The night shift at a hotel is often slower, which means that employees have more time to do other tasks. Of course, time is still limited, and not everything can be done off-hours.

What would you do if your friend was promoted to the hotel manager where you work, but now she keeps assigning all the work to the night shift, making it so you can’t keep up?

That is what is happening to the night auditor at the hotel in this story, and he simply can’t keep up with all the work. He does not, however, want to complain, because the manager is also his friend.

Working for someone who is your friend can be challenging, and you don’t want to ruin the friendship. That being said, you also don’t want to do poorly at work. Read the full story below and see what you think about the situation.

Night Audit Issues

I’m considering this a tale of my own frustration with being night audit. And honestly, I may be being incredibly ridiculous but I’m just at my wits end with being given extra tasks that don’t come with a pay raise.

I work night audit for a hotel property with 200 rooms, it’s downtown but in a small city not a huge city most bars close around midnight and all are closed by 2am. We are attached to a small convention center and hockey arena.

I only list these things because a lot of my nights, even throughout the weekdays, I’m dealing with homeless people and drunk men.

The list of things to do can seem endless in a job like this.

The homeless people I can have security remove if they don’t just leave when I ask, but the drunk men or groups of drunk individuals, often hang out in the lobby.

It is policy for them to be there rather than being loud up in the rooms (as long as they are guests).

So, we are supposed to help clean up the lobby because the people left wine glasses and beer cans everywhere.

Like obviously no issue with that, but I can’t always get around to it because some nights it feels like everyone in the hotel needs me to run them towels or there’s a leak or a car has been broken into but that’s just a part of audit.

He isn’t getting the support that he needs, though.

We are supposed to have laundry on our shift to help with housekeeping requests (and obviously do laundry), but they aren’t always here and when they are they wear headphones and never pick up the phone, so I just end up doing any quick kind of runs.

But also on top of rolling the date, doing housekeeping requests, dealing with noise complaints and guest complaint calls, and homeless people, I have to send out three separate emails.

These little things end up taking a lot of time, I’m sure.

One that requires me to compile three separate reports and 2 stacks of physical receipts, the other two are just downloading files and emailing them to a list of people. Around 10 files each night (when I started it was 5)

I also stock the hotel store, and if I have time, I’m supposed to clean keys.

God do I hate cleaning keycards, everyone is supposed to pitch in with those but unless we have new people working, it always ends up Night audits problem.

Now this just sounds gross.

Please I beg people stop putting keys in sticky stuff, and what are you doing with them?

That is what my main job is.

Not the point of the post, but better for background of what my job is already supposed to be.

The night shift is not as slow as it might seem.

A few months ago one of our senior front desk agents took over the empty front desk management position.

I thought this would be great, but they just keep giving us more tasks to do because I genuinely do not think they grasp that while I have more “free time” I am the only one in the hotel, besides our one security guard and sometimes someone in laundry.

She is truly a good person. I’d consider them my friend, but as a manager she seems to be a good manager for everyone but night audit.

It’s like I’m now asked to do monthly account write offs, which that was fine, definitely not my job but it takes maybe ten minutes once a month.

This is a big addition to his responsibilities.

I also now do all the loyalty points redemptions stays, which is a pain since that does take hours of looking at a spreadsheet and subtracting what we posted to the account from what we are being reimbursed and balancing the account.

I was fine with all of that, it wasn’t a part of my job before, but it’s also just something to do when I can.

But there has started to be these notes put in the pass-along specifically for audit. Often one off tasks, email corporate support about the card reader not working, mop or reminders to make sure to do key cards.

A couple of days ago she asked us to make it a part of our daily task list to water the plants outside the entrance.

It is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Plus, it isn’t really safe to do at night.

This shouldn’t be a big deal and I couldn’t begin to tell you why but it’s just grated on my last nerve.

The plants are maybe a few steps outside the main entrance but I just don’t feel safe doing it.

There aren’t cameras there, there’s one inside facing that door (from a good 30-40ft away) but you cannot see out of the windows at night because they turn into a mirror.

Yeah, I would refuse to do this.

So, I wouldn’t know who is out there until I step outside, and often the people I deal with at night are on drugs and say some crazy stuff to me.

And those interactions don’t equal some of the things I get told from drunk and sober men.

Our security walkies don’t work well. If they are even down the hall you have a 20% of the radio actually working otherwise it’s just static and these are the brand new ones.

Watering plants should be done in the morning.

I also don’t want my uniform to get wet, which when watering plants or filling up the watering can, it likely would.

But also who the heck waters plants at night? We are a big property with a ton of day time staff who *aren’t* chained to the desk. (Also who needs to water plants daily anyways? That’s how you get dead plants)

There is nothing wrong with speaking up for yourself.

The other night audit did send her an email back basically telling her no we would not be watering the plants at night. (We’ll see how that goes, this would be the first time we say no to doing something)

Honestly, I’d never tell her this because I don’t want her to feel bad.

I know she’s learning but I miss my old manager.

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He really needs to speak up and try to improve the job.

It’s just this job used to feel like I had a manager who worked with me. We communicated daily, she would ask me how my night went and make sure I understood she trusted my judgement and how important night audit is as a role. We were a team together.

Now I kinda feel like a task monkey, who is being graded.

Way too much context is still missing, and I don’t know how to translate more of it into words that will make sense.

Anyways just needed to get that off my chest.

He can certainly bring up his concerns without insulting the manager. Choosing his words wisely and approaching it with the common good of all will help ensure everyone is on the same page.

Read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about this frustrating story.

A good manager wants to be told when there are problems, though.

You have to set boundaries, and this person has a great place to start.

This night manager had a lot to do too, but it just isn’t fair.

I agree with this commenter, and he needs to bring it up with her.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who gets revenge on his company after they fire him and try to steal his custom program.

He has some serious security concerns, though.

You can’t just keep assigning endless work to 3rd shift and expect things to get done. I think he has to talk to the manager, and as long as he approaches it properly, it should work out well in the end.

This is definitely a difficult situation, but he can’t just keep ignoring it. Requesting a meeting, and explaining what is happening should help.