Some people thrive on having the freedom to do their job their way.

Others, on the other hand, prefer a lot of support and structure.

The same goes for managers: some like to give their employees freedom, while others choose to micromanage everything.

The direct store delivery driver in this story has always enjoyed freedom to arrange displays, and stores generally give him that.

Read on to find out how one store manager’s strict guidance caused a long-standing feud between them.

Manager said only by the planogram

I work as a DSD (direct store delivery) driver, servicing bread and cake products for a certain yellow store chain.

The style provides us a rack to display our cakes on, and it has a specific planogram. Despite this, it’s generally agreed that each driver can use their own discretion to stock this shelf, including items not planned for the shelf.

All except for one.

The General Manager of my smallest store pulls me aside a few months back and complained about my cake rack. “I’ve had several people complaining about the prices on that shelf being mismatched, and we’re forced to honor the price on the shelf.”

Let’s see how the driver responded to that.

This was a bit of an unusual complaint, but I was willing to fix it, saying “Well we can fix the pricing on that shelf, no problem. I’ll just need you to scan the products and make me a tag, and I’ll take care of putting them up.”

She immediately snapped back, “You know that shelf has a planogram, right? How about we just stock it correctly?”

Very well. As they say, cue malicious compliance.

I begin stripping everything off the shelf that didn’t match the tags on the rack (which meant I took everything away).

But for the manager, that wasn’t good enough either.

The manager immediately started questioning why her most popular sales were being taken out.

I just said “Well none of this is on the planogram, so I’ll take it out and replace it with what’s on there, like you said.” Dejected, she left me to it.

This compliance has paid off twice. The first time, the same GM confronted me as soon as I arrived, advising me of “holding out on her”, commenting on all the nice cakes at a different location’s store that she’d never seen in her store.

I reiterated that they’re not on her planogram, so I can’t put them in. She snapped back, “Well can’t we just put some in anyway?” I said with a smirk “Not if there’s not a spot for it.” And she just told me to carry on.

Read on to find out what happened the second time.

The second time was when our imitation butter cookies rolled out.

She begged me to give some to her store, and I asked if she had a spot for them. She said there could be room made, but I asked if there was a planogram for it.

She got mad and said, “I’m tired of you using my words against me like this. I just want the seasonal stuff.” I told her, admittedly a little pointedly, “Well it’s what you said, I can’t do anything about it.” She just limped off.

She very well could have all the fun snacks if she would just stop being a helicopter manager.

This driver really is taking this seriously and seems to be holding a grudge against the store’s manager.

Sure she could’ve been nicer about it, but this situation doesn’t really seem to be better. Instead, they’re just irritating one another.

Perhaps if she apologised, they might be able to come to a mutual agreement to start again.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person thought the issue extended far beyond the driver and the manager.

While others came up with better solutions to the problem.

And this Redditor thought planograms were the real nightmare here.

It seems like there are far more issues to fix here than just the planograms.

Sure the manager needs to eat her words, since blaming so much on the delivery guy is unfair.

But in reality, there are more issues with the pricing labels.

He’s just the scapegoat here.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.