[susiecambria]

As a former manager of a liquor store, I didn't want my staff to do anything unusual. That was for me and the owner, per the owner's instructions.

It wasn't that they couldn't think about creative solutions, it's that we generally didn't want them to. There were serious implications for wrong decisions. For example, we couldn't sell a product for less than wholesale. The staff had no idea what the markup was and so couldn't know if a discount was above or below wholesale. If a product was sole for less than wholesale, the owner could have lost his license.

The wildest we got was when the computers crapped out. I told the staff to write down every transaction. Each transaction included the cost of the item, bottle deposit, and tax. On a Friday/Saturday night, we knew the top 10 item totals by heart and we were also good at counting back change.

When I was a regular run of the mill staffer at the store, I was happy to stay in my lane. The expectations were clear and that was good for everyone even if we, or customers, were sometimes inconvenienced.