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server

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Hospitality

On the outside, Spencer´s seems like a great place to work, but you will very soon realize that it is a house of cards, just barely staying in one piece by a million hasty improvisations from the staff.

The management is utterly useless. They will use you as much as they can, they think that they are better than the people who actually do the work to keep the place afloat, and they will disrespect you when you make it known that you cannot do your job well when they constantly set you up for failure. 

This place does not give a care about their employees, all they care about is income for their corporation and the managers/ owners at the top, and not even paying the event servers their tips, which are legally owed to them. They will split hairs about every penny they owe you, and will likely make ¨mistakes¨ in your pay, never giving you too much, and often taking from you. Hours in general are terrible, staff meals are insulting, wages are enormously insuffient, the building itself is spread out without any sense of operations, and you may literally lose your head if you have to find anything in the storage shed. 

I have spent a year tearing my hair out at every single shift I have worked there, always believing that it will get better. It did not. It can hardly hold onto half of its staff. Managers change over like clockwork, and no real improvements are ever made. It is rapidly decomposing as a fine dining option. It´s just meh. 

Apparently once upon a time, this was a great place to work, but not in a very long time, and those who remember it are the angriest, because they ironically, are the worst treated, given the worst sections and hours, and not at all appreciated for their loyalty. It´s a very one-way form of loyalty. I´d call it taking advantage and treated your best people like old trash. 

The food is mediocre. The staff is always miserable. The managers are completely inept and utterly condescending. I cannot urge you strongly enough to run from this place. Plus, down the street, there are numerous wonderful restaurants where you could go instead. 

Oh and if you ever considered booking an event in the observatory space there, you can count on spending a lot of money for a ramshackle, thrown-together kind of event where the waitstaff hate every minute of serving you, and the food is okay. 

What a relief to be gone.

This company has a lot of learning to do. I worked there in the last three years and unfortunately this place is a horrible place to work.  They often under schedule you for the hours you were promised and then quickly replace that with over scheduling you with back to back shifts from 3AM end times to 8:30AM starts the very next morning! They have poor organizational skills and management does not know how to work together or learn from their mistakes. It is a very "pass the buck" work environment where no one will take accountability for their actions or misactions. Spencers has an incredibly hard time keeping full time staff, most likely because of the inconsistent and somehow 'legal" way of scheduling. They schedule you for legal hours on paper, but you are expected to stay 4-5 hours past the time listed for 100% of your shifts.  I think this place is a perfect example of a company who knows how to manipulate labour laws in their favour. Many employees never take or get breaks, but yet their paychecks are deducted for them anyways. They often mess up your pay and you have to constantly track your hours to make sure you are paid for the full amount of hours you worked and lastly, if you work on the events side, they do not share any of the tips with their staff. That is right... they charge events at full gratuity, but this all goes into the pockets of the company and not shared with the ANY OF the employees working the event. 

Workplace culture is average, but the overall morale is bruised because of the collective anger and resentment towards the entire management staff. People are nice to work with but, there is little incentive to go above and beyond and this is proven on a daily basis by everyone involved. 

Overall, I have learned from working at Spencers that you are entitled to your basic labour laws and rights and if you do not know them, you must study them before starting to work for this company because they will time and time again try to take more than they should and you must be prepared to defend your workers rights as well as your overall integrity. It saddens me to say that this company looks out for #1 and #1 only. Spencers shows little decency to its employees and overall staff. The labour board will be notified soon enough.

