Just some questions I have...

Hi I just recently joined the company as a p27 and I must say that in the beginning I thought that the things that were happening to me and the other 27's were normal until I met a woman who used to be a manager at PEP and she made me realise a few things.... But first let me explain my experience. - there are numerous days where I would be working and only get lunch past 5 o clock. The latest incident occurred where me and another 27 were given lunch at 17:30, we close at 6 ! On top of that we had to clean the store as well so we only ate for 10 minutes and went back to work. And when we write our hours in the book we can't even claim the time we spent working instead of being on lunch - there was a day that I worked and didn't get paid for it. The reason being that he/she exceeded the budget. On top of that we stayed and worked 2 additional hours after closing time because there was too much work to be done. - another thing is overtime. We were told that 27s don't get paid overtime but somehow we always end up working it. Especially on weekend and public holidays. The minute the store doors close we begin working all over again and the managers excuse is that public holidays and weekends give us time to get things done! We could take up to 3 hours working after hours, and I'm not talking about end of day I mean opening boxes and packing stock. - we are strictly expected to open the store exactly at 9 am but somehow that rule falters when its time to close? During the week if the manager is in store we almost always never close at 6 exactly. Always pushing for the budget to be made so we would close at 18:30 keep in mind customers are in store shopping, it is getting late and by the time we cash up, clean the store and wait for the manager to finish whatever, it is almost 8 pm. Why? Weekends as well there was a Sunday where the manager closed the doors at 2. And we couldn't claim that hour because we had to 'go the extra mile' - I KNOW THE MANAGERS DEFENSE WILL BE THAT OUR CONSENT WAS GIVEN BUT THATS NOT TRUE EITHER. IF YOU ARE NEW AND TRYING TO WORK HARD AND BE A PART OF THE TEAM YOU DONT KNOW WHATS RIGHT OR WRONG, YOU GO WITH EVERYTHING UNTIL IT STARTS TO FEEL LIKE YOUR BEING USED. There are also other things that we do in the store that I didn't know we weren't supposed to do until the area manager or someone from head office comes to visit and my manager turns into a whole new person! I mean telling us new rules in 5 minutes. Can't really explain this one as I am confused myself.

I never physically go the the managers office and complain and that's probably why this kind of treatment prevails. But here is my reasoning, if you know right from wrong in terms of company policy and humanity in general, if you were given such a great position that most people will never attain, if you work for such an amazing company why carry on exploiting people just because they are not complaining? Also I am afraid of what might happen to us if we wrote our names and store number here. But please respond with anything, I can't go on like this.