A satisfied 90-year-old employee says she’ll work there until she reaches 100. Meanwhile,
others have quit due to sexual harrasment or were straight-up let go via a two-line
form letter. So what’s the story behind such discrepancies?
Here’s what it’s really like to work at Bob Evans, according to employees.
According to a 2003 study published in Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research
over 50% of the employees in the restaurant industry are dissatisfied with their jobs — and
we're guessing that percentage may have gone up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But employees at Bob Evans seem to exude positivity. A majority of them
left positive feedback about the company on the site Comparably, with one writing,
"Everyone works together. We help everyone out who needs it."
The camaraderie seems sweeter than the restaurant's apple pie.
One hostess at Bob Evans gushed
"If we needed a meal ready, we were very able to talk to the back staff and have
them get that ready. If we had just sat somebody we would let the servers know
and it was a very good work environment. All the pieces worked together that way."
The customers are generally nice too, and some are so sincere about having their meal at Bob Evans
that the hostess said employees tend to have a good relationship with them.
And even the waitstaff, who you would expect to be the most stressed, seem happy. The hostess wrote,
"The waiters would always joke around,
and they were on rotation, so you got to know all of them really well."
Given how happy employees seem to be, it's no surprise that some took to Quora to say
that it's also a great place to enter the job market. As one past employee put it:
"It was my first job, and I loved it!"
What's it that they love about the work? For some, it's that they felt the company valued
them as both employees and as people, while for others, it is the learning experience that
the restaurant gives them. An ex-employee who had joined Bob Evans in high school — taking
up a range of roles including that of a bus boy, dishwasher, kitchen prep, cook, and server — said,
"I actually learned skills that I could use later in life. [...] I learned something valuable from
all of those. And while doing all that it was a great social atmosphere when time permitted."
But of course, not everything is cool and dandy. One Bob Evans wait staff member wrote on Quora,
"It is not easy. You will have your mental breakdowns and nights of being
so busy you feel suffocated and seeing nothing but cranky
tables mad at you for all the issues that may or may not be your fault."
Still, even with all those frustrations, she added,
"I truly mean it when I say there's more good than bad."
Many Reddit users were grossed out when a Bob Evans employee posted a photo of
a massive pile of unwashed dishes cluttering up the kitchen. So what happened? Well, the original
poster said that the pile-up happened because their dishwasher wasn't scheduled till 10 am.
And it's apparently not an isolated incident. Another employee,
who had worked as a hostess and grill cook at Bob Evans for eight months, said that
"Dishwashers tended to be either absent or slow,
so it was very hard to find clean dishes during the rushes of the day."
Guess the people are Bob Evans aren't big "Ratatouille" fans!
"Keep your station clear, or I'll kill you!"
Unfortunately, unwashed dishes are not the only issues that botch up the
kitchen aesthetics. Another former employee wrote,
"The grill area tended to be really gross. [...] Fryers,
when the oil was finally changed, tended to stay empty for a few days."
And in some cases, things get way out of hand.
The Bob Evans in Toledo, Ohio, reportedly violated kitchen regulations
According to the Toledo Blade,
"Foods were left out on a speed rack at an unsafe temperature while awaiting reheating."
They also reported that other foods weren't properly refrigerated,
including packaged pumpkin pie, cantaloupe, tartar sauce,
whipped topping, and milk. And you definitely don't want to leave milk out!
"They also had to throw out cold food because it
was too warm to be considered safe, we're talking ham, tomatoes, fish…"
Besides the luxury of wearing a casual black tee and denim to work instead of a specific uniform,
the employees have a ton of perks including insurance and retirement benefits,
and the right to have a Bob Evans dinner for free.
The discount rates on food vary with the job title, though. According to Glassdoor,
managers can eat for free. Everyone else gets 50% off on all meals on days they work, or 20% meals
at any Bob Evans location on their days off. A former server at Bob Evans told Job-applications,
"If you worked over a certain number of hours, you were entitled to a half price meal [...] even if
you came in and you weren't working that day, you were entitled to a discount."
Of course, you have to work for your supper. A former kitchen prep at
Bob Evans told Job-applications that he was in charge of soups,
salads, desserts, and rolls and biscuits among other things.
"Pretty much prepared everything, and made sure all the produce was sliced,
made sure we had soups that could be heated up and ready."
Still, it was worth it for both the discounted meals and
the prospect of starting at $10 per hour. He said,
"I thought that was amazing."
According to many employees and former employees, coworkers at Bob Evans are
like family. Not like the distant aunt you see once a year, but someone more close.
Glassdoor analyzed over 2600 reviews by Bob Evans employees and found that one
of the most common sentiments is that it's a, quote, "family oriented great place to work."
How nice is it? Well, one 90 year old employee told the Columbus Dispatch
that she wanted to keep working at Bob Evans for as long as they would let her.
After cleaning tables and greeting guests for 15 years, Pat Hartman said she has no plans to stop.
"If I get a hundred, I'll still be here, if they'll let me."
When Bob Evans advertises itself as a place where strangers are like friends
and friends are like family, there probably is some truth to it. According to The Daily Jeff,
when 30-year employee Larry Michelli passed away, his family had his funeral procession pass through
the parking lot of the restaurant, just so his co-workers could say goodbye one last time.