I worked at this nightmare of a place for nearly 4 years. I started at a young enough age I didn't know how badly I was being taken advantage of by my employers. From the very start this company payed little attention to laws: I was serving wine for about 2 years before I was old enough to do smart serve. Throughout my experience here the management was constantly switching, likely due to the terrible standards and poor quality, during which I went through several terrible managers. When I say terrible, I mean evil...literally the entire staff would complain to upper management about the event manager or other management and nothing would be done. There is little to no concern over health and safety - as a server you were pushed way too much and sorry, but I would not eat the food from here as a guest, so not worth it...
This place was hella competitive too, and not in a good way - managers had obvious 'favourites' who would get promoted ahead of more experienced staff, or would receive special privileges. In 4 years working in events at the Cambridge mill, I never received a penny of the gratuities that were owed to me (they charge the couple for this fee in the wedding contract, and pocket it). Not once. Several staff filed this with the labour board, but it was shut down suspiciously.Oh, and that's another thing, for the numerous staff who did file various complaints with the labour board, management would sit you down in the office and confront you about it...which I'm pretty sure is also illegal. I can't say enough how terrible this place is, along with the rest of pearle hospitality - it is completely toxic and incredibly corrupt in how staff are treated. DO NOT WORK HERE, OR FOR THESE PEOPLE, seriously people, you can do better. Also, I truly can't believe this place is still in business after everything I have seen and gone through, but also because of the rip-off it really is for its guests. This place sucks happiness out of you and its just one problem after another, stay away.

I can’t even explain or describe how horrible and disgusting I was treated while working there. And not even to my face, all behind my back or through emails/texts. I was hired as part time due to school but said until school starts I can work full time and help where ever. First week I was only given a good 30 hours due to training (which no one actually trained me….). Only showed me basic things and I had to figure out the rest. Every night was different in the sense of how late I would stay, what had to be done, and how the set up of the room needed to be set up like. Tips? Nope not a thing. Breaks? Nope didn’t get those either. There was one night, we all sat down 1 hour before we had to leave after working 10 hours straight, to eat the staff meal. I was told that this was the first time in months this has happened. You are pushed around like you are below everyone who isn’t a manager or a managers favourite. But that’s not even the bad part. ITS ALL THE MANAGEMENT THAT IS DISGUSTING. After the first week of working a lot of hours, the following 2 weeks I got 1 shift per week…. That’s it. I was told in person that they were short staff and needed people. Because people kept quitting, well I know why now. I didn’t get all my paper work to get paid right away so it took about 3 weeks AFTER I quit to get my paycheck. The manager wanted my sin and other personal information through text. I booked off a few days to go home (had plans before getting the job). Then got texted twice to come in, when they were the ones who approved me to have those days off. I also called in one day because I had the flu, yet I still got a call asking where I was. I got an email one day asking if I was going to show up to my last few shifts because I didn’t show up on Sunday…. Oh and they booked me in the day before a shift that I wasn’t on the schedule for. Didn’t ask if I had any plans or could come in. So no you shouldn’t work there. That’s why I quit. Just disgusting management. 

It's a clique. It felt like if you're not a favourite you mean nothing to the management. They set you up for failure, don't train you very much, for example I received 2 or 3 training shifts and then I was on my own. They expected me to figure things out for myself and then got very upset when I made mistakes. They made me feel stupid for not knowing everything about everything. No compassion. Very punishment driven. They expected me to do my job and the job of the position above mine while paying me the same as the position below mine. They once told me that I would not receive any more training and every mistake I made would be a write up!!!

You don't get tips in the events department. Even though the bride and groom are required to pay a service charge on their wedding. Also no benefits or severance pay.

In one year alone I payed almost $400 on uniforms. All out of pocket. If your uniform gets stained or ripped during the course of your job you are required to pay for a new one. 

Communication is very poor. For example they promoted a bartender to lead bartender without even informing the other bartenders that the position was available. Didn't even give any of them the opportunity to apply.

Some of the staff went to management once to ask for a security presence on the premises as they felt unsafe at work due to the proximity to Bridges and they were scoffed at. We were told that because we have multiple cameras on the premises that we were completely safe. This was shortly after the homeless man broke into the Mill and had a police standoff.

All of the events department positions are part time and primarily on weekends

Overall I think the Mill looks glamourous and successful on the outside but they don't care about their employees and I'm my opinion that is the real measure of a companies success.

