When your manager insists on blind obedience, sometimes the best response is a little public embarrassment.

What would you do if your boss demanded that you offer to carry every single customer’s groceries to their car, no matter how small the order?

Would you refuse?

Or would you follow their rule and see what happens?

In the following story, one grocery store employee finds himself in this exact scenario and does just what he’s told.

Here’s how it played out.

My manager told me I needed to offer to help everyone carry their groceries to the car. Sounds good!

When I was in high school, far longer ago than I care to admit, I was a bagger at a local grocery store.

One of the store’s policies was that we had to offer to help everyone take their groceries out to their cars.

Anytime someone elderly, or someone with a lot of bags, came through the line, I would offer to help, and many of them accepted.

There were a lot of parents with kids who turned down the help because they would make their clones help instead.

I quickly learned who was going to accept the offer and who wasn’t, so if they fit the criteria for not being interested in help, I didn’t bother to ask.

They always refused, so why keep asking?

The manager demanded that he ask everyone.

Well, one day my manager is hovering while I’m bagging, and a lady bought a carton of eggs and a loaf of bread.

I smiled and wished her a nice day, handing her the single, featherweight bag, and she smiled and returned the greeting, and was on her way.

My manager noticed I didn’t offer to help her out and scolded me, and I just pointed out she had one partially filled bag that was super light, so probably wouldn’t have needed help.

He emphasized it was the store policy, and I need to offer help to EVERYONE.

The next guy in the line was definitely a gym rat.

A foot taller than me, biceps as big as my head, a tight tank top, and basketball shorts.

It’s been so long I can’t remember what he bought, but it occupied a single bag and wasn’t heavy.

He was met with mixed reactions.

I double bagged it, still in front of my hovering manager, and said, “Sir, would you like me to help you carry all of your groceries out to your car?”

He laughed, saw I wasn’t also laughing, and his expression changed to utter confusion.

He looked at me like I’d just asked him what shampoo he used on his armpit hair.

It was 95% confusion, 5% suspicion about what game I could be playing with him.

He looked at my manager with a new expression that said, “Is this kid okay?”

Then he turned back to me, still chuckling a little in confusion, and said, “Uhh, nah, man, I think I got it….”

He took his bag of protein powder and eggs or whatever it actually was and walked out, shaking his head.

I looked at my manager and shrugged.

His expression read as “Yeah, alright, fine.”

And he went back to the office.

He never hovered or enforced the policy again after that.

Wow! It’s funny he had to see it play out before he realized how silly the rule was.

Let’s see how the people over at Reddit feel about this situation.

This guy actually asked for help carrying one small item.

According to this comment, the manager acted like a teenager.

Here’s someone who worked retail and had to ask about a credit card.

This person never thought about that being a store policy.

That was well played.

It was just lucky that the manager hung around and witnessed it firsthand.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.