Imagine working at a retail store when an customer comes in and wants to take advantage of a promotion that the store is having, but when you look at the promotion details you see that the sale is already over.

Would you give them the discount anyway, tell them that the deal is over, or call for a manager?

In this story, one employee is in this situation and ends up calling over another employee who calls for a manager.

Let’s see how the manager handles it.

“but we were on vacation”

I used to work in a store known for the color red, but I was in the cellphone department so I would wear black.

More often than not wearing black when everyone else wears red is not enough to differentiate me from the rest of the employees.

The previous week the store had a sale on Ipads. Although Apple products cannot technically be put on sale, there will often be promotions where the store will give out a gift card along with the purchase of one.

The promotion was over.

I had a couple approach me with questions about the Ipad. They didn’t seem unpleasant or anything, but they had last week’s flyer on hand.

They asked me a question about getting the gift card with the Ipad.

I try to let them down easy, “Oh this is from last week, this promotion isn’t going on anymore.”

This doesn’t seem like a very good excuse.

“But we were on vacation.”

This was out of my league anyway, I don’t even have access to the Ipad locker so I get the electronics guy over.

He has pretty much the same conversation as me.

Now he has been at this store for many years and knows what to do in this kind of situation: call a manager before they ask to speak with one.

Mangers like this are why customers think they can get whatever they want.

The manager comes over and gives them the gift card no questions asked.

Rules were meant to be broken I guess.

Managers definitely seem to have the power to break the rules, but should they give in to customers so easily? Let’s see what Reddit thinks of this story.

Another person shares their experience working at the same store.

This person has an interesting why of explaining how the couple probably thinks about the world.

This person works at the same store.

I’m guessing Apple sets the rules.

Managers don’t always make the right decisions.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.