The End of Youthful Optimism
I used to work for a major office supply chain. One day, I went into the back and found one of the cashiers standing over a pile of stuff—printer cartridges, calculators, etc.
She was stomping her little heart out and trying her best to smash all of it. I was like, “WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING!?!?” She said, “Oh, they told me to break this stuff because they can’t sell it.”
I marched into my manager’s office and asked what they were thinking. Their response FLOORED me:
“Well, that stuff has sat in the clearance bin for months. We can’t afford to keep it on the floor, so it has to be destroyed.” I asked, “Why can’t you donate it to, like, a SCHOOL or something?”
Their response was, “Well, if we donate it, we have to write it off as a loss, and it makes our profits look lower. This way, it’s written off as damaged property, and it improves our books.”
They did the same with blank CDs. There were hundreds of them in stacks. I figured I could use some of them, so I grabbed a bunch and put them under my jacket.
When I came back at the end of my shift, they had taken them back, and another cashier was taking them one by one, scratching them with her keys, and dumping them in the trash. It totally shattered my youthful optimism. Story credit: Reddit / pwbdecker