Panda Restaurant Group reviews

Fast growth from upper-middle management has led to lazy trainings for Store Managers an Store Managers with low-quality management skills: 1. Store Manager's sharing Panda Express policy verbally is often different than the video trainings and written policies (if you are advantageous enough to find them, which I was). 2a. Store Managers scheduling procedure was "based on business needs", translated to how they understand profit per hour. But profit per hour during the days the Store Manager is there could be low due to understaffing, very commonly happening when there's only one FOH member scheduled. This leads to the Managers understaffing for breaks. 2b. I've witnessed a handful of occasions where shift leaders and associates working the front (customer service side) as the only cashier. The cashiers would often inform me that they need to use the bathroom or they haven't taken their break, while working an unexpected amount of time without a break, but there wasn't anyone to cover the register because panda policy states we can't share registers. On the extreme end, I've seen an associate wait 4+ hours before their one and only break, and seen associates be forced to take their break at the first 1.5 hours and work the rest of the 4.25 hours without any more breaks. 2c.For context, the store I worked at made about $10k-14k per dayl; and $70k-$90k per week. The Store Manager's Manager forces the Store manager to only utilize 20% of the profit for labor. And it seemed the Store Manager was more inclined to follow the directive at the expense of exploiting their employees. Keep in mind, an additional employee to cover breaks is $20 per hour and $80 for a 4-hour shift. According to the numbers, it's not a question of whether or not the company could afford the break coverage, just whether or not the well-being of the employee was aligned with the company's values. 2d. It seemed Store Managers preferred taking advantage of the California break law policy regarding an exact 6-hour shift where the employee gets 1 break and 0 meal breaks. But from my understanding of the litigation, this has to a verbal contract approval of both parties every time and wasn't always communicated to new associates. One of my previous shifts, I saw a Shift Leader reenforce only 1 break and 0 meal break at the dismay of the new associate when the associate was not previously informed of this type of scheduling nor did they agree to waiving their meal break. 3, Racism towards customers from Management and Cooks. Panda Express written policy states that if a customer requests for fresh food, then we are obligated to make the customer a fresh batch. I've seen Cooks resist cooking the fresh batch for Black customers, but have no problem cooking a fresh batch for non-black customers, especially for customers with the same ethnic origin as the Cook. One racial instance was so bad that a Manager refused to provide a Black customer one of the regular deals (small entree for $1.50 instead of $5-$6 a la carte) because the customer requested the extra entree right as their transaction completed. The Manager explicitly told the Black customer they had to pay full price.