dishwasher

assistant restaurant manager

server

management trainee

prep cook

Kura Sushi

I had been with the company for roughly a year. I was a regular server then eventually after six months i was promoted to the Head Server position, which is essentially a supervisor of all serving staff but also not really a supervisor. The staff that I worked with were all college students who didn't care at all about the job, and constantly complained about not getting paid enough, consistently doing terrible work and claiming that they were completely justified in complaining, of which they were not always. Servers are paid $2.50/hour plus tips, as Head Server I only made another dollar on top of what I made prior, and for the amount of responsibility that management expected of me, is beyond not worth it. My staff didn't listen to me at all when I told them what they needed to do, and even didn't listen to management when doing the same. I was treated with disrespect, and even bullied to an extent. Management was fine for a while, but after we got a new general manager at the Carrollton location, things got progressively worse. Corporate is constantly watching both the kitchen and the servers, and if there is ever an issue that they see, they immediately call and ask that it be rectified. That is an entirely new level of creepy, and while I can understand the focus on operation, that's borderline stalking behavior. The new GM continued to add more servers onto a shift, to the point where we'd be overstaffed and we'd make less than $10/hour on a busy day (tips are pooled and split down the middle with the kitchen staff), and continued to say that "change would be coming soon," after the majority of our staff had gotten away with no call no showing, breaking company policies multiple times, and general bad behavior, all with a slap on the wrist and no further punishment. Now, the main reason why I left the company (on top of all the things mentioned previously) is because management almost let an associate get away with harassment. To give context, there is a sake box that is used to fill glasses for hot sake, and is in plain view of all guests. This guy was drawing insanely crude pictures of a coworker and friend of mine (she is on the heavier side, but did and does an amazing job and nothing but her job, on top of being a generally nice person, she never started any drama with other people unless they instigated it first) making fun of her, clearly labeling them with her initials, multiple times. Even I was targeted by the same associate, but I laughed it off because I have experienced worse treatment. Management knew it was him, and told my targeted coworker that if he didn't apologize, he was going to be fired. FIRED. He claimed to have apologized, when he didn't, and management planned on having him sign RESIGNATION PAPERWORK claiming that he was "going back to school" instead of being straight up fired like they promised. This means he would be eligible for re-hiring at a later time. I don't think that I need to say that is beyond not right from a moral and legal perspective. I grew to hate going into work, and this was just the cherry on top. Some of my coworkers were good people, and cared about the job and were nice to work with, however when my coworkers get treated like dirt, and the company decides to run the restaurant into the ground by having a focus on operation first versus genuine customer service, that's where I say I'm done. Work at this store only if you need a second job, they're flexible with scheduling, but at the rate the restaurant is being run, I can't recommend working here at all.

The workplace often felt political, with frequent favoritism toward people with close personal ties to managers. Advancement decisions lacked transparent, job-related criteria, and personal connections seemed to carry significant weight.

After leadership changes, front-of-house and kitchen teams appeared less diverse than before. While local demographics can influence applicant pools, the pattern raised inclusion concerns.

Corporate policies discourage nepotism and emphasize fairness, but day-to-day practice did not consistently reflect those standards.

Work-life balance was manageable at first, but as turnover increased, remaining staff faced heavier workloads.

Communication in the kitchen was a recurring challenge. Many teammates primarily spoke Spanish; without basic Spanish or clear visual cues, coordination was difficult. Limited translation support contributed to delays and occasional preventable safety issues during peak hours.

Pay felt low for the area, and professional growth seemed limited without clear, performance-based criteria. The environment came across as closed-off and not especially welcoming.


The environment is extremely toxic. There is workplace bullying, favoritism, employee theft from other coworkers. If a manager doesn’t like you they’ll create statements with false narratives in order to write you up. Some managers allow and promote favoritism. 

HR is almost nonexistent and when you do bring an issue to them there’s never “sufficient evidence” for them to take action. HR likes to sweep everything under the rug and tell remind victims that they’re not allowed to divulge information just so they can make it appear as if they’re on the up and up. They say “Let’s not bother operations with these things” (When literally being in a toxic environment such as this your operations are BOUND to be affected). They set up their own system - Lighthouse- so that if you make a complaint - they can continue to create the illusion of a great work atmosphere.

