It’s funny how some policies sound so good on paper, but in the real world, not so much.

So, what would you do if your manager told you to stop helping customers directly and rely on a self-service tool instead?

Would you quietly help customers anyway? Or would you follow the rule and show the company just how dumb it really is?

In the following story, one customer service desk employee finds themselves in this situation and decides to follow the policy.

Here’s how it all played out.

“You have to use the kiosk for that”

I used to work the service desk at a big box store, the kind with a million tiny aisles and a lot of weekend chaos.

Corporate rolled out this “self-help” push, and our store manager repeated it in a meeting: we were not supposed to walk customers to items anymore because it “trained dependence” and slowed down the desk.

The approved script was to direct them to the new touchscreen kiosk map near the entrance. It sounded harmless on a slide, but in real life, half our customers were older, tired, or just in a hurry, and the kiosk was always surrounded by carts and kids.

Every customer was pointed to the kiosk.

Still, the instruction was super clear: use the kiosk, do not leave the desk unless it’s for an actual return. So I did exactly that.

Lady asks where picture hooks are, I smile and point to the kiosk. Guy asks where the lightbulbs are… kiosk. Someone asks where the restroom is, yep, kiosk. People would look at me like I was messing with them, and I’d do the same calm line: “Store policy, the map will show you.”

Within an hour, we had a little cluster of confused customers poking the screen, then a line, then a second line for actual returns because I couldn’t move faster.

The kiosk did not help.

One customer got so frustrated that they asked for a manager, and I happily called one over, then stood there quietly while the manager spent ten minutes walking them to the aisle anyway.

By the end of the weekend, we had three complaints logged, two abandoned returns, and the store manager asking why the kiosk area looked like an airport check-in.

Monday morning, the rule was magically “use the kiosk when it helps, but just be human about it.”

Wow. That sounds like quite the nightmare.

Let’s check out how the folks over at Reddit feel about this.

It does sound a little ridiculous.

For this person, that’s not customer service.

According to this comment, they should’ve done it anyway.

That sounds like a lazy store.

There’s no wonder the policy changed so quickly.

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.