Your Reasoning Regarding Seasoning

(One of my coworkers is walking from the sales floor to the backroom.)

Manager: “Where are you going?”

Coworker: “A customer wants a motorized toy truck for their kid. There are none on the shelf, but I scanned the barcode and the scanner told me there’s one in the back room on the top shelf. I just need to get it down with a machine. I won’t be even five minutes.”

Manager: “You want to go to all that trouble for one toy car?”

Coworker: “It’s the kind that’s big enough for the child to drive in; it’s a 200-dollar sale.”

Manager: “No, that’s too much trouble for one thing. Get back to stocking your aisle and tell the customer that the scanner was mistaken.”

Coworker: “Sorry, but you did hear that it’s a 200-dollar sale, right?”

Manager: “Yes, but we can’t come back here every time the customer wants something. You have stocking to do!”

(A week or so later, I happen to be working alongside this coworker when the same manager walks up to her and the following exchange happens.)

Manager: “Hey, a customer is looking for a packet of seasoning and it looks like there’s one back here. The location is on the scanner here; can you get it down?”

(My coworker reads the scanner.)

Coworker: “[Manager], this is on the top shelf, wrapped in a pallet of mixed merchandise. I would have to get the machine to bring the pallet down and hope that the seasoning is in a place that I can get at without ripping the shrink-wrap. If not, I’d have to wrap the pallet again before putting it back up. All that for a single 50-cent packet of seasoning?”

Manager: “Well, we have to make the customer happy, and every little sale counts, right? Just try to make it quick; he’s waiting.”

(He walked off, leaving both of us just looking at each other, speechless.)