Steak n Shake Reviews

Pros

You can make good money as a server.

Cons

Very physically demanding.
Incompetent management.
Lack of effective training.
Employees are disrespected.

Advice to Senior Management

When problems are taken to higher ups they should be answered/responded to.

Pros

You stay busy
You get to work with the public
Employee discount

Cons

Some times you are doing several jobs at once
On your feet all day
You get covered in food
Cannot bring your own lunch

Advice to Senior Management

Give the employees positive feedback if they perform well. Make sure all of the workers are doing their job correctly so that the other employees will not have to suffer. Do not keep someone if they are always late.

Pros

pay was decent but ended working over 60 hrs per week with no OT

Cons

threatening Distric Managers, they will come an talk to you like you where a child infront of your employees. No respect

Advice to Senior Management

look for a better job, i didn't spent 5 years in collage to be flipping burguers, cashier, fountain busser and server, dthru operator all at once because the company labor standars are ridiculous.

Pros

The table turns are fast which allows you to make more money serving.

Cons

The managers never help the employees out and they always under staff.

Pros

Opportunity for bonus income is good.

Cons

Extremely micromanaged from the top. Employees are treates like replaceable pistons in a engine. Do it or we'll fire you motivational system.

Advice to Senior Management

Find a "leader" to run the organization and then treat your people like they are your greatest assets.

Pros

There really are no great reasons to work at Steak n' Shake. Perhaps the only Benefit of working there is a flexible schedule, if you're lucky to get scheduled. There are so many employees its hard to get hours, but that also means you will always have someone to work for you. After 5 years of employment you would think that managment would be begging me to work full time

Cons

Steak N' Shake is the most dreadful place to work on the face of this earth. The uniform is humiliating and the things you will be asked to do are more humiliating. Also starting May 10th, steak n shake will begin taking 2.5% out of every tip a server receives on a credit card in order to pay for the credit card machine. I'm not even sure if thats legal, but it is def. unfair and degrading to the servers who are required to work long hours with no breaks. I have worked a 14 hour shift without a single break. Also, you have to pay for any drinks you consume while at work not to mention the CREDIT CARD MACHINE. If the cost is so great to steak n shake they should make it a cash only buisness. Also, shouldn't that 2.5% be added on to everything that is charged on a card? why does it just have to come out of the servers tips, instead of the general sales of the business?

Anyways, I would say the cons to working at a place like this are so numerous that it's really not even worth the small pay check. I'd rather be a hobo then work for a company such as this.

Advice to Senior Management

If you actually listened to each other when you converstated then perhaps you would know what is happening in the store you are running. The management is very unprofessional and often plays favorites or unfairly treats certain employees. Also, there are these strange policies that seem to be made up on the spot and then used in this game of favorites to eliminate the weak. One day its you'll get fired for not having a hair net the next day it will be you'll get fired for leaving the menus in the service station. Its completely ridiculous and a very unprofessional workplace.

Pros

insurance is pretty affordable for a family

Cons

looooooong hours if you have a family its going to be hard

Advice to Senior Management

work on your internal promotable candidates

Pros

You will get good work experience in a changing environment.

Cons

District managers are not very attentive at store level.

Advice to Senior Management

District Managers need to focus on developing people more.

Pros

Typically, most people are under the impression that working for a fast food restaurant is a bad idea, and that's mostly because of the bad rap that fast food places get. You're either a teenager or a loser if you work there. You know the stereotype. I've seen all sorts of people come and go since I started working at Steak 'n Shake, but that's mostly because they're either crappy employees or they've moved on to bigger and better things, but we've had our fair share of 'losers' and 'teenagers' there.

Anyway, this is all about the pros, so I'll break it down here. The people you work with are typically fairly easy to get along with. You'll make a friend or two working there, regardless of what age you actually are. Just try to avoid the people that are quite clearly bad news; pathological liars, shady looking people, individuals that have been accused of stealing, etc.. By avoiding these people, you can keep your job security as long as you're on the straight and narrow, do what you're told and try to help out your co-workers to the best of your ability.

Most would consider every employee wearing the same thing every day a drag, but I think it's for the better. It helps with the camaraderie there. No-one looks different, so no-one is above you except for the managers. You feel like you're commiserating with your fellow co-workers 'cause you all look the same.

Before you consider joining Steak 'n Shake as an employee for whatever reason, look at your store. If things are at least moderately clean during rushes, the employees seem happy, and the staff in the back don't look stressed out, you've probably got a good store on your hands. My store, luckily, just so happens to be one of those places. We've made a lot of changes in the several months I've been there, most of them for the better. The store looks a lot cleaner than it used to, and there are less complaints from staff and customer alike.

If you've got some good managers, they'll work with you to create a flexible schedule. My second job takes up most of my time, so I only work during the weekends. If the store is strapped for employees, run, don't walk, unless you want to work forty hours shifts and, like most places, they REALLY don't want to pay you overtime, so you'll find that if you're getting around thirty hours, they're going to keep an eye on you to insure that you're not working extra hours than you've been scheduled.

