From RHUer

My manager was absolutely anal about that loathed phrase, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean!"

Stop to take a drink of water? The phrase was bellowed across the store.

Pause to retie that damn shoelace you keep tripping over? Storming over to you to snarl it in your ear as you struggle to balance on one foot.

Slip on something and have to grab a shelf to avoid landing on your ass? Crank it up to Volume 11, people!

Now keep in mind, our place can only be kept so clean during business hours. Even mopping the floor is only ever done before or after hours, because nobody has the time to mop around half a dozen customers who are trying to shop for their product.

So short of randomly tugging a clorox wipe out of its bottle and giving the front counter a cursory wipe, cleaning instead of leaning is utter bullshit. We have other duties, and it's not unreasonable to do the minor aforementioned things.

But my manager won't hear of it. So I finally got fed up and grabbed a disposable camera... or five... and was on my manager like a paparazzi on the tanned buttcheeks of a supermodel wearing a bikini. For five days that week, I filled my camera with instances of him "leaning" against random things. I learned that he was a "Do as I say, not as I do," kind of guy. It filled me with vindictive pleasure to get shots of him leaning but not cleaning.

The following week, I ninja'd my ass into the breakroom and tacked Every. Single. Picture. to the Announcements pegboard. I wallpapered that cork board and the wall around it with pictures of my manager leaning against all sorts of shit. I hung a custom made banner with my manager's FAVORITE line above them all.

Then I left it alone.

The manager came in at noon.

Silence.

My photos and banner disappeared without fanfare.

The entire day was spent blissfully unbothered by my manager's usual bellowing of the phrase. The day stretched to a week. Then to a month. Six months later, I got a job somewhere else. I never again heard that phrase so much as whispered in that store.

I forget what it cost to get all that stuff made, but the final verdict was: "Worth it."

--RHUer