I work for a Noodles & Company I live by, and I have a lot of problems with my manager.
Sometimes corporate makes really dumb decisions such as adding the steamers. The steamers supposedly make cooking faster, and they do. But they are a pain in the ass for dishes. Whenever I close an extra 20-30 minutes is added on which makes my school sleep schedule more delicate. On top of that, the steamers themselves ruin the so called « freshness of the food » (even though we throw away our meatballs after 15 minutes because they are no longer « fresh frozen ») because in a way it dehydrates the noodles and makes them cool down faster because of lack of a chemical change or something I dont fully understand. But still, my manager ignores this and argues that customer enjoyment rates have gone up .5% (Not even statistically significant)
On top of that, we are going to switch to a « One size bowl » from now on. The whole point of this is our « competitors » (Chipotle really only) have a one size plate. This makes prices for the customers go up to account for this marketing change, it increases our plastic waste and does effectively nothing. No customer conscientiously our sub conscientiously is going to think we are better than Chipotle for this. It might even make business go down because things are higher priced.
So what does my manager do about this? I don’t know. He probably puts some form of cognitive dissonance up because he is 47 or something and it’s too mentally hard to change his actions. All of these changes ultimately harm him and his business and puts more power into corporates hand while simultaneously getting it removed from him.
I know a lot of this is really minute, but this is what slowly drives inflation and this hurts people like my manager without him realizing. He might never know that he is just another cog in the machine, but who knows, maybe he gets paid $50 every time he walks into a closet with one of the men at corporate and that is why he allows it. 🤷️