overwound manager rant

[Jaegar]

WARNING: Complete b**ch described within. If you don't wanna feel angry and/or emo, just ignore my furious ranting. It's also kinda long.

The speaker's corner isn't here anymore but I need to vent so I'm gonna have a nice rant here.

As the title indicates, this regards my overwound perfectionist vegetarian neat-freak hyperactive micromanaging cranky competitive workaholic manager at work. (I'm not saying being vegetarian is bad, but she manages to make it so)

The past two days have been unimaginable torture because she's been sick, and therefore her crankiness is increased severalfold. At the best of times we manage to get along with minor tension and a great amount of self control on my part.

As if me having to deal with her wasn't enough, we can't seem to keep any new hires in the store since she started managing the closing shift (everyone there now has been there since before she was transferred >.>) We had a new girl last week, and judging by her lack-of-presence tonight, she's quit already and I can't really blame her. In the manager's (let's abbreviate TM) massive quest for prefect efficiency she never seemed to understand that people aren't born with an innate knowledge of the nuances in working at a restaurant. She's washing dishes slower than everyone else? SHE'S NEW! She doesn't now where the trash compacter is? SHE'S NEW! Just calm down and have someone else work with her to show her the ropes as she does new things. It's probably more "efficient" than having an untrained person wandering around with just a short description of the procedure. It probably didn't help that near the end of Tuesday closing she loudly threatened to fire everyone in the store. We actually finished 10-15 minutes early >.>

TM's also obsessed with having everyone productive every second they're in the store (she's even done work off the clock on days she wasn't scheduled after coming for a sandwich O.o). Tuesday she criticized me for taking 10 seconds to lean against the cabinet and breathe for a sec while I looked for trash bags in a place they are 80% of the time. "Well, maybe someone moved them >.>". Then there's the micromanaging tendency. It's not good enough to be doing something, you have to be doing the absolute best something. She'll actually just up and have two people swap jobs ('you cut and you do veggies") for no apparent reason and with no preference for personal skill (remind me to come back to that skill part). She also has some kind of "i r superlady" mentality going on too. She's constantly assigning people to help another person with a 1 person job but utterly refuses help herself, even if it means making sandwiches for 5 people at once and flat out ordering me to take out the trash instead of working the register for her. I had 3 people in line (which I can deal with) and she insisted that I needed her help. Nope, not 10 seconds to breathe with her around. Stop to catch your breath and you'll be taking temps or pre-sweeping the lobby in no time (2 of the most useless and annoying tasks in the store, even worse than cleaning the refrigerator gaskets).

Oh yeah, the skill part. Today as we closed TM was giving me my list of tasks (which is about 4 major tasks long in all seriousness). The first one was to spot sweep the lobby (because it had already been swept a couple of hours ago, only the dirty parts needed sweeping of course). I suck at sweeping. My parents have literally been trying to teach me to sweep for over 10 years (household chores) but I just can't see dirt on floors untill it's "eww it crunches" bad. I politely told her "I'm sorry, but I'm incapable of spot sweeping." Of course this provoked a rant that went something to the effect of "You're not leaving this store till you learn. Why do you have to disagree with me? Don't talk back all the time..." When I finally managed to get in a full phrase it was "I can sweep but..." cue next rant... I finally added to the phrase after she slowed "but i'm physically incapable of seeing what's dirty so..." enter "stop arguing with me rant". Eventually I got the full phrase out "I can sweep, but I'm physically incapable of seeing what's dirty so I may be slower or less thorough than you want". This started her entire rant over as I started to sweep. When she left off with a final "Why do you always argue with me?" I stated to point out that I had only stated a fact about my abilities, but thought better of it as that actually would have been arguing.

She also considers her word to be absolute law that should be eagerly lapped up and perfectly absorbed and acted upon by every employee (even long strings of instructions muttered in the opposite direction from 10 feet away). The slightest question irritates her. If it's just asking "you want me to do this, this, this, and this right?" her mood will visibly worsen. If you actually go so far as to ask "do you really want me to do this?" or "are you sure that's how I do it?" The best result is a mild scolding (worst is threats of firing or writeups). When she gives instructions, they generally come in massive orders suitable for an hour of toil, and if you happen to forget one out of that list she's going to ask you why it wasn't done. A recent development is her habit of assigning time limits to every order. "You need to wash these pans, the cutting boards, and a few other dishes. It should take you 15 minutes at most". Not only is it annoying, stressful, and arbitrary, we know that we should work quickly. Adding a deadline to hang over our heads is just being a controlling jerk.

