All right, it’s really late, but I want to get this typed out before I go to bed. I’m seeking opinions on the current situation at work, which this evening changed from irritating to downright maddening. Lots of details under the cut, and it’s probably rather tedious, but I’d appreciate input from anyone that has the patience to read it all XD
Originally we had an opener that worked 6-10 and was in charge of cutting the meats and cheeses for the case, taking care of the salads (i.e. putting them in fresh bowls, discarding and replacing the expired ones), cooking the hot foods for the morning and lunch, and a few other small, miscellaneous tasks. In addition to this shift there was the production shift, usually 4-8, that was in charge of making the day’s prepackaged sandwiches and salads.
Eventually, at the suggestion of our merchandiser (i.e. corporate), these two shifts were combined. The new timeframe was 2-1030, and the prepackaged salads were dropped from the roster. So, to reiterate, this production/opening shift consisted of making sandwiches, cutting meats and cheeses for the case, taking care of the case salads, cooking hot foods, and the other sundry small items. The sandwiches, meat/cheese case, and salad case are all supposed to be ready by 8. The hot food is all supposed to be ready by 10. It’s the stuff that needs to be done by 8 that’s really the source of the problem.
These days we’re making about 30 sandwiches a day, which usually takes me between two and a half and three hours. Considering I have to cut meat and cheese for each sandwich and do some truly retarded paperwork for each type that I make, not to mention the fact that 6-10 of these are foot-long subs, I think this is pretty good time — less than six minutes for each sandwich. Does that seem slow? If you think about going into your kitchen and making a sandwich wis cold cuts, cheese, lettuce, and tomato, how long do you envision it taking? And if it’s a footlong sub? And if you have to take the temperature of each sandwich and write it down along wis the time, package it up, put a label on it, and shove it into a refrigerator?
Cutting the meats and cheeses for the case takes anywhere from half an hour to an hour, depending on how much cheese needs to be cut, how many new packages of meat I have to open, and whether I have to rearrange things or not.
Dealing wis the salads takes anywhere from 45-90 minutes, depending on whether whoever worked the previous day set them up correctly and how many I have to replace rather than just putting them in fresh bowls.
Of course I’m not factoring customers into this. The store opens at 5, so any point after that it’s possible for me to have to deal with someone. It’s generally pretty slow, so this isn’t a huge deal, but it does bear considering.
Anyway, as you can see, we’re looking at somewhere between just under four hours and six hours for these tasks — either of which time frame works out quite well wis the 2-1030 shift. When we started having problems was when they started cutting back the number of hours the deli was allowed to schedule per week, and my start time began to creep. 3 still worked pretty well… sometimes I’d have to put off cutting the meats and cheeses (the lowest priority of the three big initial tasks) until after 8, but I’d lay out the empty trays so the case at least looked a little better. 4 was pushing it; I almost never got the meats and cheeses cut until well after 8.
But lately she’s been scheduling me at 5. So either I make the sandwiches by 8, or I get the meats/cheeses and salads done by 8. The hour between 8 and 9 is free of any time-sensitive tasks, so that’s a sort of catch-up hour… after 9 I’m busy cooking shit, but there’s still some time between putting things in and taking them out to get stuff done. However, there have been maybe three days out of the ten or so she’s scheduled me at 5 that I’ve managed to get all of my tasks done by 10 (which is my typical leaving time these days). This makes sense, right? The work I used to do in 8 hours has a hard time fitting into 5?
Well, apparently it’s not good enough. Today I got written up because I’m not able to get all this shit done. “Work not finished in a timely manner.” Written up because I can’t get 8 hours’ worth of work done in 5 hours. Or, more accurately, because I can’t get 6 hours’ worth of work done in 3 (since it’s the stuff that needs to be done before 8 that’s really the problem). Oh, and she’s put prepackaged salads back onto the list of shit I’m supposed to do, too.
The biggest problem, I believe, is Steve. He’s the one that works this shift on my days off, and supposedly he’s able to get the sandwiches, meats and cheeses, and case salads done in three hours. I haven’t the faintest idea how he’s managing it. Wracking my brains, I can’t even come up wis a way to cheat and get it done in three hours. Thirty sandwiches in an hour is two minutes per sandwich, including (as I mentioned) cutting stuff for them, doing the paperwork, and packaging them all. But apparently because he can do it, I should be able to do it.
So what I really want to know is this: does this seem unfair to you? I’m asking because I’m really, really, really annoyed about this, but my initial emotional reactions to things have a tendency to be dead wrong; there are times when I calm down and start thinking I should really just get over it. I am not and I refuse to become one of those people that tries to weasel out of every little disciplinary issue by whining to the union about it… but at the moment I’m inclined to think this is genuinely unfair, and if I remain convinced of that and they try to write me up about it again, I will go to the union. So I’d like to know what people on my flist think about it. Thanks in advance.