If management wants a show, sometimes the best move is to give them one they won’t forget.

So, what would you do if corporate kept demanding nonstop promotional announcements that no one listened to, then tried to strong-arm you into doing them their way?

Would you cave to the pressure? Or would you put your own twist on the rules?

In the following story, one retail manager finds himself in this situation and opts for the latter.

Here’s what happened.

“Do more announcements,” they said. “It will be fine,” they said.

Back when I worked in retail for a stupidly ******** localized chain, I was the fresh meat department supervisor once my boss got fired for inside job theft.

Part of the stupidly outdated training manual was that every half hour, the person in charge of the department (myself or an assigned employee/manager/assistant manager/obnoxious corporate toadie) should make announcements for sale items and whatnot.

Now, did I initially do everything to the outdated training manual? No, given that I had only one day of formal training (pre-2020 pandemic) and was expected by corporate to know everything.

When they threatened his pay, he changed his mind.

But when I was trained, the guy in charge said no one actually follows the training manual to the T except corporate. No ****, Sherlock.

After adjusting to the position, and while I was also simultaneously the de facto warehouse manager for 3 years, corporate starched suits came in every now and then. Eventually, they came in every week.

They would complain about me not doing announcements to pick up sales when there are literally three markets around our location within walking distance of less than half a kilometer.

I didn’t care, of course, until they threatened to lower my hourly rate. Which, as you guessed, was an empty threat because full-time supervisors can’t be docked pay.

He started sprucing up the announcements.

So I came up with the idea of adding disclaimers and warranties, but only when the starched suits were around.

After the most over-the-top stupid voice announcing, I’d always end each with a disclaimer like “We are not held liable for any side effects after purchase, including headache, nausea, fever, itchy and watery eyes, foaming at the mouth, and seizures” in the most menacingly pleasant way.

Funny enough, I’d also make some whacky sales pitch just to comply with the very frequenting suited idiots. Such as “Today and tomorrow only, get boneless chicken breasts for $.99/lb! One-time offer, exclusions may apply. Offer may change without prior notice and this store exclusive.”

After he left, the customers missed his announcements.

And I’d say the disclaimers really fast like those radio car commercials.

Eventually, the stooges stopped asking me to do announcements to their annoyance after about a month. Ironically, all the successful stores were never bothered by corporate and never really followed the training guides anyway, just the boss’s orders.

Now, no one does announcements, and I left last month anyway.

I heard from the former co-workers that the customers miss the crazy sales pitches, which were a breath of fresh air against a really bad shuffled playlist from corporate radio, and the boss-approved discounts due to the bankruptcy of the main supplier, anyway, effectively ruining sales.

Yikes! He really took a risk doing that.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit feel about what he did here.

This person would like announcements like this.

Here are things this reader would say.

This reader used to dislike making announcements.

This would be so great!

At least he had fun, and the customers loved it.

That’s a win-win.

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.