Imagine selling candy door to door. If nobody wanted to buy the candy, would you blame yourself for being bad at sales, or would you decide that you need to change what you’re selling and where you’re selling it?

In this story, some teens are in this situation, and their boss is furious that they hardly made any sales. Instead of feeling bad about it, they decide to do something different.

Keep reading for all the details.

“You better start making more sales”

Back in the sun soaked streets of Phoenix, Arizona my 14-year-old self squints gleefully into the window of a greasy Chevy impala, rolling down as slowly and choppily as OPs writing.

It’s time to sell some candy.

I hop into my new favorite escape from my life of picking up cigarette butts for my father, rife with opportunity.

Here’s how it worked…

My job was to sell boxes of cheap candy that my boss , “Al”, got from who knows where.

We sold the candy door to door , an army of tweens driven around by someone triple their age. Five to six bucks a box was our price, a dollar a box was our profit.

Al got the rest.

One day was different.

One weekend he drove us way away from our usual spot, thrust us into ahwatukee , a prominent neighborhood with lush houses.

Al expected big things of us.

The day was hot and grueling. That bright shiny day quickly turned into a sweaty hellscape, ending in anger and the disappointment of only selling three boxes.

Al was furious.

Al didn’t care about their excuses.

He picked us up from our drop off locations and drove us to another neighborhood in ahwatukee.

He reamed us, insulted us, and accused us of not trying.

The truth was it was just brutal in every way. People were on vacation. The only people answering was the occasional hired help

He didn’t care.

Al expected things to change.

He demanded for us to

“Start making way more sales!”

Enter malicious compliance.

The next neighborhood he dropped us off in was about a quarter mile from a convenience store.

They complied but not in the way Al expected.

We took the cash we had from our original sales and bought a bunch of cheap candies from the convenience store.

We resold those dollar thin mints at a significant mark up.

We kept the extra cash and occasionally sold one or two of his candies only because people saw them in our box of candies and chose those. Each o e if us had about thirty bucks cash for ourselves , and twenty or so for AL.

We made more sales alright. Al just didn’t know how much more.

That’s very clever. I’m glad they found a way to earn more money for themselves than for Al. In fact, it sounds like they don’t need Al anymore. They could just resell the other candy at a markup.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Another person shares a similar story.

Here’s a fun fact about IKEA.

One person points out why MLMs don’t work.

It does sound odd.

This isn’t a very good business model for the teens.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.