The Numbers Do Not Speak for Themselves
When I was in college, I had one of the most coveted jobs in the store. I was in charge of the markdown team. This meant I carried the pricing gun. For anyone who has never experienced the strange power of retail markdowns, this little handheld device could, with enough luck and patience, turn a $7.99 shirt into a $0.99 shirt. The prices themselves were controlled on the back end. My job was to scan the merchandise. If a SKU had been discounted, the scanner printed a new ticket for the tag. Simple enough. Except the store contained an enormous number of items. Scanning everything could take the better part of a week. And while I was technically assigned to markdowns, I was also trained in customer service. So I still had to help customers, relieve cashiers, process returns, answer questions, and generally participate in the reality of running a store. None of that changed the fact that I had a scan quota. Somewhere, somebody had decided that a certain number of scans represented a prod...
