Our manager was in the store mornings almost every day, but even then he was usually in his office. Store policy was enforced on employees not through regular supervision but by the threat of surprise inspection by Carl, the manager at another branch owned by same person who owned our store. Carl would do his best to sneak into the store unseen and spring himself upon an unsuspecting employee, asking to count how much was in each register (we weren’t supposed to have more than $50, or $20 overnight- everything else was dropped into a safe) and to see the checklist that every employee was supposed to keep. I called him Rat Man Carl both because of his function in the company and because of his rodent-like appearance.
I was one of the store’s best employees, though it’s hard to overstate just how low the bar was set. If I called five minutes before a scheduled shift to say I wasn’t coming, they were just impressed that I called. I was a friend of the owner and his daughter, and once in a while old ladies would go out of their way to tell the manager how much they appreciated the nice young man who knew how to count their change back to them. There was zero chance of my being fired or reprimanded in any way, and I knew it. Consequently, I couldn’t have cared less about Rat Man Carl and his surprise inspections.
He, one the other hand, took great pride in his work. I’m sure he imagined himself a secret agent as he skulked outside the store, waiting like a savanna cat for me to turn my back so that he could slink into the store and surprise me. It disappointed him to no end that I never displayed the least shock or dismay at his sudden appearance nor at the solemn warnings and stern lectures he delivered in a grave tone.
Carl’s son usually worked another store but once had a shift with me. He blatantly stole whatever foodstuffs he wanted and encouraged me to do the same, going to so far as to refuse to ring me up for an ice cream sandwich I ate. I had to ring it up myself, which was itself against company policy but seemed the lesser of two evils.
Several years later I ran into Carl at a Target. We spoke for a minute, and he bragged to me about how he was moving up in the world, making $18/hour as an assistant manager and well on his way to becoming a full-fledged manager. I wished him the best.
That story is hilarious!