I'm a supervisor for a large, Seattle based fast-food corporation/legal drug dealer that poses as a cafe. Since I started, I've felt the tasks to be completed were far too many for the man-hours scheduled. I'm not sure if this is corporate ignorance of what's actually possible on the ground or a deliberate attempt to make us work harder by giving us unrealistic goals.
To put it in perspective, 3 people normally close the restaurant each night. When I was trained by my manager, there were two others and us (so 4 total people). My manager gets on us if we stay past our scheduled time and yet when we had 4 people doing the closing tasks (one of whom is the manager), we still blew past our time by 15 minutes. Like I said, unrealistic expectations.
So yesterday I closed with two others and we were busy. I had lots of supervisor tasks to do and my team was busy taking care of customers. I didn't take a break or even a lunch because the tasks simply couldn't be done if I had. (By the way, I don't let my teammates skip breaks or lunches). Now when I close, I don't want my manager getting in trouble by her boss because we went over our scheduled end time. Therefore, we busted our butts to do the best we could until the time to leave and just a few minutes late.
Today my manager criticized my team and I for not cleaning enough or preparing enough ingredients
for the morning shift. I asked her what needed to be prepared each night and made a list of what she said. Tonight I had the same teammates as before and we maliciously complied. We cleaned a lot and prepared a ridiculously large amount of ingredients for the morning shift. Of course, we were just following her directions.
We got out 35 minutes late (and only then because one of my teammates was getting uncomfortable and I'm not ok with that). The funny thing is we still didn't get even close to doing all the things I'm told we're supposed to do at closed. We just finished the list that's all. I'm sure I will get in trouble for this and I will post the conversation if I do.
TLDR Large corporation has crazy unrealistic expectations for employees and I protested them by maliciously complying, blowing past my scheduled shift end time.
PS Normally I take the trash out so morning crew doesn't have to. I do this for them, off the clock. But seeing as how it was them that complained about our prep, I piled all the trash at the back door and didn't take it out because we're technically not allowed to take it out at night and I maliciously complied.