Hello!

I'm in a sticky situation with my employers and it's very frustrating. I work for an independent catering company as a senior manager who pre-coronavirus ran 2 kitchens in 2 different cities. When the initial outbreak became serious before they closed restaurants we decided to close and begin looking at opening a series of take-aways in those cities. Then the lock down became serious and my directors began insisting that no more than 2 people ever be in any of our offices or kitchens at any one time.

Then i got told my pay would be changed to furlough and for the most part we needed to self isolate, so i began self isolating. Then my partner got a letter from the NHS saying that they had to quarantine because they were at sever risk due to medical issues they have.

Over the last week my directors have started to get very angry with me for not basically single-handedly setting up these businesses and are insisting on making me travel between cities to set up and recruit people for these takeaways. I explained to them that it wasn't wise for me to travel between cities as my partner is high risk, and since they are refusing to leave their houses at all, it's a bit unacceptable to expect me to do everything, especially since i'm being payed via furlough.

I got a response saying they agree that i shouldn't have to travel between cities, then the following day i got a phone call saying i had to travel 140 miles to buy kitchen equipment, recruit a full kitchen team and train them to run these businesses. whilst training up a full team of staff in my current city, whilst not having more than 2 people in the building at any one time. Then i got a message from my other director that i was basically going to have to run both businesses simultaneously to cut down on other people coming into contact with one another. i'm relying on a few people that they're organising to do construction work for me and delivering storage containers and fridges and they haven't organised it for me because they want to reduce how much human contact they have to have. but i cannot actually get to these people because i don't drive.

So far i designed menus, got suppliers, got everything set up. then i got radio silence from them for 2 days, followed by a dead line for less than a week to get these takeaways set up, and was told to completely change the menu, and recruit our own drivers, and train up a team to be able to run the business in a week so i can be available to basically move to another city for a week.

Whenever i try to reach out and talk to them, i either get snotty whatsapp messages, a promise of a conference call that never happens, or just silence followed by them just giving me a list of ridiculous tasks whilst they're sat at home. and i don't know what i should do or if i were to refuse to commute between cities it would put my job on the line. i don't drive so i would be obliged to take public transport, whereas all my directors drive but aren't willing to travel.

TL;DR:

Being made to travel between cities and set up food outlets whilst being forced to work solo due to self-isolation.

Bosses are ignoring my requests to self isolate due to my partner's medical situation.

Being payed the government's furlough in lieu of my actual pay, but being made to work full time hours.

being given dead lines for setting up food outlets without any sensible resources and rather than discussing it with me, they just send me snotty messages and lists of bizarre tasks when i try to get in touch with the issues i'm facing.