It goes on going on

Work are pressing ahead with their “24-hour garage” plan. October has been designated a trial month. So not only have they decided to instigate something that I’m dead against, they’ve rushed it through so I only have a few weeks to get it staffed and find a way to make it work.  It looks likely that our ‘overnight operatives’ will be agency staff on a temporary contract, which is great.  They’ll be on minimum wage, working through the night, with no motivation and a building full of snacks and car accessories to help themselves to as they see fit.  Supposedly HQ will “have a look at it” in mid-November and if the figures look good they’ll consider making it permanent and if they’re not so good they’ll close the thing down. But what’s going to happen between the end of October (trial month) and the mid-November meeting? Are they going to stop being open all hours pending the release of the data? My suspicious is No - they’re going to keep ploughing on with it and hope to build a customer base from somewhere rather than admit that it was a terrible idea to start with. So the ‘trial month’ is already expanding to a ‘trial 6-week period’ so they’re lying to everyone already.
I suppose the one good thing is that my regular staff won’t be too affected. Their shifts will continue as normal, which I’m pleased about because at one point it looked as if the extra hours would have to be covered by each of us working one nightshift. That, let me tell you, would not have gone down well. I don’t know if there’s ever been a mutiny at a filling station but we would have got very close to it. As it stands now, everyone can go on as normal. They’ll even have to continue cashing up at 10pm as The Powers That Be want the monthly accounts to ‘accurately reflect the additional revenue opportunity separately.’ The only thing they won’t have to do is set the alarm and switch the lights out. 
Those Above Me only want to have one employee on site, so obviously we now have to knock half a wall out so we can have a protected booth for them to sit in, with an access window and a sliding drawer so they can take payments from outside. So now I’m having to get quotes from various companies and trying to find one that can do the work within the next five weeks; none of which will be cheap. Talk about an expensive experiment. Then there’s the disruption that’ll be caused to our regular routine while the work is carried out during September.  It all seems to be getting rushed through without full consideration and my worry is that, no matter how awful the resultant figures are, they’ll have to keep us open 24 hours a day from then on or the whole thing will have been a huge waste of money, and they can’t have that. So our profit-making performance will be ruined through no fault of anyone at the garage but it’ll reflect badly on all of us; me especially.
Sometimes I hate being a manager. 

RC 30-8-16