The pay isn’t worth the amount of work they want you to complete; you’re constantly belittled and taunted in a language you don’t understand (Spanish speaking coworkers making fun of English speaking coworkers in their face, but don’t understand the language or because you speak English with an accent. The store manager refuses to acknowledge the level of toxicity that occurs on a daily basis - or that they’re the actual cause. 

Corporate is literally just a high school clique of people to see who can do the least amount of work but stress out the employees the most. They’re changing rules every 5 secs that it just becomes frustrating and stressful. They never check on their employees. It’s always about what you can do for them only. 

For a company who sends emails all day there is horrible communication within the actual store. They text your personal phone constantly even on your off days and make it very difficult to make appointments, life events as it’s a very Store First, Your Life Second type of atmosphere 

A typical day of work is being blamed for others mistakes. Instead of coming to work feeling happy you feel bad for yourself since you have to put up with coworkers who talk smack about each other. Everyone feels entitled. The managers never call out servers for doing a bad job. Everyone’s their own boss. If you don’t meet one persons expectations, expect to be degraded by their group of friends. Everyone’s divided in who hates who the most. Managers talk bad about certain workers to other workers. HR won’t do anything to help you, as a matter of fact they encourage you to quit instead of fixing the problem. You make little to no money since all the tips are shared and 50% goes to the kitchen. Servers get paid just as much as you do but they slack off, do what they want to do, mostly on their phone, play video games, area manager also is apart of a “group” then makes it obvious when they don’t like you. Hardest part of this job is being stuck where you’re not old enough to work at a real serving job, out of with snobby people who are just entitled as the servers. Do yourself a favor and just look somewhere else. This is mentally draining I never worked at a job where I come home and feel like I want to take my own life. It’s that serious. Everyone’s problems are now your problems. If you are in a group where you are not liked they will make it known and the managers will also treat you like doodoo. I have met some great people but they all left due to the fact that this is a toxic work environment. Not even upper management cares how the workers feel all we’ve been told is “push through” or encourage to just leave if we don’t like it. It will never change DO NOT WORK HERE. No free food, no respect and be prepared to be someone’s dog. 

Pros  are, the interview was easy got hired on spot, pay is great, some of the people I worked with were great co workers, and the job itself wasn’t hard to do.

 Cons are that management is overly strict about the littlest most insignificant things, lacked good training, only had a measly 20% discount that barely covered anything, some people that were hired turned out to be literal felons or registered six offenders , a former general manager would sleep with servers, the current general manager drank beer while on break, some managers would watch the cameras on their phones while at home looking for reasons to punish workers, lacked room for growth, they’d promised to give raises and training for improvement but never followed up giving workers empty promises, management picked favorites which was unfair for other employees and overworked employees. 

In conclusion, if I were rank Kura Sushi as a work experience A-F and scale of 1-10, it would get a D and a rank of 4, the cons outweigh the pros. The pay is a big upside, but your sacrificing being treated like human being. You are just a cog in the machine with this company. Being overworked would be a tolerable thing if there wasn’t just a small food discount of 20%, at least allow employees a 40-50% discount or a $10-$15 limit shift meal. They dispose a lot of food at the end of the shift anyways, they could make the excuse that “It’ll make you sick” but just Beforehand they’d literally give that same food to customers. Management isn’t horrible, but some managers just need to not be managers, there’s good ones and bad ones. Easy job though, even with lack of effective training, it’s easy to catch on.

I’ve worked at Kura for a few short months and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. 
The company is totally unorganized and unprofessional towards people in the FOH & BOH. 
Management was all over the place and didn’t care about any feedback coming from the people that came in to spend their money on your food. 
I’ve worked in hospitality for more than 3 years and I know what i’m doing but being a head server at Kura was a total nightmare. 
Staying till almost midnight doing jobs that should be done by management is unacceptable. The pay should be higher than it is and the kitchen shouldn’t receive a high split of servers tips when they’re getting paid $16+
The false promises and changes were just too much and I feel sorry for anyone that works there. 
The worst part is all the food that gets thrown out at the end of the night because they’d rather throw it all in the trash than give it to their workers. 
The way that area management and other management from other states would tell you to call everyone on the waiting list towards the end of the night and when you do most of them come in yelling at the host that they were called but can’t be seated because we’re full house, then having to tell them it’s gonna be a 30-40 minute wait after they’ve been waiting for hours. You need to come up with a better system. 
The opening team is sweet when it comes to the servers and kitchen staff but the management only cares about the money and not for the people working there. 
I could go on and on about how unprofessional, disrespectful and annoying this job was but i’d rather not waste anymore of my time. 