According to the report, Michelli was so dedicated to Bob Evans that
he had shown up at work even on the morning of his daughter's wedding.
And another employee who had spent 25 years working at Bob Evans told Quora,
"We were a special group. More like a family than coworkers."
Getting laid off hurts, but when it's family, that's a lot worse.
So when a group of Bob Evans employees in West Virginia were abruptly laid off via a two-line
form letter, it definitely rankled. One of the laid off employees told Eyewitness News,
"I was in shock, I was absolutely in shock. And I mean, more than anything I think I was disgusted."
The employee, who had worked at the restaurant for a decade before being abruptly let go, added,
"Ten years I've given that company! And I think the least they could have done
was at least, you know, they could have handled it better."
And it wasn't an isolated incident. Another employee who was let go
after 36 years at Bob Evans wrote on Glassdoor,
"Treat your long-time employees like you used to! [...] I stuck
by you people and you try to eliminate my job, I deserve better treatment."
And many other locations have shut down over the last decade as well.
After the closure of five restaurants in 2013,
the director of corporate communications, Margaret Standing, told the Tampa Bay Times,
"We told the team there it had nothing to do with their dedication or how well
they were doing their job, but for reasons and circumstances beyond their control."
And in 2016, the company's low-performing locations were shut,
affecting as many as 1,100 workers. But there was one silver lining: the changes
implemented by the company after these closures, including a new focus on takeout and delivery,
helped the chain weather the COVID pandemic better than most of their competitors.
Anyone who has ever worked in the service industry knows that customers can sometimes be difficult,
and it's no different at Bob Evans.
At Bob Evans, it's a custom that you pay your bill at the cashier's desk.
But it's a custom that some customers aren't familiar with. One employee wrote on Reddit,
"People usually figure it out themselves, but sometimes they will stop me and angrily
tell me they're ready to pay. When I drop their bills off, I tell them that you pay up front.
So if you're not listening to me, it's not my problem really."
Another employee wrote on Reddit that every day they would have multiple people just
walk out without paying for their food at all. And unsurprisingly,
the pandemic didn't always bring out the best in customers. One waitress wrote that a customer
who refused to follow mask protocols started swearing and threw a bottle of sanitizer at her.
A survey conducted by Social Science Research Solutions found a shocking stat:
71% of women in the restaurant industry had been sexually harassed. And according to the
survey, the perpetrators included both customers and those within the industry:
supervisors, managers, restaurant owners. What's worse, when the incidents were reported,
almost all harassed employees faced retaliation of some sort.
And unfortunately, Bob Evans has had their share of harassment issues.
The St. Louis Business Journal reported that in 2005, the restaurant chain faced
a lawsuit that alleged that the general manager at one of the restaurant locations
sexually harassed eight female servers, some of whom were still teenagers.
In that case, the settlement reportedly cost the restaurant a quarter of a million dollars.
But it wasn't an isolated incident. According to the West Virginia Record,
in 2021 an employee who worked at the Bob Evans South Charleston location filed a complaint
against her former manager and the company for sexual harassment and racial discrimination. She
alleged that her complaints to the restaurant's supervisory personnel were ignored, and she was
subjected to retaliatory actions. Ultimately, she said that he assaulted her and even came to her
house after getting her home address from company records, leaving her no choice but to quit.
On 2015 New Year's eve, the city of Flint, Michigan, saw the "Chosen One" traipsing
along the streets, hopping in and out of some shops and restaurants including Bob Evans.
Yes, it was none other than Daniel Radcliffe, the star of the popular "Harry Potter" movie series.
According to M Live, Radcliffe was in the area to visit his
girlfriend, actor Erin Darke, who is a University of Michigan alumnus.
So naturally he went to Bob Evans for a meal. The manager of the restaurant said,
"We gave him the same service that we give everybody, and he was satisfied."
Not everyone was quite so sanguine about it, with one Twitter user writing,
"Out of all the things Daniel Radcliffe could do in Flint, he chooses to go to Bob Evans. #Why"
He's not the only celebrity you might spot at a Bob Evans, though.
Another star who we guarantee enjoys the farm-fresh food served up at Bob Evans
is the quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals, Joe Burrow. According to the Bengals website,
Burrow was a frequenter at the Bob Evans in his hometown of Athens, Ohio.
According to Indeed, less than half of Bob Evans employees feel that they are
paid fairly. The company has been accused of not paying its employees their due. In 2018,
they had to settle a lawsuit by giving away $3 million to 1,800 odd employees.
According to the lawsuit, the company had been paying the employees tipped minimum wage,
which is much less than the regular minimum wage, while making them do a
ton of work that did not earn them any tips — like scrubbing walls and sweeping the floors.
That broke the United States Department of Labor's rule that says if employees do non-tipped work for
more than 20% of their work time, they have to be paid the higher non-tipped federal minimum wage.
In 2019, yet another lawsuit was filed by employees in some Bob Evans locations
in West Virginia. Besides incorrect payment, the lawsuit alleged that employees were asked
to pay from their pockets to compensate for customer walkouts.
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