Feeling down after review
Hi everyone! I apologize if this will be long, I will try to sum this up as best I can. I debated posting in here because I don’t want to give away my location and such, but I’m also not going after the managers or my coworkers involved. This is more about me feeling bad about myself I suppose.
Long story short, I’m in a smaller store. We haven’t had an SM since about March. So a lot of nearby SMs have been coming into our store to help with whatever needs to be fixed or done, especially on book floor. I’m a CTE, have been since 2019, and before that I was two years on book floor.
With this in mind, my review (well all of our reviews haha) were done with another SM. My review was great overall. Nothing to be personally ashamed about. Last year we had two very very awful health inspections back to back. The inspectors (yes we had two together and it was a nightmare 😭🤣) with quite a few critical marks. Both times. Both were also during season. They were late with our first inspection by about 4 months, so when it was due for our second inspection, they showed up a month later to keep their schedule. Anyway, i took full responsibilities for these bad inspections. Even told my SM at the time to write me up, and she did. And then I made it a point to do better. I felt awful for being a terrible leader and even came up with my own personal plan to do better as well.
Our last inspection was in November. The lady said the place looked so good that she had to FIND things to mark us off for. I still got two critical marks which were corrected on site. And a few Non-critical marks. Sent it to corporate. Great. Everything was good.
Come this time around we just had our inspection earlier this month. The inspector said we have the cleanest place in our county, said he could tell we take pride in our store, and again had to FIND things to slash us for. Which he did. Two critical marks which were corrected on site. And a few non-critical. First critical was my barista didn’t use a paper towel to turn the faucet on and off when washing her hands. Second was our red sanitizer bucket didn’t say the word “sanitizer” on it. The non-critical marks were bracelets (which has never been addressed to me in my seven years), the papers we have on the back of the beverage case (need to be washable and also never been told this before) and there were some food certificates missing in our binder for the baristas.
We automatically took care of everything. I get an email from one of the corporate guys asking what my action plan was for the follow up inspection visit. I was SO confused because the HI didn’t say anything about a follow up nor did the form say a follow up. I emailed back, said we didn’t have a follow up, told him what the HI said and what we took care of and he emailed back and said oh good! Okay great to hear!
At this point me and my two baristas are utterly confused. My one barista during her review said she was told “well after that lengthy health inspection…” and we’re all like what? We thought we did good. We reorganized the entire cafe. Took months reorganizing and cleaning and doing deep cleanings every single day because obviously we weren’t sure when the inspector would be in.
Come to my review, I knew this was going to come up. I got a D for the health section and honestly i wanted to cry because I KNOW how much work me and my girls put into keeping the place clean. And I explained the critical marks and even the SM said they were silly, and I fought for a C and he said he would vouch for me. A year ago I would’ve given myself an E. But i know the work I put in. My entire store knows. They saw it. They heard me on the daily for months “health inspection this, health inspection that.” I was scrubbing floors and detailing the freezers and fridges. I wanted a perfect score on my inspection but our county has the strictest health inspection process in the state.
I know this shouldn’t bother me as much as it does but I just feel so distraught. I didn’t get any hassle on my last inspection in November with the two strikes. Even my awful back to back ones didn’t require an action plan.
I don’t know what I’m asking for here. Maybe I just needed to vent to people in the same work environment. I’m not upset with the other SM. He and all the others are working double duties to help our store while we don’t have an SM and I truly appreciate them so much. And I appreciate even more that he was willing to hear me out. I just feel so defeated because I know I went above and beyond and still got bit in the end 😞
So sorry for the long post and I appreciate anyone who read this.