Plus a lot of companies seem to think that customers prefer to witness workers “seem busy” as opposed to them actually being busy. I do deliveries for a restaurant, and there is a lot of downtime between 1 pm - 3 pm and 8 pm - 10 pm because people just aren’t ordering food at those times, so management usually makes us do pointless busy work. A lot of our busy work does have a point when the store itself is busy, but it would be really nice to just sit around and chat when we have nothing going on.
I remember I used to work at a grocery store and we had the same problem. After about 9 pm we usually only had the night shift people, with a minor rush at 11 pm or so, and our store closed at 1 am, so a lot of that time was just spent sitting around chatting. If you were a stocker you were probably busy, but us cashiers had nothing to do. Management seemed to think this was a horrible thing so instead they made us “look busy” by literally telling us to act like we were cleaning things.
I have had the rare few customers get mad at me in service jobs for not “working” when I was “supposed to be,” but I feel like deep down nobody really gives a shit. As a customer myself I much prefer somebody doing things timely and in a friendly manner than them just looking like a busy bee.
Plus a lot of companies seem to think that customers prefer to witness workers “seem busy” as opposed to them actually being busy. I do deliveries for a restaurant, and there is a lot of downtime between 1 pm - 3 pm and 8 pm - 10 pm because people just aren’t ordering food at those times, so management usually makes us do pointless busy work. A lot of our busy work does have a point when the store itself is busy, but it would be really nice to just sit around and chat when we have nothing going on.
I remember I used to work at a grocery store and we had the same problem. After about 9 pm we usually only had the night shift people, with a minor rush at 11 pm or so, and our store closed at 1 am, so a lot of that time was just spent sitting around chatting. If you were a stocker you were probably busy, but us cashiers had nothing to do. Management seemed to think this was a horrible thing so instead they made us “look busy” by literally telling us to act like we were cleaning things.
I have had the rare few customers get mad at me in service jobs for not “working” when I was “supposed to be,” but I feel like deep down nobody really gives a shit. As a customer myself I much prefer somebody doing things timely and in a friendly manner than them just looking like a busy bee.