Another post knocked loose this memory from my retail days.

I'd just started working at Fry's. For those who don't know it was a big box electronics retailer sort of like Micro Center with terrible management at anything above the department manager level.

I found this out firsthand shortly after finishing training. I worked in the Components department, think computer parts for builds and electronics stuff you'd find at Radio Shack, and I was a Sales Associate. That meant I was on the lowest rung and didn't earn a commission from sales.

My Department Manager had explained to me that I didn't get commission, but my primary responsibility was still helping anyone who came to the department. If you did well enough at this you'd be moved to commissioned sales where you made the big bucks. So I tried to be helpful. Plus everyone wore the same white shirt and tie, and customers didn't know the difference between commissioned sales and associates.

Then corporate came.

The corporate Components Manager breezed in to tell everyone how to do their job, and in her eyes that meant I was supposed to be putting together product schematics to the exclusion of everything else. So she condescendingly took me aside to review how to put products on a peg.

In the middle of this demonstration someone came up to ask where a product was, and I tried to help them. That didn't sit well with corporate lady, so she stopped me in front of the customer and told me that wasn't my job, and that she would help the customer. That earned her an odd look from the customer, but whatever.

So I continued doing the schematic. It wasn't exactly the rocket surgery she made it out to be. Apparently she got distracted haranguing other people, because it was an hour or so before she walked by. While I was helping another customer. Again she came up and started yelling at me that my job wasn't helping customers, and I needed to get back to work or she would write me up.

I shrugged. Whatever. It was a job I took to pay bills during grad school so it wasn't worth arguing. I would do exactly what she said, though.

I was putting together a product schematic right near the front entrance that day. That meant a lot of people would come through and I was the first worker they saw, so they'd come up to me and ask where to find something. Normally I'd be happy to help, but not that day. I wasn't going to get written up, no sir!

So every time someone asked me to point them to something I politely apologized and told them I couldn't help. They'd inevitably get angry when they realized I wasn't helping them. So I'd politely apologize again and tell them it was corporate policy that I wasn't allowed to help them, and oh by the way that policy was put in place by Corporate Manager who just so happened to be at the Components podium that day if they wanted to go ask her anything or talk to her about that policy.

She never did come over to apologize or tell me to do anything any differently. This lady was too convinced that her way of doing things was the right way. I did have the pleasure of looking down the aisle to the podium and seeing a steady stream of irate retail customers, who are always a special mix of belligerent and stupid, laying into her with complaints that got more and more irate as they realized everything I'd told them was true. I'm told she didn't end up getting much done that day because she was too proud to admit it would be better for me to take five seconds out of hanging products on pegs to point someone to the right part of the store.

As soon as she left we went back to helping anyone who came through, even if I was doing the extremely difficult intellectual task of hanging products on the proper peg. I wasn't at all surprised a few years later when the company started circling the drain because they couldn't pave over incompetence at the corporate level in a world where Amazon and New Egg were eating their lunch.