Competent retail managers do everything they can to make their stores better. And this usually doesn’t include turning checkout lanes into obstacle courses.

So when one very incompetent grocery store boss insisted on placing fragile displays in a high-traffic area for customers, one employee quietly let physics show him why this was a terrible idea.

Keep reading for the full story.

You want me to put some very breakable vases right in the way of incoming customers? Sure thing!

I work in retail, at a grocery store. Front end.

So, my manager told me that he needed us to put these vases full of flowers on display at the ends of the registers.

It didn’t take long for the employee to predict what would happen.

At first, I was like, “Okay, no problem, dude,” but later I remembered that at the endcap of each register was a cooler for drinks. So, this was problematic.

I told my manager, but he told me to deal with it.

They knew it was a bad idea, but were forced to go through with it anyway.

Oh, I would do it all right, but it wasn’t going to be pretty.

What this forced me to do was put these 1 x 2 foot cardboard boxes with vases on top along the stand leading to the registers.

The logistics just couldn’t work.

This gave customers a small amount of room to get by, but not much. Anyone who wasn’t looking was going to run into the box and spill glass and petals everywhere.

I couldn’t wait.

So finally, the inevitable happened.

As predicted, within 15 minutes, someone had turned the corner into the register and sideswiped the box, sending the vase crashing down.

And then another one eight minutes later.

After the third one, my boss finally told us to get them out of there, though he still insists that it is my fault—which it is, but not really.

If only someone had warned the boss something like this would happen… oh wait — they did!

What did Reddit think?

Most retail workers know that just because someone is in charge, doesn’t mean they know best.

Many employees can’t wait to give their bosses a well-deserved headache.

Stores seem to hate the idea of customers being able to easily navigate through them.

This commenter calls it like they see it.

Three shattered vases later, this manager finally got the message.

Turns out, just listening to your employees is a much cheaper approach.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.