I worked for Sams for 3 years. I was just a barmaid but I took the course in Tadcaster to become an in-house relief (at my own expense of course). I left just under a year ago and am fortunate to have a good job within the local government now. I loved working in the pub. The hours suited me fine, I had terrific manager bosses, it was a friendly pub and we took great pride in the place.
In the Summer the beer garden was a mass of flowers (before he scrapped the garden budget of course), and with the lovely umbrellas it had a continental seaside atmosphere. It was always packed with diners, the majority from local offices who would call in for a baguette at lunch time. The kitchen had one of the highest food hygiene standards in the city. And then Humphrey brought his axe down. As the only full time member of staff I was cut back to 8 hours a week. My bosses started doing a minimum of 90 hours each a week and you could see the strain on their faces. Just how thin were you supposed to spread yourself? They were getting up at the crack of dawn to clean and going to bed well after midnight. Even their days off stopped. The pub was too busy for one member of bar-staff and there weren't enough hours for two so they took up the slack.
On one occasion when they did take their evening off things got so busy ex bar-staff and customers were having to help out free-gratis. When eventually the strain became too much they made the decision to leave which I was devastated about. Humphrey could not find replacement managers for love nor money (obviously word had got out). He even put a postcard in the local post-office window advertising for managers! How cheap is that! Eventually he decided to remove the stock and shut the place down. At the 11th hour a relief was found - a single "older" person with another pub to run. How ridiculous was that? And it was Easter Weekend. Needless to say the running of the pub was left to us bar-staff who put in extra hours for no extra pay.
I used to drive to the pub in the morning to let the dray in, sometimes waiting for hours because they'd been delayed somewhere. I'd get to work at 6, let myself in as the "manager" was at the other pub, do all my checks before I opened up only to find (and this did happen) that there was next to no OBB in the barrell and there wasn't another on the gantry! I had to get customers to manoeuvre one into place. Fortunately they were too polite to moan about cloudy beer! I'd lock up at night, go home shattered as it'd taken me 'til past midnight to clean up (and I only got paid til 11.30) and I'd get phone calls at 2am asking if I'd remembered to shut a window upstairs!
I was glad when that came to an end. But this is all stuff that Humf never saw. Yep, the pub ran smoothly because he'd got staff, managers, ex-staff and customers working for free!! The pub then got permanent managers in and I stuck it for a few more weeks. Without the hours there is no way you can keep the cleanliness/ hygiene standards up. With two of us behind the bar we were always cleaning the glass shelves/ optics etc but with one person it just wasn't possible. I have never seen standards slip as fast as they did there. There were constant clouds of bar flies round the beer pumps and some of the optics, and once or twice I had to flick a cock-roach off the bar. The toilets stank. The cleaner always did a thorough job but obviously she suffered with the cutbacks. I don't think the managers cleaned them that often. The carpets became black and sticky and the pub started to look and smell dirty.
The food trade just died. Who in their right mind was going to pay ?5.95 for a small portion of microwave curry and rice? Eventually after trying to cram 30 hours work into 8 I decided enough was enough and quit. To be honest I was embarrassed to work there anymore. The place started to look like a run down working mens club. I've been up twice socially since Christmas and both times I had to listen to customers saying how bad it was now. Oh yes, Humphrey may well be saving money cutting back the hours but it's a false economy. To be quite honest I don't know how the pub has escaped being shut down by Environmental Health. No person in his right mind could possibly do something as drastic as he has done and expect things to carry on as normal. God only knows how much he's wiped off the value of the company and how much revenue he's lost/ losing. But I can say this with absolute conviction. I'm bloody glad I don't work for him any more.
