PRET A MANGER WORKERS MUST APPEAR “AUTHENTICALLY HAPPY” – FOR £6.25 AN HOUR
The sandwich chain Pret A Manger has been accused of making unreasonable demands on their young workers, expecting them to be all smiles at all times – despite earning a measly wage of £6.25 an hour.
Evening Standard columnist Richard Godwin – who regularly writes about the struggles young people face finding decent jobs and getting on the propery ladder – attacked Pret’s expectations of their staff, writing:
“The sandwich chain… require[s] its employees to maintain the ‘Pret Buzz’. The ‘Pret Perfect Worker’, according to its website, ‘never gives up’, is never ‘moody or bad tempered’ and always ‘creates a sense of fun’.
“That fun has to be real, too. ‘The authenticity of being happy is important – customers pick up on that,’ says one representative. So your personality must be right. Your colleagues will tell on you if you’re ‘only there for the money’. The money, by the way, starts at £6.25 an hour.”
Godwin also turned on the language being used by the Government lately, announcing controversial cuts to benefits. He wrote:
“For all the Government’s ‘strivers’ and ‘skivers’ rhetoric, their welfare reforms do not address the fact that most of the welfare bill goes on subsidising workers whose wages are not enough to live on. The only jobs being created are entry level positions. The standard unit of crappy employment used to be the McJob. Now you are required to be Pret Perfect Worker.
“You may not have enough to live on. You may be at the mercy of your company. But you are required to keep smiling as if everything’s okay.”
Like Godwin, Graduate Fog is concerned that many of the entry level jobs graduates are taking in 2013 are too low-paid to allow you to be financially independent, paying your own rent and bills in full from your wages alone. Instead, young people are remaining economically dependent – whether that’s on the state or on your parents – well into their twenties and beyond. When you look at it like that, is it any surprose young workers aren’t smiling?
*DO EMPLOYERS EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM YOUNG WORKERS ON LOW SALARIES?
Is it insulting to be asked to be cheerful at work, when you’re not being paid enough to cover your basic living costs? If you’re working for a low wage – or interning for next to nothing – how does that impact how you feel about your job? If you were paid more, would it make a difference to how you feel about your work?
I have to say, it’s always struck me how chipper the staff in Pret always seem – perhaps this is the reason why! The bit about “Your colleagues will tell on you if you’re ‘only there for the money’.” sent a shiver down my spine.
Deeply concerned about what they do to test the authenticity of the happiness. If you need to work this hard to get your staff to seem comfortable in their role then you really need to work on treating them better.
I heard that they chose their workmates by running it by the team. Which makes me worry about favoritism and discrimination.
A democratic vote is not the right way to award jobs.
It’s easier to ‘smile while you dial’ at a callcentre, not so easy to smile when you face the customer all day.
They’ve got us by the knackers (the employers) as per usual.
It does sound horrible but…. they do seem like a happy bunch, and it makes it far more pleasant than some of the alternatives where the person serving you spends the whole time fixated on their phone or gives the impression that your coffee order is a major disruption to their day!!
How dare they. I would never smile for anything less than £7.50
Disgraceful, unreasonable expectations, awful.
Now where was that smiley Indian boy who wanted to polish my shoes?
i eat in pret some times and have never seen one staff member smile
George: That’s not the point though… the point is that if someone is being paid minimum wage to work in customer service, it seems like adding insult to injury to make them have to smile as well! Plus telling someone to look authentically happy is kind of… inauthentic. Oddly enough.
My gran used to say “A smile costs nothing”. Today not even £6.25 can buy you one. 🙁
… Is this comment thread just full of people deliberately determined to miss the point? They’re not being paid to smile, they’re being paid a fairly low wage to do a fairly menial job. Chances of experiences of authentic happiness while working in Pret? From my experiences working in retail, I’m going to say they are fairly slim!
“They’re not being paid to smile”
…the post is titled “PRET A MANGER WORKERS MUST APPEAR “AUTHENTICALLY HAPPY” — FOR £6.25 AN HOUR”
and so I guess in the authors opinion they are indeed not being paid to smile, or at least they’re not being ‘paid enough’ to smile.
On the otherhand they could perhaps smile because they’re actually enjoying their jobs, or because friendly people like us are nice to them when we buy things, or because they’re looking forward to something after work, or that they like their colleagues, or that they have a job but are also working towards something better, or maybe that they’re happy to be paid to work somewhere warm while it’s horrible and cold outside, or that they’re looking foward to their wages at the end of the month.
As you say “they’re being paid a fairly low wage to do a fairly menial job” – so what’s unfair? That their employer expects them to provide good customer service? How shocking!
“friendly people like us are nice to them when we buy things” – … have you ever worked in retail or food service?
Like many people yes I have and at a wage where I depended on tips which in turn meant I depended on people liking my service.
There used to be an expectation that most people did crappy jobs in retail and the service sector as they started out on their career. They graduated knowing they might progress up the ladder quicker, but it didn’t entitle them to be crane lifted to the top. A few admittedly gained a crane lift, but most didn’t – instead we did crap part time jobs, worked in factories, did overtime to repay our debts.
Setting out in life with a sense of entitlement and a very large chip on your shoulder won’t help you.
Fortunately for you it seems you have managed to progress away from that horrible retail experience.
And yet if my boss wrote “authentic happiness” into my contract, I’d feel pretty uneasy about it…
I think shop workers should have a sense of entitlement – if by that you mean they should be entitled to their own feelings!
Of course they are – but… you want to be miserable? Go and find a job that doesn’t depend on you providing friendly service.
Now if I pay you to provide good customer service, I think it reasonable that you do exactly that – if you don’t, then others will.
Have a nice day 🙂
Not feeling authentic happiness ≠misery
Providing good customer service ≠feeling authentic happiness
Have a nice/bad day, whatever you want, free from your employer’s judgement! 😀
i went in one over the weekend and didnt find one happy staff member plus they were all eastern european’s. do pret not employ british people
I wrote several blog posts & YouTube slides of real Pret A Manger Mystery Shopper reports on expret.org
During the pandemic already low-wage staff don’t even get bonus paid, but still have to act like acrobatic clowns for weekly Mystery Shoppers.
I walk people through a micromanaging Mystery Shopper report on:
> https://expret.org/2021/03/13/pretamanger-staff-dont-look-happy <
.