Many workplaces are really busy and it falls on the employees to work extra hard (usually, for no extra money).

What would you do if your manager made a policy that prevented you from getting work done in your downtime, only to make you stay for overtime to get it finished?

That is what happened to the grocery worker in this story, so she followed the instructions perfectly, racking up overtime until the store manager got mad and changed the policy back.

No Dishes until department closes!

I work as both a teacher and at your Arizona Hometown Grocer.

That makes for a very long day.

After I finish teaching 4th graders I go work in the Deli department. There are tons of things to do: sweep and mop, take in the teas, the soups, tear down the hot case (which has about twenty items that get tossed out and have dishes needing to be done).

I’ve developed a system where I work on the dishes as I go, and there is a bell to ring if someone needs customer service.

Why are some customers so impatient?

Some customer didn’t like this daunting task of having to ring a bell to get my attention, so a new policy has been adopted by the store management team: No doing dishes until the department is closed!

This is a problem.

Well, this is a problem for management.

The deli department “doesn’t have the hours” to pay us past our scheduled time, and on top of this, any time we work past our scheduled time in the departments counts as overtime. Double Whammy for them.

I didn’t believe this was the case, but either way, this was a logistical impossibility. I knew that I couldn’t do the dishes after the department closes without, you know, going past closing time.

Management is forcing her to waste time.

I pace back and forth through the front of the deli, watching for customers as I clean the slicers and counter tops, the only things I could do for cleaning because they were within eyesight of customers.

I have about six customers from 4-7, walking past a 4x3x3 sink full of dishes piled past the top and spilling over.

She has to follow the rules, no matter how dumb they are.

I keep thinking how dumb this is that I can’t do the dishes right now, but resign myself to keep to my plans of only working on customer service until 7pm.

I keep tearing down stations and the dishes keep getting higher and piled more messily.

Ahh finally 7pm

These could have all been done already!

I start doing dishes and I finish about 2.5 hours later.

I do this two more times during the week, and get pulled into the office, with the deli manager and assistant manager both there.

Are they clueless as to why this is happening?

Assistant Manager says: “It appears that there’s a bit of a problem here, because you shouldn’t be taking 3 hours to do the dishes”

Then deli manager chimes in

Ummm. She was told specifically not to!

“Yeah why don’t you do the dishes during in between customers??”

I slowly look over to a very sheepish looking assistant manager who looks at me like they want me to shut up.

Maybe the management team needs to get on the same page.

I said that “management said I can’t do dishes until the department closes”

This started an argument back and forth between Silvia (my deli manager) and the assistant manager that turned so angry that I got uncomfortable.

I bet this was awkward, but entertaining, to watch.

“This overtime hours isn’t coming out of my department!!! Fix it!!”

The assistant manager yelled back at her “Look you’re overstepping here. We’ll take it out of mine this time… just, make sure you do dishes in between customers. “

Those managers had to pay that ‘stupid tax.’

I got close to 9 hours overtime that week. Maybe I’ll get some new shoes 🙂

I love it when managers actually have to deal with the problems they caused. It happens so rarely.

Let’s see what the people in the comments say about this story.

This commenter says it was a very dumb rule.

It would have been wonderful to see in person.

Now this is a whole other issue.

Yup, too many layers of management.

Oh, I’m sure this commenter is correct.

It is a thing of beauty when a manager gets called out.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.