1.) As an assistant manager you are required to work 50 hours a week (minimum) but that usually never happens. Some times your <sarcasm>Intelligent Area Coach</sarcasm> will want specific cleaning tasks completed when he comes into the store at 3:00pm (2 hours before a peak hour begins) and have it cleaned by the next morning. Since controlling labor is also thrown into the equation you cannot keep anyone after their scheduled time to help you (if you are not making sales for example). So that leaves JUST YOU after hours completing numerous time consuming cleaning tasks by yourself. Expect to work 60 hours a week. Once a salaried manager goes over 40 hours they receive something referred to as "Chinese overtime" which is pretty much a server wage. This can be difficult when it comes to maintaining a social life. They also expect you to go in on your rare days off to check on the store. I know that's important but making time for yourself is important to your psyche.
2.) Expect to be blamed for EVERYTHING. Once a week, General Managers have meetings with the Area Director and they will generally throw you under the bus to protect themselves. So expect to be yelled at a lot especially when you did nothing wrong. They will refer to this line of bullsh*t as "building capability in you."
3.) Restaurants should be clean. Managing time to clean can be difficult during peak hours when the Assistant is usually working. Some times these things just don't get done because one would rather focus on customer service as opposed to deck scrubbing behind a rack in the back of the store where a customer can't see anyways. There is a time for this, and it is not during peak hours or after close when it can get dangerous.
4.) Your supervisor (the Area Director) will only look at numbers on a paper and will not investigate further (i.e. bad labor numbers, sales, inventory) in case there is an explanation. You will only get chastised for making excuses when all you are really doing is explaining what happened. All in all, expect to get yelled at a lot for things beyond your control on a daily basis... 60 hours a week.
