Flying chairs and customer brawls could also be commonplace for Waffle House workers, but meal breaks apparently should not.
Employees on the Southern dine-in chain see a sizeable chunk of change faraway from their paychecks each week for food consumed — even when they didn’t eat it, reported The Messenger.
Atlanta-based cook Gerald Green, who claimed he hardly eats in-house, told the outlet that the restaurant has docked him $39 for untouched food within the last three weeks — and “there’s no option to opt out.”
Now, “fed up” workers are rallying in picket lines, and 13,000 signed petitions to push Waffle House to carry the charge.
They’re also looking for other guarantees regarding higher wages and higher safety protocols amid vicious customer brawls on the eatery which have been widely reported in recent times.
![Many Waffle House employees don't eat their worth of the meal charge, the workers say.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/11/waffle-house-3.jpg?w=1024)
“Waffle House workers from across the South are fed up,” reads the petition from the Union of Southern Service Workers.
“We’re sick and uninterested in making poverty wages, the constant threat of in-store violence, and mandatory meal deductions – whether we eat a meal or not while on a shift.”
One South Carolina server finds the meal policy especially unfair since she hardly has a moment to bask in their menu items.
“I’m normally the one server working second shift, so I’m running around and don’t have time to eat a meal,” said worker Summer Schoolmeester-Cochran.
“But Waffle House still makes me pay for it.”
She’s not alone, says Georgia-based employee Cindy Smith.
“Eighty-five to 95 percent of us don’t even eat the Waffle House food,” she told Today.com. “We’re still having to pay for it.”
The mandatory charge has also increased of late and workers weren’t notified, Smith claimed.
“The meal deductions have at all times been taken out, but it surely was only, like, $1.50 per shift. Then they decided to start out bumping it up. Daily that you just work now, it’s $3.75 that comes out of your check. That’s greater than I make an hour.”
The Post reached out to Waffle House for comment.
Smith also said the charge makes it harder for her to afford the food she actually eats and that, paired with a scarcity of security, has her fuming.
“At one point, probably 2011, I used to be robbed at gunpoint,” she said. “Waffle House didn’t reach out, and I needed to work my entire shift.”
![Waffle House workers protested a meal deduction policy and safety issues at the chain.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/11/waffle-house-4.jpg?w=1024)
When Smith joined the recent rally outside Waffle House’s headquarters within the Atlanta area, she said the bosses dismissed their concerns.
“All of us stood on the market. We were very quiet. We weren’t rude. We weren’t disrespectful,” she told “Today.”
“We only sent three people in to deliver 13,000 signed petitions for them to inform us if we didn’t get off the property, they were going to call the police, and they threw all 13,000 petitions within the trash.”