Friday evening, T1. I was headed out to DXB and arrived 2 hours before departure. Checked in and then hit the absolute joke that is security at MAN. They had 2.5 lanes open (i'll explain) to cover an A380 plus many other departures. It took over an hour to clear. The worst part of it was that despite the huge queues, they closed a lane and sent home probably upwards of 20 staff who just walked straight by all the passengers patiently waiting. Quite the slap in the face whilst I understand people deserve to go home from work. They then reopened a lane but not fully. Only for scanning baggage whilst pax were redirected around a queue of people waiting, to be scanned in a different lane. At the time I reached the front of the queue, they stop scanning bags for over 10 minutes with staff all over the place. They looked like they didn't have a clue what they were doing. Couple this with the usual patronising, smug remarks from the staff aimed at passengers and it just made for an awful experience. As others have said, the shops were empty, restaurants and cafes empty. The only place I really saw many people was at the gates. I complained to the Duty Security Controller after I got through and their response was "we don't have any control over how many staff we get".
Absolute shambles. Compare this to DXB where at peak times, you can expect perhaps a 5-minute wait at security.