Quote:
Originally Posted by Destor
the internet loves to blame invisible higher ups. its never the workers
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While its technically true the internet does love raging against the machine to the Nth degree, it doesn't necessarily mean the machine has clean hands and isn't worth raging against.
Anecdotal story: Back when KB Toys was a thing, and the initial popularity wave of G1 Pokemon was in full swing, the company had the foresight to push in heavy on the property - and in particular, the cards. Tended to be sold for more than anyone else (which, to jump in on that train, was almost everyone else in the mall; toy stores, music stores, video stores, clothing stores, shoe stores... anyone with impuse counter room that decided they wanted some of that even if it were "inappropriate" for their marketing base, they sold them), with the notion that a) more profitable, of course, and b) when everyone else runs out, they'll buy our mountain of inventory at the higher cost. And because it was such a high commodity in high demand coupled with the "holographic charizard chasing" by folks with eBay get rich quick dreams, we sold a ton.
However, the other side of that is, because it was so popular, it was unsurprisingly a high shrink item. People could just stick the packs in their pockets, but a lot of the theft was done by people who overthought about security systems, and felt they needed to open the packs in the store and hide the wrappers somewhere out of eyeshot of employees... so we ususally found these wrappers shoved in amongst the plush. Even though they were *on* the impulse counter right by the registers we still would lose a number greater than zero. It got so bad, our manager decided to display them BEHIND the counter and place signs about anyone wanting cards to ASK for them.
In comes the dumbass idea from someone in a suit in an office far removed from the store level.
We had one of our monthly storefront changes, and one section was slated to be a 4 foot section mostly populated by individual packs of pegged Pokemon cards. To add to the stupidity, we were supposed to build the company's coveted "bulk stacks" right in front, which pretty much cut off eyeshot to all this high theft, high profit merchandise to someone even standing right there in the front of the store. We weren't the only store that voiced displeasure at this obviously ill advised marketing blunder in the making, but I don't know how many actually worked against it outside of our store. Our manager initially refused. We populated the section with
other Pokemon merchandise. District manager came in and made us change it. She said she gets the concern, but began threatening to write everyone up in our entire store (there or not) for insubordination if it wasn't changed to what was supposed to be there because that's what's mandated to be there.
Predictably, we lost thousands of dollars worth of that shit. Being around $10 a pack, that's a ton of shrink on our inventory. Inventory tracking wise, it was "worse" than if people came in and walked off with Playstations, because the consoles were high ticket, low profit, and would show losses of lower numbers. All things being equal, losing around 15 packs of something easily pocketable was EXACTLY THE SAME ON PAPER as someone leaving the store with one video game console. And we're losing hundreds of these things in a matter of days. Per store. Per district. Totally predictable outcome, but we "had to".
So, in a few days we get this semi-condescending sounding memo from corproate telling us to "please hold all Pokemon cards behind the counter". The thing we were doing in the first place for exactly this reason. "Shut up and do as you're told" cost untold amounts of money company wide over a car crash anyone with any sense could see coming.
That's not the only incident I've experienced like this, and that wasn't the only company I've worked for it happened in, but it is my "favorite" story that perfectly encapsulates it.
On that, I will generally side with the lower rungs on how shit really is, because in a lot of these cases, all it takes is one suit with a bad idea to fuck up a lot of things down the chain... then that same suit, to save face, will throw folks underneath to the wolves to save their own ass and/or reputation.