Did I mention that she obsesses over time? Yeah, we're scheduled to close the store in 1 hour of work with 4 people (closing till we leave) she gets upset if we're not out 15 minutes early. This particular obsession has greatly increased the past couple of weeks. Today she started wrapping up the food and cleaning the line an HOUR before we closed... while people were still ordering sandwiches. I was so tempted to make a joke to the (obviously irritated) customers along the lines of "I don't have the heart to tell her we're not closed yet", but I knew she'd take it personally. The other day she was obsessing over closing early "X at restaurant Y closes early sometimes. Why can't I?" She repeated it for about a half hour like a mantra.

I understand that we're supposed to work for our pay, but out of all the papers I signed when I was hired I don't remember any saying "I pledge my body, soul, and personal health to the prefect functioning of this restaurant" (not sure what she signed though >.>) I made a comment to one of my long-time co-workers about the possibility of TM snapping and she said "Please don't suggest that." I kinda think TM would benefit from a vacation, even if it's just to a nice white padded room.

Have I mentioned that TM's competitive? Not only is her word law, nobody else can be better at anything than her. Because she's been sick this week, everybody else in the store has had to say "Gesundheit" or "Bless you" 70 times each. I happen to say Gesundheit. After one such incident she just had to prove something so she said "Gracias". And for the finale, "yes, I know what both of those mean". Oh grats! you know thanks in the 2nd most common language in the US and what Gesundheit means (common trivia fact). I paused and thought before saying YW in Japanese. She didn't respond XD.

As a conclusion... We finished closing on time even while one person short (new girl didn't show up). TM had closed the store 7 minutes early too. Fortunately, nobody came to the door in the remaining time we should have been open. The only real blow-up after the "you must sweep the lobby >_> thing was near the end. Apparently 2 people working to clean every surface in the store, wash every dish, and store every piece of food didn't work fast enough. 10 minutes till the hour she got up from her manager-type paperwork and soon shouted "WHY HASN'T THE LINE BEEN SWEPT YET???" Sure pick the one thing that hasn't been done yet. Nevermind that we had done absolutely every other thing that needed to be done. No, just that single task (it was indeed the last task in the entire store) not being done 10 minutes early by an understaffed crew deserved her ire. Hopefully the situation will return to normal when TM recovers from this cold or w/e. I'm still gonna have to look at some options though. (She's only night manager? Day manager pwns, esp compared to her.)


If you've read this entire thing, I thank and congratulate you. I owe you a good listen as you pour out some horrible experience you've had.

[Hadvi]

hmm, you had a hard time. I had something like this too at the place where I used to work XD. So I totally understand why you had to rant.

[Yoon]

Sorry to hear that. Geez, that manager of yours sounds like a real Nazi driver. -.-

It sounds like she has some major emotional problems too, considering she's venting it all out on you guys at the restaurant. She could be suffering from personal issues, marital/love/sexual issues, PMS (if she's young), menopause (if old), untreated mental disorder, etc.

In any case, there's no reason why she should treat you or your co-workers in that manner. Maybe you and your co-workers could band together and issue complaints about her management abilities to the restaurant owner/HQ. Perhaps if enough people were to protest about her, maybe the owner/HQ would "re-review" her management abilities.

[Jaegar]

lol, yeah. I'm considering the formal complaint option (it worked for a different problem in the past). I'm kinda surprised she's a manager because everyone I talk to in the various parts of the campus food service is like "oh yeah, I know her. She's nuts." Thanks for the support ^_^ I feel better after having re-affirmed my reasons for working there (1st paycheck of the year ;D) and having thought of some options like I said.

Looking back over what I typed, I'm surprised how little I exaggerated (up or down). Those were my exact words in that sweeping rant too. I really do make an effort to be polite to her.

One minor but annoying thing is that she has no sense of humor (at least that I can see). I't so hard to make even a minor joke around her. I think the only time I've heard her laugh is when she's making jokes about her own workaholic slave driver attitude (she knows she's bad).

lol, that reminds me of when I warned her ahead of time when I decided to over analyze the menu. I knew if I started spouting off my observations she'd take them as suggestions that the menu was imperfect and therefore she was imperfect. It was fun after I did it (took all break though). I determined the price of every type of meat based on what certain sandwiches cost minus the price of a veggie delight (a.k.a. salad-on-a-bun). I was expecting to find huge variations in the prices between the basic sandwiches (ham, turkey, etc) and the big sandwiches (The Feast, BMT, turkey& ham, etc.). It turns out, most sandwiches are roughly equivalent to their base meat price plus a veggie delight. The only one I calculated as being ridiculously overpriced was the turkey& ham (.40-.50 over the base price). Surprisingly The Feast was within a half cent of the base meats composing it. I did find a little exploit with it though. The Feast costs $2 more than a veggie delight, but double meat costs $1 regardless of the sandwich you have... Buy one feast with double/triple/quadruple etc. meat and a few veggie delights. Grats, you just duped a bunch of Feasts XD. rofl

I didn't point that bit out to TM XD

edit: oh yeah, due to differences in menus and pricing, I'm not sure how valid my observations and duping method work at any other Subways.