Thrown in at the Deep End

A kitchen assistant at a national pub chain in West Wales wrote a review about their first ever job. They were meant to be a kitchen associate, but their first shift was taking in alcohol deliveries from 5pm to 9pm - a two-person job they were made to do alone, with no training. They were told to put tills in the front bar but had never been shown how. When they got it wrong, they were shouted at.

First job. First shift. Alone. Shouted at for something nobody taught them.

That review has stuck with me for weeks because it captures the whole problem in one evening. Someone showed up ready to work, got handed tasks they'd never seen before, and got blamed when it went sideways. Four hours in. Day one.

What day one actually looks like

I've been reading employee reviews on Indeed and Glassdoor for months now, specifically looking for what people say about their first days and first weeks in hospitality. The pattern barely varies between chains, cities, or roles.

A front-of-house team member at a national chicken chain in Coventry: "When you join, you are bombarded with everyone else's work; they give you minimal training - someone will tell you the general idea of what to do once, then you're thrown into the deep end and scolded when you inevitably make mistakes."

A bar associate at a national pub chain in Cardiff Bay: "No training given. Expected to work one of the busiest weekends of the year with no training."

A team member at a national bakery chain in Telford: "Barely any real training, thrown in the deep end and told get on with it."

A server at a national pizza chain: "You were thrown in at the deep end. No proper training. The other staff were too rushed to help train you."

That last one is worth sitting with. The other staff were too rushed to help. The people who are supposed to be training the new person are also the people running service, and they can't do both. So the new person gets a vague walkthrough and then they're on the floor, guessing, while the experienced staff try to keep up with their own work.

An employee at a casual dining chain described the whole thing in one line: "From the beginning everything was a mess, after training you are thrown into the restaurant and will have to figure it out on your own."

It starts before they even arrive

Some of these people barely get told when to show up. An employee at a casual pizza chain in Bath: "My first shift I was told about 2 hours before I started."

Two hours' notice for your first day. No time to prepare, no idea what to expect, just a text and a start time. Compare that to how you'd feel starting any other job - you'd expect at least a schedule, an outline of what the first day involves, maybe a name of who you're meeting. In hospitality, for a lot of new starters, there's nothing.

A new supervisor at a national Italian chain had never worked in a restaurant before. They applied, got the job, and turned up ready to learn. Their manager told them to keep their inexperience quiet, handed them some basic online training that covered nothing a supervisor actually needs to know, and left them to figure it out. By their third shift, they were running the entire restaurant alone. On Mother's Day. Three shifts of zero preparation, then the busiest day of the year.

A sales assistant at a national bakery chain in Montrose didn't make it past two days: "Only managed to work here for two days. I was expected to know the job with very little training. Spoken to like a child."

And an employee at a national brunch chain: "Training is no longer a thing. New employees are just expected to know what they're doing. If they don't they are removed."

The 90-day cliff

According to The Access Group, 42% of new hospitality staff leave within the first 90 days. Nearly half your new hires gone before their third month.

The most commonly cited reason, according to PKF Francis Clark, is that the job didn't match expectations. People hear "unmet expectations" and think it means the new starter wanted something unrealistic - better hours, higher pay, less pressure. But read the reviews. These people knew the hours. They knew the pay. What they didn't expect was to be left completely alone on day one with zero training, zero support, and zero way to succeed.

An associate at a national pub chain in Dundee described their entire onboarding: "Training is non-existent as I learnt from a cleaner before me and only then the basics, most of it I had to figure out the correct procedure myself."

They learned from a cleaner. The person who happened to be nearby, who happened to have five minutes, who happened to know some of the basics. That was the training programme.

Read the reviews carefully and you notice something. The complaints are never about the work being hard. Every one of these people knew what hospitality involved. They showed up ready, wanting to do well, and were given nothing to work with.

PKF Francis Clark's research found that if you retain someone past 90 days, they're 50% more likely to stay long-term. So the difference between a short-term loss and a long-term team member often comes down to what happens in the first few shifts. And right now, what happens in the first few shifts at most venues is confusion, isolation, and blame.

What a good first day could look like

Imagine your new starter arrives on Monday morning and they already know the layout of your venue. They've been through a short guide on their phone over the weekend - filmed in your kitchen, your bar, your dining room - that walked them through the basics. Where things are, how the close works, what the first hour of a shift looks like, who to ask about what. They haven't memorised everything, but they're walking in with a foothold.

They know the names of the sections. They've seen the till system. They know where the cleaning supplies live and how the end-of-night checklist works. When they arrive, the shift lead doesn't have to spend the first thirty minutes giving a tour while service is building. The new person can actually start contributing, because they've already absorbed the stuff that normally takes three confused shifts to pick up.

They still need support, they still have questions, but the questions are better - "should I do X before Y?" instead of "where is everything and what am I supposed to be doing?" The shift lead notices. The rest of the team notices. Instead of babysitting the new person through the basics while service builds around them, they're working alongside someone who already has a foothold. That changes the energy of the whole first day.

And when the new person goes home after that first shift, they're thinking about the parts of the job they actually enjoyed, because they had enough ground under their feet to notice them.

The fix

Everything described in that "good first day" section is what Lattify does. Your shift lead spends ten minutes recording the close, the opening routine, the till walkthrough, and every new starter gets those as interactive guides on their phone before day one. They show up already knowing the layout, the procedures, and how a shift runs - and that knowledge stays current even when the person who recorded it moves on.

The first shift is the audition you're failing

Every new starter who walks through your door is making a decision, and they're making it fast. They're deciding whether this is a place that has its act together or a place where they'll be left alone on day one and blamed on day three. According to Enboarder, employees who have a positive onboarding experience are 69% more likely to stay for three years or more. The gap between keeping someone and losing them in those first twelve weeks is narrow, and most of it comes down to whether anyone thought about their arrival before they got there.

All employee quotes in this article are drawn from public reviews on Indeed and Glassdoor for major UK hospitality chains, collected between 2024 and 2026. Chains have been anonymised.