Bingo — you described it exactly. The store I worked for sold lots of small wares and dry goods. We could have sold ten times the purple and maroon items because those are the team colors for the Baltimore Ravens and the DC team (formerly Redskins); but no, we only got what every other store in the chain got, across the country.
Many of these retail chains are in a consortium that manages multiple types of businesses under one holding company manned by MBAs with no actual experience of the type of work being done or the type of customer utilizing each type of business. They manage greeting card stores the same way as restaurants or drugstores, just sending out a clipboard of regulations every few weeks, keeping an eye on their personal stock portfolios at a vast remove from the places of work generating their high income. It’s as you say, a huge waste of money and a suppression of the working people making barely more than minimum wage to run these places with their hands tied behind their backs.
Musk’s recent reward to his working people was an excellent role model that needs to be widely imitated.
Very interesting...and a sad state of affairs. Our son is a superstar, but that ridiculous centralized planning wears him down and he gets resigned to the futility of it all — “there’s nothing I can do, it’s corporate.” His guys are very unhappy having to stay the extra hour at the end of the day. That means family plans, going to kids ball games, dinners, evening plans...all fouled up for an extra hour of open time at the end of the day. It sounds like everybody is looking to leave.
Don’t those corporate suits ever think about these things?