 wrote: »

That is a good point! I believe she will get a job at the local sandwich shop where her friend works, but can't see her pulling her weight there either. She doesn't even have a CV and has very bad grammar, so I don't think she will ever get a job which isn't minimum wage. One of the reasons I'm still doing my share of the work, is so that after I leave she will realise how much I was doing in comparison to her. And it might make her treat other future colleagues better instead of taking them for granted.

You still seem to be struggling to get your head round the fact that neither she nor the owner care whether the work gets done or whether the shop is open. They don't. If you go she will just leave it closed 90% of the time and send in her wage slips as per normal.

Mika134

You still seem to be struggling to get your head round the fact that neither she nor the owner care whether the work gets done or whether the shop is open. They don't. If you go she will just leave it closed 90% of the time and send in her wage slips as per normal.

Thanks, I understand she doesn't care. However, before us, the shop owner had 4 members of staff working there, two at a time. He noticed they didn't bank any profits one week and fired the one who was supposed to do it. Then he came back from Iran and found the shop closed when it should have been open, and fired the two who should have been on. The last one quit as she was friends with the others. We know all this as the neighbors were close with them and told us. I can't risk that happening as I need the money until I have enough saved. After I leave, the other girl will HAVE to work otherwise we will have no weekly profit. He will also need to hire another person to cover to me, who will need training and supervision for a while. So yeah, she will need to be present and making a profit.

Mika134

On the other hand, as an employer I'd quite like to know if my prospective employees had any issues. If someone's had a problem getting a half decent reference from more than one job, that's far more likely to be about them than the companies they've been workng for.

That is a good point. Almost every one I'm applying for state that they need your current or previous employer though. And this is on the application form, before they will even meet you to let you explain anything. I wish they would accept any references, so long as at least one of them were in the past 3 years or so. Managers can be just as dodgy as employees, and someone could have had a string of great jobs with good managers, then just the one bad one right at the end. I've got at least 7 references over all, as I've worked tons of jobs sometimes two at once. And worked all over the country. All are good, it's literally just this last job I'm going to struggle getting one for.

Ozzuk

Try breathing exercises before going into interview, if you are anxious then often your breathing faster and not even realising it. Slow yourself down, long intake of breath, hold, saying something like hold/release, then let it out slowly. Repeat for a few minutes.

There are many variations of this exercise, but I find it really helps reduce my overall anxiety levels.

Good luck! Is it possible to take over the shop if its failing? Maybe a business case/loan?