Since if you decline they fire you. Yeah, this doesn't make sense since now they're still out someone for that shift AND out other shifts. But managers aren't logical or reasonable when they pull shit like this: they're vindictive.
Even more depressing when you think about how, overtime is extra money that they're losing by making you work.
At my job (pizza place, so maybe bad example), we have effectively only 2 night time managers, which means at the end of the week, whoever has the most hours goes home first, so that franchisee doesn't have to pay the extra money.
"so why not just close early if it costs owner too much to pay you?"
Well, because. Just because, that's all. Last time I cut orders at 5-or-10-to-close, the next day our owner (who I usually only see twice a year for MAYBE 20mins) came in and said I'd be fired if it happened again.
People with money don't give a single fraction of a flying freaky fuck about their employees. Unfortunately for me, I work in one of the (ten poorest) states in the US that enforces 'right-to-work' laws, which I recently learned, don't mean that you have the right to work, but instead means my employer is under no legal or contractual obligation to recognize, let alone pay Union fees.
Unionizing isn't illegal, but good luck finding anybody that will do anything pro-union in one of those places.
"Uhh . . . yeah, I'm gonna be leaving at 5, like it says on my schedule and since you're the manager, you're gonna need to manage your way out of this situation without me."
I'm in management, if I need someone to stay late I'll say please and ask, and if they say no, I respect it. I don't expect anybody to work outside of their scheduled hours.
That's class solidarity. None of us are owners, we are all the labor.
Crazy how businesses pull this shit. Yet where I work they won't let us work overtime cause they don't want to pay us. But then get shitty when the work is not done ...
Hey, I worked at a place that had me working overtime, but they wanted to put my hours on different paycheques because they weren't supposed to be letting me work overtime. Nice, huh?
In our contract we have it that no one has to work overtime, unless no one else who has worked more overtime than you rejects it.
Luckily, we've had some people fall into some legal trouble, so they grab up all the overtime that others don't want. But there are two people who have worked zero overtime this fiscal year, and I really want to organize my shop into making them both work some really shitty overtime shift.
No one has to work overtime unless everyone ahead of them refuses and there's no one else behind them, right? And the order of the line is whoever's worked the most OT. I mean that seems fair though?
The system works like this. You get credit for the overtime you work. The people with the least amount of worked overtime are at the top of the list, and the most are at the bottom.
When opportunities for overtime are offered, we work down the list starting with the people who have worked the least overtime.
If we go though the list twice, and the number of people requested to work isn't fulfilled, whoever is at the top is then forced to work the overtime. And we do that until we have the people.
Because those people are shitty workers as it is, and no one wants them around anymore. And sometimes a cherry assignment for overtime comes around and everyone else wants it, but they get first dibs because of how our system works.