Hosts are expected to do everyone’s job for them. Servers hide in the kitchen on their phones. They never offer to clean their tables which is fine if they’re busy however, that is not the case because they manage to find time to complain to the host they have dirty tables. The pay is bad for the amount of work expected of you. They also over book like nobody’s business so it becomes your fault when a table who only has a hour to eat isn’t gone by the time the next reso is there. 
It is also not a friendly environment between servers. They constantly go to the iPad and steal tables from on-another, talk behind each others back, and don’t help each other out. It is very competitive for no reason.

The worst of it all is the managers. They’re unapproachable and hide in their offices. Nothing was more annoying then having a phone call or a person at the door that needed to speak with them and the manager making me feel like garbage for going to get them. Like that’s kinda your job. 

The scheduling is also awful. All summer I was given maybe two three hour shifts a week. summers for students are prime working time and they just took that as an opportunity to over staff. Whole place is a joke

I have worked at Cambridge Mill for just over a year now as a Special Events Coordinator, and I have to say that from the beginning, it is much more than I could have asked for. 

The establishment is the epitome of great customer service. It’s so refreshing to see every member of the team, from management to entry level employees, share the same values and work tirelessly towards the same quality of service for their guests. I thoroughly enjoyed working with each and every person on the Cambridge Mill team. 

The hospitality industry is a difficult one given the many hours that need to be covered, but management regularly encouraged me to take time for myself. I was given many opportunities to expand my knowledge of the industry which led to the only reason I could foresee myself leaving Cambridge Mill; a career advancement within Pearle Hospitality. 

I continuously brag about my job/Cambridge Mill as a whole to everyone I know. I have made the most amazing colleagues and friends at this establishment and I am going to miss working with each of them every single day. 

You gotta work here.

I worked as an event server & bartender at the Elora Mill this summer as I was home from university. The job culture and environment is awesome. Working in hospitality, long hours are expected, but the events team at the mill make these long hours fly by. The people are really what make this job. The events manager  is understanding, supportive and an all around amazing boss. He works alongside the events crew and understands the ins and outs of the industry like the back of his hand. The head maitre D' is equally as great and the two of them have made this summer of work fun and rewarding. The entire events staff is hardworking, driven and committed to providing excellent service. I have made great friends at the Elora Mill and will treasure my time there forever. I hope to come back and work here again next summer. Highly recommend if you are a student looking for a good serving job. I look forward to seeing the doors that will open for me after working for the Elora Mill and for Pearle Hospitality.

Don't walk, run. Not only is this property specifically horrible to work for the problems, but disappointment and lies carry throughout multiple properties Pearle Hospitality is affiliated with. 

They paint a pretty picture for you during your interview but soon you'll find out that was all an act to get you through the doors. They offered me a ”higher wage” due to my experiences but once I received my pay I slowly started to find ”mistakes on accounting end” they called it. I had 2-3 hours deducted from every other shift, breaks that I never took, a $300 uniform I never received throughout my entire time working for this company. They kept my vacation pay, tips and way too much of my time. Myself and other staff were expected to work 12 - 14-hour shifts with one unpaid 30-minute break but never guaranteed. 


The building is disgusting. They lack of support from upper management is concerning. Not only were they extremely unapproachable they were clicky and it felt like I was back in high school. 

I would never recommend this company of this property to work to anyone.

Would show up at 5 for the start of my shift and wouldn't leave until 2 sometimes 3 am. even if I was only scheduled until midnight. As the dish washer you were in charge of cleaning and maintaining almost every aspect of the kitchen. As the wait staff you are entirely subjected to the whims of anyone you walks through your doors, and in the face of degradation you just have to sit there and smile, even if all you did was have the audacity to exist in the same room as the customer. 

My favourite memories of that job would have to come from going on supply runs with the kitchen manager and all the delicious and fantastic food the chefs would prepare. Their food was delicious, albeit a little expensive.

Feel like i should mention they had me train my replacement then never put me back on the schedule after his training was done. They didn't even have the decency to fire me to my face.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Massage therapist 4 salaries reported	$110,000 per year
Server 9 salaries reported	$17.75 per hour
Housekeeper 3 salaries reported	$18.00 per hour
Cuisinier 10 salaries reported	$19.72 per hour
Line cook 2 salaries reported	$20.25 per hour

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