A customer is looking for a particular coffee maker, but Cheyenne and Mateo tell him they can get another from the stock room if they are offered a bribe. If prices weren’t so low, there would probably be an adequate stock of items on the shelves. Cheyenne and Mateo try to initiate a black market transaction in response to this shortage.
As customers stand outside waiting for the store to open, one of them offers Mateo and Cheyenne $40 each to put aside one of the TVs that is on sale. Because prices are so low, there won’t be enough for all of the customers that want a TV, creating a shortage among the waiting customers. Having people wait in line helps allocate the items based on people’s willingness to spend time rather than money, but this man would prefer to have the item allocated through a black market transaction.
Dina and Glenn accidentally ruined some ballots by spilling a pot of coffee. They are worried they will be accused of tampering with ballots and face jail time. If they both stay quiet, then nothing will likely happen to either of them. There’s an incentive to confess and try to get the other in trouble, but they both know who would responsible. Since they do not trust each other, they try to set each other up by pretending to be each other and recording their voices. This serves as a credible threat in the case that one of them rats the other out.
Dina brings a pressure washer outside as a deterrent to the strike, but she ends of blasting a hole through Glenn’s car window. While the goal is to convince the other employees to quit, Glenn ends up bearing the full cost of her deterrent.
After Dina stepped down as assistant manager, the store manager needs to find her replacement. Amy knows she is the likely candidate but declines the offer before Glenn can offer her the position. Her rationale conforms to the income-leisure tradeoff model. Since there is no increase in earnings from the assistant manager position, Amy doesn’t want to spend more of her time away from leisure. The scarcity of time available in her day means she must make tradeoffs on how to spend her time and she would rather spend it on her college classes.
Each year the store participates in a competition that divides the employees between two teams to see which team can sell the most during the day. Glenn announces that the winning team will receive a pizza party. While the employees aren’t overly happy about either the competition or the pizza party, incentives can usually be a way to induce higher levels of productivity. It turns out that each team member on the winning team also receives $100, but Glenn was saving it as a surprise incentive. Amy has to explain to Glenn that incentives need to be announced at the beginning in order for them to actually work.
Each year employees participate in Color Wars, where the employees are divided between two teams to see which team can sell the most during the day. Glenn announces that the winning team will receive a pizza party. While the employees aren’t overly happy about either the Color Wars or the pizza party, incentives can usually be a way to induce higher levels of productivity. It turns out that each team member also receives $100, but Glenn was saving it as a surprise incentive. Amy has to explain to him that incentives need to be announced at the beginning in order for them to actually work.
As Dina and Amy go searching for Bo, Amy notices that Dina doesn’t have a radio in her truck. It turns out that Dina special-ordered her truck without a radio (even though it costs more) because she believes it would make her truck less appealing to potential thieves. If criminals behave rationally (which Gary Becker argued that most do), a truck without a radio wouldn’t be worth the potential cost associated with car theft. Dina has removed the incentive to steal her truck.
After a recent uptick in the amount of union activity in the store, the corporate office has decided to institute Employee Appreciation Day. Jonah is quick to point out that this particular day always seems to occur whenever they are trying to get people to sign union card. He advocates for the union instead and mentions that joining a union may provide more long-term benefits, but Amy and Dina work to convince the employees that a union is unnecessary.
It’s election day and Cloud 9 has placed pamphlets in the break room encouraging employees to vote for anti-union candidates. Cloud 9 knows that unionization could result in much higher labor costs, so they spend that money to encourage workers to not form a union. This form of managerial opposition is part of the explanation for the decline in unionization rates in the United States.
Teaching with Superstore