Be A Sore Winner And Lose Your Position

(The gas station I work at is part of a national chain that runs promotions. Customers receive a sticker for every unit of a set amount of litres of gas they purchase. With ten stickers, they can purchase a promotional item for cheaper than its normal retail price. To encourage us to promote the event, there are regional competitions between stations. The stations that sell the most items get a financial reward that is added to the budget for the Christmas party. Usually, these events run several months and the amount you have to buy for each sticker is so low that most people have ten stickers by the time they fill their car the third time. This is why my station decides to simply give ten stickers to each customer that buys the minimum amount for a sticker. None of the items — mostly gardening equipment or DIY tools — are good enough, rare enough, or cheap enough for people to be interested in buying multiples or buying them in bulk to resell, so we are confident that by doing so we do not create extra sales. Our main “rival” is a station that has a large number of commercial truck drivers as their regular customers. Our “rival” station wins the competition this time, with us as a close second. During a “stamp” event, a coworker runs over to me and another coworker.)

Coworker#1: “Guys, you will not believe what [Manager] told me just now. [Manager of Rival Station] went to the regional manager and complained that we were cheating by giving out extra stamps, and that we should be fined and permanently disqualified from every competition.”

Coworker#2: “What?! Wait. Wasn’t it [Rival Station] that asked their regulars to not pump their gas in one go, but do multiple purchases of ten euros each during [Event] so they could hand out more tickets? How is that fair?! They have all these truck drivers as customers. Do you know how many ten-euro purchases it needs to fill up one of those trucks? We only give one ticket per customer and car!”

Coworker#1: *grinning* “I know, and so does [Manager]. You want to guess who is now under investigation and has to return the reward they got for [Event Competition]? Not us!”

(As it turns out, what we did toes the line, but was considered acceptable. [Rival Manager], on the other hand, had broken the rules.)

Lesson Number #1: “It does not pay to be a rat, especially if you are the one with skeletons in the closet!”