Some store policies look great on paper, right up until you’re the one expected to follow them at 2 am.

So, what would you do if pay raises were based on secret evaluations that you couldn’t pass because of store policies based around the overnight shift?

Would you keep doing what makes sense to avoid waste? Or would you follow the rules and show them how dumb the whole thing is?

In the following story, one convenience store worker finds himself in this situation and decides to prove a point.

Here’s what happened.

Mystery Shopping Nonsense

Years ago, when I worked at a major chain convenience store, we had “mystery shoppers” hired by corporate that would come in and secretly evaluate the store. Employees’ pay depended on these evaluations.

I worked an overnight shift, 10 pm to 6 am, alone. That’s important because the mystery shopper eval list included silly things like “hot fresh coffee,” “roller grill full,” etc. Not having them would cause you to be docked points and thus not get raises.

Now, if you ever worked this kind of job, you know that it is just silly during those hours of the night when there are few customers; the idea is to balance availability against waste.

Fed up, he decided to figure out how to get a raise.

But after 2 rounds of my day coworkers getting raises, and I didn’t because, per store policy, I didn’t make extra coffee or roller grill items during the night, I spoke to my boss about it.

“I understand that this is corporate policy, and I also understand that our store policy is not do this at night. What can I do as a night shift worker to get a better evaluation?” Something along those lines. Not adversarial or anything.

The boss told me, “Just make sure you get full points on every line, that is your only job,” and handed me another eval list to “study.” OK.

He made sure to follow the rules very carefully.

For the next couple of weeks, I made sure to make fresh coffee (decaf and regular roast) at 10 pm when I got to work, and fully stocked the roller grill. Hot dogs, jalapeno sausage dogs, taquitos…

And then at midnight, when exactly none of this stuff had actually sold, I closed the doors and went to stock the coolers. This took around an hour and is just something that’s done on the night shift.

So at about 1 am, I would then toss all the roller grill items and pour the coffee down the drain and… make 2 fresh pots and restock the grill & reopen the doors.

And then at 4, I would dump it all and make it fresh again because it had been there for 2 hours….

Suddenly, the extra tens didn’t matter.

The boss called me in and told me that as long as I got tens on all the other items, I would be getting my raise along with everyone else from then on.

He said, “Just *** stop wasting $100/night on stuff that doesn’t sell.”

No prob, boss, thanks! (Too bad you didn’t notice the issue until it cost your bottom line 😂)

Wow! Luckily, it worked for him!

Let’s see if the people over at Reddit have ever encountered something similar.

This person would’ve eaten the food.

Here’s someone who can’t get over him being alone.

According to this person, KPIs are not important.

 

Apparently, this reader doesn’t like secret shoppers.

At least they caught on quick!

This could’ve been dragged out for longer.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.