How The Number One Manager Becomes Number Two

All the employees wear earpiece walkie-talkies, keeping us in contact at all times. Chatter on the main channel is kept to a minimum, as it’s the default channel everyone is required to use unless requested on another channel.

Our regional manager comes for a week-long visit. Normally, he doesn’t participate in store operations, so it’s the first time he uses one of the walkie-talkies. For some reason, he switches it from push-to-talk to always-on. This means we can hear everything on his end, plus it drowns out everyone else from being able to use the channel. I head off to try to find him to fix the issue.

Before I locate him, he heads into the managers’ bathroom, and chooses to ignore my polite knocks on the door. For the next 20 minutes, all two dozen staff members are treated to a disgusting chorus of a series of grunts, shuffles, curses, farts, and plops, followed by a loud flush.

When he comes out, he angrily looks into my office to ask me what was so d*** important that I tried to interrupt him. I explain the walkie-talkie to him, hearing the echo of my voice in my earpiece, then show him how to properly set it.

None of the employees can keep a straight face when they see him the rest of the day.