I have to preface this by saying that our location isn't too busy, and we have a decent amount of employees working at the branch. More often than not, a customer can walk right in and instantly be helped. However, this is not always the case. Also, I'm not solely a teller but a "universal banker", which means my job is WAY more involved than just processing deposits and withdrawals. A customer interaction can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours in extremely complicated cases

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When I first joined, I would see customers, work on their issues, process transactions, offer cross-sells, go to lunch and break when I was told, and just generally keep my head down and do my job.

Eventually, I got talked too about how I would "disappear" for "hours" when the branch "needed me the most" (i.e, one or two customers were waiting in line because everyone was busy). Because I build pretty good rapport with my customers while I work on their issues (which is somewhat of my cross-selling schtick), I got in trouble about being a "therapist" for our clients rather than just getting them out the door.

I was also told that I was in trouble for frequently going over my scheduled lunch hour, and that it was causing "chaos" in the branch. "Wait, you're our manager, isn't shuffling our lunches around based on volume and load your job?", I thought to myself. I was told that I had to be proactively swapping lunches with others in the event that I'm tied up, which doesn't really work because everyone else is also busy with their own customers and no one is incentivized to answer to my messages asking for a lunch swap - I also can't do any further digging about lunch scheduling because I'm always in the middle of a customer interaction!

In response, I started updating our manager at the beginning of every single interaction. "Customer here for withdrawal", or sometimes "Issuing a new debit card". This, I thought, would be a perfect way to cover my ass and show my management why things are taking time, right?

At some point, I was helping a customer pick apart fraudulent charges on their statement while apparently two or three clients came in at the same time. I later got talked to again because I was accused of "standing around" when the branch "needed to clear a line", and that I should find a way to get customers out the door when this happens. I would also notice as soon a customer entered the branch and was waiting in line even for 5-10 seconds, I would instantly get pinged with questions such as "how much longer?", and "what are you doing?", and "Can you hurry it up?".

I then started REALLY trying to cover my ass and would update my management every 5-10 minutes for longer interactions. Things came to a head on Friday when I was helping an elderly lady reset her online access password (part of the services we offer at the branch). The lady was having a little bit of trouble choosing a new password and we had a line. After only 15 seconds, my management told me to jump back on the line and "come back to her when the line's been cleared". Luckily for her, I did not abandon her to do another 10-15 minute transaction and instead just waited for another 15 seconds while she chose a password. I felt like the order was nonsensical and short-sighted so I just stalled for half a minute and then continued assisting her. I now feel like I will get talked to again for this.

Does this sort of line-aversion happen at anyone else's branch? How do you gently push back against management micro-managing your interactions when you're just trying to work and help the customers *correctly* (i.e, untangling the root cause of their issue and not just hurrying them out the door and making it someone else's problem)?