I worked here from the time the store first opened. In the beginning, there were plenty of staff and we were properly staffed, which made it a comfortable place to work. However, over time, corporate kept pushing to reduce labor, and we were often forced to run the store with the absolute minimum number of employees. On top of that, same-day call-outs happened frequently, and at times the working conditions were honestly very rough.

The store was open as usual on both Christmas and Thanksgiving. As for scheduling, I do appreciate that my availability and time-off requests were generally respected. That said, there were many mistakes in the schedules, including approved time off not being reflected, so double-checking was absolutely necessary.

Management was not very reliable overall. Even when issues were raised—such as asking them to address coworkers who consistently avoided their responsibilities—nothing was done in many cases.

At the store level, it wasn’t terrible, but corporate management was a major problem. The store layout was also very poorly designed, making daily work unnecessarily difficult.

Additionally, a Japanese manager who was transferred from another location was extremely rude and lacked basic communication skills. Almost everyone disliked working with him.

Overall, the biggest issues came from corporate rather than the individual store.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Honestly, when I started working here it has been always been busy every time I work, no matter it is a weekday or a weekend, holiday or not holiday, but the constant turnover of the staff and the remaining staff constantly calling off double the workload of every team member as the customer keeps coming and ordering as many as they want, both from the belt and the express belt, and there is no limitation that keeps burdening every single staff working in the kitchen.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
It is always stressful every day here. The staff working here is urged to work as hard as possible to fulfill the sales goals every single day, even though the workload is overwhelming. It causes us to start the cleaning late that costs our clock out time while many of us have to work again in the morning after. The manager and the team leader are nowhere to be found in the most overwhelming situation. All they care is the sales boost that costs the stress of the staff.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Every day is rough day. There is NO slow day here, understaffed or not, people constantly come to eat as many as they want without caring the burden of the kitchen, yet complaining a lot when the food comes too slow because there is a disruption in the kitchen that has been overwhelmed.

Working at Kura, the people you work with could be fun. At the Katy location, the management is absolutely terrible. They're constantly scolding their employees because they're younger and it feels like a parent discipling you. Also when calling in for breaks and such, management takes no respect into keeping your messages private, there is a lot of disrespect. The treatment of the management don't make you feel respected. The most enjoyable part of the job would probably meeting the people and getting to know them and the hardest part of the job would be all the running around with only a 30 minute and 10 minute breaks. There were phases where management hired many people at a time, and all those people quit in less than a week because they knew it wasn't worth it, there is a lot of turnover at Kura Sushi. Night shifts aren't that bad because the staff don't give that much care into actually keeping up with their cleaning. The plate slots used to be cleaned with boiling water and scrubbed down, to now just being sprayed down. I could never eat again at this restaurant knowing how little care the staff take into cleaning just because the pay is so little per hour. Although it is a fun job sometimes, there are just some things that can't be overlooked. 

Pros:
- 10% discount on food
- Relatively short shifts
- Less interaction than normal serving job

Cons:
- 50% of tips go to the underpaid kitchen staff, and the rest is split up between all servers
- As of the last three months, you are unable to pick up, swap, or get shifts covered. If you’re sick, or have something important come up, good luck, and be ready to call in and potentially have your hours cut. If you have your hours cut, there’s no saving them, as you can’t pick up shifts to supplement.
- Scheduling is poorly done, it’s all done through a spreadsheet they send a picture of to a GroupMe group chat. Requesting days off has to be done in person, and written on a sticky note that you have to pray actually gets done. Personally, about a 30% success rate with being off on days requested off, sometimes a month in advance.
- Job expectations keep rising, while tips have been slowly decreasing over time
- The tools provided to do your job are outdated and poor quality, and you’re expected to pick up the slack from it
- Turnover rate has skyrocketed, about 80% of the people working there currently have started in the last month

Hopefully these things will be fixed in the future, but currently I cannot recommend working here unless absolutely necessary. There are much better places to work.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Dishwasher 1 salary reported	$18.00 per hour
Assistant restaurant manager 2 salaries reported	$26.40 per hour
Server 3 salaries reported	$16.24 per hour
Management trainee 165 salaries reported	$18.12 per hour
Prep cook 2 salaries reported	$16.27 per hour

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