Drunk With Managerial Power

(I work in a convenience store that takes money orders at the customer service desk. The company we do them through isn’t cooperating that day, and my manager has just phoned them for the third time when he gets paged to assist one of the front registers.)

Manager: *SIGH*

Me: “Do you want me to just take your key? If it’s just a void or something, I can do that while you fight with these people.”

Manager: “Yeah, would you? My numbers are [numbers].”

(I take the manager key, which is required for price changes, voiding any merchandise priced higher than $5, and in this case, authorizing rain checks. We have to page the managers for almost everything, and have to sit there and wait for them to show up while the customers stew. It turned out the customers in this case want a rain check for an item we no longer carried.)

Me: *to everyone up front before heading back to my own department* “I’ve got the manager key if anyone needs it. Just page me to whatever register.”

(Nobody else needs the key, and eventually the manager pages me back to customer service so I can return it to him. I go back to talk to a coworker up front with a pout.)

Me: “My brief reign of power is over.”

Coworker: “And it was surprisingly peaceful!”