Potbelly Sandwich Works – “Sucks”

Pros

Great food, awesome associates, hours weren't too late at night, live music, fun and lively atmosphere, and the uniforms were decent

Cons

Living the potbelly culture was cool years ago. It has become a cut-throat business of greed and undermining. Endless hours of hard work with no gratitude. Always having to do pointless endless paperwork every shift worked. Pay freezes, reviews that were given but not coherently with minimal feedback in between. So much info was emailed out daily and never stayed around long, do this ,change that, no dont do this anymore, oh wait now we are goin to do that again... Agh! Stop changing every little thing and sending a stupid email about an email! Never ending changes that rarely improved operations. Salaried management was ridiculous. They continued to hire hacks off the street who became detrimental to the store, and these people only looked out for themselves and didn't care who they stepped on along the way. Potbelly used to be cool and fun and a great place to work... Now it sucks! When potbelly and it's managers cared...that submarine sunk a long time ago.

Advice to Senior Management

Get back to basics! You should have never changed the dynamics of the company to focus on make more money! That completely shifted the culture that we respected and loved and turned it into an environment that was follows with endless pointless paperwork and soul- sucking. Senior management rarely visited the stores and when then never spent time with associates or leads to get their thoughts or concerns. The DM role is worthless...they just head off problems but never resolved the issues. It became cut- throat and promotions were few and far between and never went to the person who worked the hardest or was deserving. Pay freezes, sub par reviews and low merit increases hurt the employees morale. Outside hiring is the WORST idea!