So, as you can probably tell, much of how great your experience at your store depends on the actual store itself and, following close behind that, managers. For example, they allowed us to wear costumes for Halloween as long as we had our name tags visible, a rare display of individuality in a company based around squashing it. And, of course, I was one of all of three people that dressed up. Go figure.

Cons

For starters, the company itself is one of the downsides. They have some of the most ridiculous policies I've ever heard of. As if that weren't bad enough, they're constantly changing these ridiculous policies to make them even more ridiculous, or making up new policies that are even more ridiculous than the ones that preceded them. An excellent example of this is forcing drive-thru operators to wear the same promotional flair that servers are expected to wear. It's very clear that not a single person at the head of the company has never spent more than an hour at a restaurant at any one time that didn't involve free food and kissing the CEO's ass.

Considering how hard they press the guys in drive-thru to push promotional items, it's a wonder we even have to wear the flair. My guess is because they assume customers can see them through the menu board. Speaking of that, the newest promotional items are always on display in and around the store, and even on the menu board in plain site. Yet, we still have to wear these huge, ridiculous pieces of flair that only serve to get in your way than educate a customer.

The company runs a bonus program where essentially, if you can somehow manage to fend off disgruntled senior citizens or food grubbing poor people and avoid complaints, somehow get all of your numbers perfect and no-one gets overtime, you get a fifty cent bonus for every hour you work. If you're working forty hour weeks, that's a surprising chunk of change. This, however, rarely happens. Many of the times, you'll get dinged twice for complaints just before the end of the bonus period and, whoops, there goes your bonus. It's awfully coincidental, but whatever. Yeah, you can only get two complaints in four weeks to get the bonus. Third complaint and you can kiss your bonus good-bye. Good luck with that.

Which brings me back to the aforementioned senior citizens and poor people. For a store where, I feel, the food prices are absolutely atrocious and needlessly expensive, we get a LOT of senior citizens and poor people. I've always joked that people who go to eat at Steak 'n Shake have more money than sense, but that left out the poor people. Typically, the poor people are lured in with the promise of discounts and the coupons from the Sunday paper. These coupons arrive every Sunday in every newspaper in my area without fail, and you can always pick out the poor people because they will point out to you that they have coupons, WHICH ones they have and exactly how much the coupon says the food is worth, as if by not having enough cash in their wallet, the world may somehow stop existing.

Most of the old people that come into the store have no business being outside the nursing homes they inhabit. Remember when I mentioned that most people that go to your store are sensible, reasonable individuals? The opposite holds true for old people. You'll find that very few are actual sensible, where the majority of them are cranky, crotchety and looking for someone to take their frustrations out on. If you're a server, this problem is multiplied exponentially. Expect to also run a billion malts to the inevitable ten-top herd of old people that you have shuffle into your store from the nearest graveyard.. er, I mean, nursing home.

I wish I didn't have to be so harsh on a select few (in most cases) people, but it seems like many people have such a strong sense of entitlement these days that not a single one of them has. Not a day goes by without having someone yell at me for stupid reasons.

Worse perhaps is carry out. It's the most pointless and complaint-generating function of the store, and it only serves to stress out everyone in the back. Between people in the restaurant (who are often too lazy to tip) and people in the drive-thru (who go there because they're too lazy to tip), we've got our hands full. We're in full-on rush mode and we're in a state of high efficiency. We're getting food out in a timely manner, everyone's happy.

Then soccer mom calls the store and orders fifty dollars worth of food. Now we're on red alert because they say that they'll arrive in ten minutes and expect the food done by then. Or random Mexican landscaper enters the store and orders carry out for his crew of twenty crammed into a beat-up white van and time is of the essence. So now we have to drop everything and insure that the order gets out in time. If we don't meet the expectations of the individuals in carry out, which you never will (Fun Fact: Most customers believe that the staff in the back are powerful sorcerers who can immediately magic their food into existence and are insulted when they have to wait any longer than five minutes for food.), you often get dinged later on for a complaint.

Anyway, I could go on all day about this stuff. Heck, maybe I ought to write a novel.

Advice to Senior Management

My advice?

Stop forcing stores to go 24/7 that don't want, or have the traffic, to, just because some drunk called in to complain our store wasn't open at 3 AM and then passed out at our menu board until the next morning.

Stop with the ridiculous policies. If you feel the need to make a new policy or revise an old one, actually go to a wide range of stores and see if these policies need creating or fixing.

Stop putting undue pressure and unrealistic expectations on managers and associates alike. I know Steak 'n Shake's policy is 'Ah, for every person that leaves there's ten more waiting to take his place', but your biggest asset are your associates and managers, and from what I've heard, manager quit rates are astronomical. After talking to my managers, I can see why. I'm amazed how many of them still work there.

Oh, and keep your district managers on a short leash. The one we have is a short-tempered perfectionist ass-clown. I'm betting it's because of your crazy expectations for him, too.

Pros

The other employees are great as long as you treat them with respect its easy to make friends. money's usualy pritty good.

Cons

They work you to the bone between one to two months of working there you will hate the place more than you hate anything else in the world. When I quit I will burn the bow-tie.

Advice to Senior Management

respect your employee's and you wont be so short staffed all the time.