Imagine working retail and being switched from one job you know really well to another job you don’t really know how to do. If you saw a problem in your new job that you knew how to fix, would you fix it, or would you stick to just doing your new job?

In this story, one employee is in this exact situation. He tries to fix the problem, but his supervisor tells him to focus on his actual job.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

The time my supervisor told me that they weren’t paying me to fix shelves, they were paying me to work on computers

So, I worked retail for a long time while getting my degree. After a few years, I was moved onto the recently-created geek-squad knockoff that paid $2/hr more.

When they created the department, they hired a new tech supervisor who had owned his own shop, but it had failed.

He’d never worked retail, but seemed like he at least knew repairs. That was good, because I was completely new to it. Zero experience whatsoever (outside of my own computer).

Naturally, I was the new main tech.

It sounds like corporate is overpromising.

Well, part of the department creation was to convert a section of the store (previously just used for general office/store supply storage) into a workbench. Unfortunately, there was only enough space for 2-3 computers at a time, and the rest were all to be placed elsewhere until they could be repaired.

When the first official day of this service kicked off, there was a surprising amount of demand for it (our location was right next to a retirement community). I think 20 or so laptops came in, several of them extremely nice, as well as 10+ desktops.

We quickly ran out of space. The intake guys were setting them all on various shelves behind the bench.

They were promising a 3 day turnaround on them, per corporate – they really wanted us to be churning these things out.

He saw a really big problem.

Now, part of my old job was to set up and take down displays. I knew how much the shelves held, I knew how to tell if they were overloaded, and I knew how to fix them. It wasn’t hard.

These shelves were overloaded. They still had the supplies, and now they had a bunch of computers on them. To top it off, several of the supports were broken or missing – they’d probably been scavenged to repair product shelves in the store.

I had started unloading them and was searching for any extra supports to repair the shelves when my new supervisor, completely freaked out, yells at me – “you’re not paid to fix shelves, you’re paid to fix computers. Get back on them. I’ll fix these.”

Seriously. He yelled. One rush was enough to send him into a panic – that’s how new he was to retail.

Oh no!

However, I was pretty jaded already, and I figured that if he wanted me reparing computers that badly, so be it.

I left him to it, and started running the “repairs” (seriously, it was just plugging in a flash drive and running a program that ran a bunch of utilities).

About 20 minutes later, I heard a crash. Then, a second later, I heard a second crash.

The top shelf had given way, then taken the middle shelf with it… along with all of the customer’s computers.

The supervisor needed to take responsibility for this problem.

This dude had tried to duct tape the shelves. Duct tape. Instead of 3 undamaged supports, they had damaged supports and some freaking tape.

I don’t know what the final tally was – probably a few thousand dollars in damages. I didn’t care.

He asked me to make the calls, but I fought hard on that one – I had tried to prevent it.

He caved and did it himself, though I still caught a lot of the fallout from the customers.

He chose not to throw his supervisor under the bus.

The GM came calling to find out what happened, but I chose not to sell him out. Told him the shelving unit failed, that’s all.

No one got in trouble.

Supervisor got more used to a retail environment, chilled out a lot. Eventually got hired at another place making way better pay and actually brought me over with him.

So yeah. No epic revenge in this one, just probably a few grand worth of damages and some ticked off customers.

I would be furious if I was one of the customers!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person thinks everything about the story checks out.

I feel so bad for the computer owners!

Is this comment implying that the retail store was Staples?

It is rather unusual.

I’m disappointed too.

Duct tape isn’t as strong as you might think.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.