This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/MaddieGator on 2025-05-22 01:28:01+00:00.

Years ago, I worked for a medium-sized retailer which sold all sorts of things, from confectionery to garden supplies. The store had half an aisle near the front of the store dedicated to events, which were pretty much right in the customers’ faces as they entered the store.

Every few weeks, these event shelves would change over to a new department, or be themed to any upcoming holidays or special days, such as Mother’s Day or Halloween.

Usually for these events, we would get the stock delivered the week before, and spend that week taking out the old stock and replacing it with the new lines. If a new line was missing from the delivery, we’d go and find a different line that would fit into that event from elsewhere in the store.

One day in early April, we received an email from upper management:

“Do not replace missing event lines with any other lines.”

We emailed back to clarify, because of course, nearly every event delivery is missing at least one line. Do they want us to spread other items out to fill the empty space, or what?

“Just leave the space for any missing lines empty. It will look like they have sold out.”

Barely a month later, while preparing for the Mother’s Day event, we receive our regular delivery, with no Mother’s Day event lines - not one. So we email upper management to let them know that we haven’t received any of the event lines.

“They will come on your next delivery. Do not fill empty space.”

Well, they did not arrive on the next delivery either. We emailed them again, informing them that we had still not received any event lines, and heard nothing back, so we decided to do exactly what they asked. We cleared out the old event lines, and left the entire event section completely empty, for the entire 3 week period leading up until Mother’s Day.

After Mother’s Day, during a conference call (a group call between upper management and all the store managers for the region), they asked us why we had zero sales for the event lines, and why our sales for the period had dropped significantly. We just referred them back to other previous emails where we told them that we never received the delivery, and they had said not to fill missing lines. Cue the most deliciously sweet awkward silence.

After the call, one more email was sent out to everyone:

“Please use your best judgement when filling missing lines for events.”