Fewer jobs require more patience working with the public than retail, especially when it’s products that are high in demand, and you can’t control the flow of customers.

And having to circumvent corporate policy on top of all of that? Well, now that’s a whole other can of worms.

A frequent Reddit user posted yet another viral story about his boss’s approach to dealing with being understaffed, understocked and just plain undervalued at work. Here are the details.

If you can’t help customers, refer them to other stores.

I work in a specialised profession, in which I’m not authorised to do quite a number of technical things.

It seems likely this job is in a pharmacy, but let’s get more context clues.

My boss now has quite an interesting character.

Usually, she is a very nice person, but she has some interesting qualities / quirks, for which the rationale only becomes apparent when you work in retail long enough.

It’s pretty easy to identify the quirks of a lifelong retail worker.

An example is that she doesn’t like having too many people in the store, because it opens us up to shoplifting (it’s bad where we are at).

Fair enough, especially if there’s an understaffing issue.

Anyway, the context, as always.

When our store gets busy, I try to help our customers as much as I can, leaving my boss the cases that are harder to deal with.

The rest of the customers whose problems I can solve?

They can go about their daily lives.

For middle management this doesn’t seem like an entirely unreasonable perspective.

One day, there are just too many customers in the store and I can sense my boss becoming a little antsy, as she tends to do when this happens.

Oh boy…

“Palpatine,” she says with some irritation, “if you see that I’m busy or not available, and you know that we don’t have the product in the store, can you help our customers by referring them to the surrounding stores? They might have the product instead.”

Sure. Here comes the MC.

See, what you need to know about my particular profession is our products are all regulated differently.

There are three broad groups of products.

One, the lowest tier (Tier A), is almost completely unregulated, these can be bought nearly everywhere.

Second, the mid tier (Tier B), can only be supplied by my boss.

And third, the highest tier (Tier C), you need to get it in writing before my boss can supply it to you.

This definitely seems like it can get dicey once you combine understaffing and under-stocking.

If a customer comes in wanting a Tier C product, we cannot change the order, because it’s a legal requirement. But, if we don’t stock a product in Tier A or Tier B, we can recommend alternatives.

But sure, if we don’t have the product in the store, I will refer them to the surrounding stores.

Normally, what we do is to take time and try to convince customers seeking Tier A or B products to switch to something else that we do stock.

But since we don’t have the exact product in store, I guess I will just refer them to the other store (which belongs to our competitor) that is literally just a short escalator ride away.

No harm, no foul?

It took all of five minutes for me to clear out the customers from the store.

My boss was very impressed with me and I even got a “good job” from her.

Though of course our sales for that day could’ve been much higher, and we missed our target sales for the month (again).

If this is the case, then this sounds like potential genius on the part of the boss. Let’s see if the Reddit community agreed.

Most folks expressed a ton of enthusiasm for all involved.

Some even commended the boss for being smart, and working within her pay-grade.

Others however, did express some confusion at the familiarity of the anecdote.

And funnily enough, some shared their own alternative perspectives on shoplifting, sparking some interesting debate.

Well, they do say that problems require modern solutions.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.