Is a coffee after meal break rule fair for Heytea part-timers?

Heytea part-time employees say stores deny meals to workers who have not completed six hours on shift. Those who want to eat must either have 30 minutes deducted from their work hours or volunteer for extra overtime. Several staff reported similar or stricter rules, and some stores deliberately capped hours and shortened shifts.

The rule surfaced around the Spring Festival, when many university students take part-time jobs at tea and coffee shops. Staff argue the policy masks labor-efficiency cuts that leave them working long stretches without rest. In food and beverage, mealtimes are peak hours, so eating on schedule is already difficult, but workers question whether the coffee after meal arrangement is reasonable.

Around the Spring Festival, a large number of university students flocked to tea and coffee shops for part-time work, but a Heytea rule about mealtimes has left employees confused: those who have not worked a full 6 hours are not allowed to eat, and if they want to eat, they must either have half an hour's work time deducted or volunteer to work overtime. Multiple Heytea part-time employees reported encountering similar or even stricter requirements, and some stores have deliberately capped work hours and shortened shifts. In the food and beverage industry, mealtimes are peak hours, so it is normal for workers to be unable to eat on time, but employees question whether the rule is reasonable, believing that management cuts work hours under the pretext of controlling labor efficiency, leaving workers toiling almost without rest while famished.

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The Spring Festival is almost here, and many university students on holiday choose to work part-time at tea or coffee shops to earn some pocket money. However, not long after starting, these students new to the workplace began to have questions about some of the store's rules. For example, the Heytea part-time employee who posted on social media below shared a screenshot of a chat record and asked everyone, "Is this how all milk tea shops are, or is it just Heytea?"

Judging from the screenshot, this Heytea store requires all employees to "not be allowed to eat unless they have worked more than 6 hours." If employees have not reached that length of time but want to eat, they must either have half an hour of meal time deducted from their work hours or voluntarily work an extra half hour of overtime. The poster said that when she had previously worked part-time at other food and beverage stores, she had never heard of such a rule, so she began to doubt the reasonableness of Heytea's requirement.

Similar cases are more than isolated. A part-time employee who had just left Heytea also mentioned the store's "must work 6 hours before eating" clause when sharing their work experience. In the comments section of that post, many Heytea employees left messages saying their own stores had even harsher conditions: "At my place you can eat only after 7 hours," "No food at all if you haven't worked 8 hours," "At our store you're only allowed to eat after a full eight hours."

By that logic, if a worker starts at a Heytea store at 9 a.m., they must work continuously until at least 3 p.m. before getting a brief meal break, perfectly missing the normal lunch period. To newcomers just entering the workplace, this Heytea rule fails to take employees' actual needs into account and does not even give them a break to eat midway. "Even in a factory you can at least eat on time. What kind of employer doesn't even let you have lunch?"

However, veterans who have worked in the food and beverage industry for years admit that the public's mealtimes happen to be exactly when restaurant orders are fullest, and staff must handle an endless stream of orders during peak periods, so being unable to eat on time is the norm for many food and beverage workers. Many people may simply skip lunch or dinner during work and wait until they clock out to soothe their rumbling stomachs.

Although it is understandable that the nature of the job makes it impossible to eat on time, many people still feel there is something wrong with Heytea's rule. Some staff members revealed that because employees must meet the time requirement to eat on paid time, some stores deliberately cap work hours when scheduling shifts, resulting in "part-timers having no meal time" and "only being given five-hour shifts, exactly the kind where you just cannot eat."

In addition, if business at the store is average, some part-time workers reported "being sent off after only two hours of work" and "if it's not busy, they tell you to leave, specifically capping it at 5.5 hours."

For tea shop workers, work hours basically determine how much pay they can get. But in order to control labor efficiency, store management cuts work hours and reduces shifts, invisibly lowering employees' wages, so that workers, in order to protect their hours, can only endure hunger and work with almost no rest.

Some Heytea employees use the phrase "you don't give the horse grass but still want the horse to run" to describe their situation at the store, saying bluntly that many workers have long been dissatisfied with the company's rule that "you cannot eat if you haven't met the work-hour requirement," but after raising feedback there was no response at all, leaving them to reluctantly accept this less-than-reasonable requirement and become output robots behind the counter who neither eat nor rest.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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