Unpopular opinion: employee scheduling software is actually making things harder for small business owners

I run a small coffee shop in Austin with 12 staff. I switched to a fancy scheduling app last year and everyone said it would save me time. But now I spend 2 hours a week fixing automated swaps and dealing with complaints about last minute changes. Before I just used a paper schedule and people swapped shifts by texting each other. Nobody ever complained then. So tell me, are these apps really worth it or did we all get tricked into paying for problems we didn't have?

3 comments

3 Comments

piperwhite11d ago

Does anyone else feel like these apps are just "fancy" with a capital F but not actually helpful? I swear my barista swapped shifts with someone at 2am and the app sent an alert to the WHOLE staff, waking up my pastry chef who then texted me calling it "a crisis management failure." I spent 20 minutes explaining it was just a shift swap. The old paper method nobody complained about because they'd just text each other and maybe forget to tell me, which was honestly fine. We traded one set of headaches for a DIFFERENT set of headaches, except now I'm paying 40 bucks a month for the privilege.

josephl6711d ago

Honestly, I feel your pain. I think we all got tricked into paying for problems we didn't have. Sometimes the old way was just better and less stressful for everyone.

knight.mason11d ago

And what exactly was the "old way" that you're missing here? Because from where I'm sitting, people complain about the old system just as much once it stops working for them. Are we talking about cash and handshakes or something more specific?