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Every now and then, a boss comes up with an idea that makes absolutely no sense.

That’s exactly what this record store manager thought after headquarters shipped his store twenty folding tables with instructions to set them up on the sales floor.

But there was one problem. His store barely had enough room for customers as it was.

Frustrated, he called his regional manager and tried to explain why the plan would never work, but his boss wasn’t buying it.

Left with no other choice, he decided to set them up anyway.

Keep reading to see what happened when the regional manager showed up the next morning.

Had to comply before my boss would see that an idea was so stupid it would prevent customers even entering the store.

From 1997-2004, I was a retail manager, mostly for a chain of record stores. I was widely considered to be one of the best managers in the company, mainly because I worked very hard, was very diligent, hired good staff, and took great pride in my work.

My branch ran like clockwork, so I was frequently sent to other branches that were failing, in order to get them licked into shape, to install better routines, and to retrain staff to keep it that way. The company even used in-store administrative paperwork that I designed because I found the existing stuff messy and inefficient.

All this to say; my opinions were well respected, and any concerns I raised well heeded. Until…

It all started when he got a memo explaining a new floor display.

October 2001. I was asked to sign for a consignment of “trestle tables.” That was how they were described. They were folding wallpaper pasting tables. I thought there must be some mistake, but no, it was addressed “care of [me]” and to my branch.

The accompanying memo said that I needed to erect these tables, ALL TWENTY OF THEM, on the shop floor, and staple the accompanying plastic (rolls of what I can only describe as trash bag plastic, both in quality and smell, but red), to the tops of them like tablecloths. There are a number of issues here.

Firstly, what for? We have beautiful, bespoke, powder-coated shelving for all the CDs etc. It’s a slick, professional retail space. What’s the deal with wanting it to look like a yard sale?

Since the story was small, customers already complained.

More importantly, my store, at least, the retail space, is small. Barely more than 15’ x 20’ in fact. And the middle of the room is dominated by a large, immovable rack unit which houses the back catalogue CDs.

Customers already complain that the store is cramped. People in wheelchairs and parents with strollers complain that it is hardly navigable.

So even ONE of these tables is going to provide a maddening and pointless obstacle, perhaps even a safety hazard, not to mention blocking access to existing stock. Just one. I’m supposed to erect twenty. This is ridiculous.

When he called the regional manager, he doubled down on the memo.

So I called my regional manager, (I’ll call him Greg) and asked him what this was about. In fact I gave him my thoughts in the strongest possible terms. But he seemed to think it was a brilliant idea by our recently installed new owners, and would “get customers in.”

I pointed out that on the contrary, it was guaranteed to keep customers out, since they’d sent me 240 square feet of tables and I only have ~220 square feet of floor space. They couldn’t get in even if they wanted to. And they would only want to out of sheer morbid curiosity. He simply could not understand the problem.

I implored him to understand the numbers, to visualize the absurdity of this. He couldn’t. He said it had all been worked out and every branch had the exact number of tables they needed.

After hanging up the phone, he got to work.

The conversation got heated. I said he was stupid if he couldn’t understand this. He ordered me to “Just get it done.” And that he’d be down first thing in the morning “To check compliance” – and yes, I vividly remember him using that word – before slamming the phone down.

Well I was infuriated, but determined to show him the issue fully if that’s what he wanted. I stayed late, alone, and wrestled these tables into place, having to carry each one down a long flight of stairs since deliveries are made to the top level of the mall, what they call the “service deck.”

It took me over two hours, cost me my back and many cuts and bruises, but I managed to get 18 of them in place, complete with “tablecloths” stapled to them. My beautiful shop floor is now a three foot high sea of crappy red plastic, with barely a single square foot of floor space to stand in.

Greg showed up as promised.

I made sure that there was a navigable path underneath, since I still needed to set the alarm and get out. I did so, having to literally army crawl under the tables to the exit, just managing to get the shutter down and locked in time.

The next morning, about 8:35am, Greg was there as promised, having got there before me. He was standing In stunned disbelief, looking through our grill shutter at this scene. “What have you done?” He said, somehow in disbelief.

“Exactly what you asked for. Exactly what we talked about yesterday. Wait there…”

To prove his point even further, he showed Greg how he had to enter the store.

I slid the shutter up and army crawled back across the floor to the alarm to disarm it, before shouting back to him “That’s what I have to do just to get in. What do you propose the customers do if they want to buy something, or even look at a product? Should they walk on top of the tables or crawl underneath?”

Greg’s eyes were like dinner plates as he stood helpless at the entrance. How he couldn’t picture this in his mind yesterday I don’t know, but I think he sees the problem now.

“Actually Greg, this is only 18 of the 20 tables. We could stack the other two on top if you want.”

Finally, Greg understood what happened.

He shook his head despondently “Let’s just clear this mess up.” He started at his end, and I started at mine.

Annoyingly, the tables now won’t even fold in half easily because of the plastic stapled to the top of them. I ended up using a box cutter to slice the join, while Greg angrily slashed at it with a car key.

It took us at least 40 minutes to get them all folded away, back upstairs, and the shop floor clear. The store opened late as a result, with the resultant annoyed customers, and Greg spent the next hour using my store phone to tell head office what a stupid idea it was and that they had to urgently rethink.

Yikes! Imagine having to see it to believe it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who is let go from a charity due to budget cuts, then gets blowback from the board over her severance.

Let’s check out what the folks over at Reddit think about it.

This was another way to handle it.

Ooh! Good question.

This reader wants to send the story to their corporate office.

That would be understandable.

They never listen, and most of the time they totally should.

Maybe there are some good bosses out there, but according to Reddit, they sure seem few and far between.