S05.E15: Cereal Bar

[Aulty]

Quote

After Cloud 9 receives a new cereal bar, Amy and Jonah speculate on Zephra's ulterior motives. Dina enlists Cheyenne's help in dealing with a scammer. Garrett tries to con Glenn into giving him paid time off.

Original Air Date: 02/13/2020

Edited February 4, 2020 by Aulty

[chocolatine]

Free cereal, a 50% Lyft discount, and paid time off for mental health crises means the tech company is definitely not modeled after Amazon. One of Amazon's core values is "frugality" and they don't offer such perks even to their corporate employees. The perks plus the reference to self-driving cars on campus sounds like the company is Google.

Jonah and Amy don't work for me as a couple, there's so little chemistry between them. No amount of delicious gnocchi can fix that.

[Harvey]

I'm glad Carol got suspended, it is more realistic that way.

I need a day like Garrett’s day off 😭

[AnimeMania]

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

I need a day like Garrett’s day off 😭

I think every day Garrett is off is like what he described, the only difference is he wants to be paid for it.

[joanne3482]

I should have known Dina wasn't going to allow herself to be played, but I had a moment where I was worried that she was and I was a bit sad for her.  I think this move to the new owners has interesting potential. They're not quite as cut-throat as Wal-Mart but not quite as benevolent as CostCo seems to be. 

[Ms Lark]

Although the writers are, once again, making Amy seem totally incompetent. That was just sad.

Not loving the show as much as I used to. Wonder how much longer they're going to be able to keep it going.

[iMonrey]

There was a scene with Amy and Jonah standing in the produce aisle, and I noticed how pristine everything looked. Hard to believe a store like Cloud 9 has such an impressive produce display. Looked like it could have been a commercial for Whole Foods. 

Seeing Scott MacArthur again made me miss The Mick. A little bit. I enjoyed the interplay between him and Dina too. And Cheyenne was cracking me up not knowing what to do about it. That was really the best part of the episode.

I don't get why Amy was trying to shut down everyone during the phone call unless it's because she didn't want her new boss thinking she didn't have control over her employees or something. There's nothing wrong with them asking about pay raises.

[OpalNightstream]

There is zero chemistry between Amy and Jonah. There is more between Garrett and Dina. I wish they would soften Mateo up a bit. He’s always so nasty about everything. 

[Artsda]

Amy really didn't have her teams back in this episode. Jonah for Manager!

[theatremouse]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

I don't get why Amy was trying to shut down everyone during the phone call unless it's because she didn't want her new boss thinking she didn't have control over her employees or something. There's nothing wrong with them asking about pay raises.

I got the impression she thought this wasn't the right forum and that it was too soon. Like she wanted to feel out the new overlords before anyone went in asking for anything. Possibly she also admired the new CEO prior to the acquisition and didn't want to make waves while being a little bit fan-girly. Some scenes America played it more like the latter, but others more like the former.

[Harvey]

3 hours ago, Ms Lark said:

 

Not loving the show as much as I used to. Wonder how much longer they're going to be able to keep it going.

It was just renewed a few days ago for another season so at least for another year.

[AnimeMania]

5 hours ago, iMonrey said:

There was a scene with Amy and Jonah standing in the produce aisle, and I noticed how pristine everything looked. Hard to believe a store like Cloud 9 has such an impressive produce display. Looked like it could have been a commercial for Whole Foods. 

They are called "Honey Smacks", there is a reason the word "Smack" is in the title.

[Fostersmom]

5 hours ago, theatremouse said:

I got the impression she thought this wasn't the right forum and that it was too soon. Like she wanted to feel out the new overlords before anyone went in asking for anything. Possibly she also admired the new CEO prior to the acquisition and didn't want to make waves while being a little bit fan-girly. Some scenes America played it more like the latter, but others more like the former.

I figured she was trying to keep them from screaming about unions, raises, and whatever else Jonah has made his pet cause. Yeah, those things do NOT go well in retail. I worked for a small dollar store chain that was bought out by Dollar Tree about a decade ago. One of the first things that happened after the buy out was Dollar Tree sent in a lady to tell us about the evils of unions. Yeah, we had like 9 employees, only 2 of us were even full time, just me and my assistant manager, but sure, we were going to try to start a union. 

I LOVED Dina's creative scam artist. I never saw one who rewrapped the boxes, but so many scam artists are out there. Even my mom got wise to them from hearing the stories my sister and I would tell her. She was behind a customer at Kmart one time who hauled in a big old box for a late 90's stereo system, tossed it up on the counter and said it didn't work. The cashier wasn't even batting an eye as she started to process the refund. My mom spoke up and said don't you think you should check the box? Yeah, it had a cinderblock in it. I worked in an Amish community and we had someone return a potty chair, said they had received 2 for the baby shower. All the returns at that store had to go back to receiving, be checked, and then processed. Yeah, the box was full of naked Jem dolls (remember those? Rock star Barbies). We had to check all the comforters before we sold them, people love to shove stuff in the packaging to steal. Luggage, purses, and backpacks were checked for stolen goods like they were full of explosives. They really need to give her a story line about employee theft, employees steal way more than customers off the street. That's pretty much the whole reason stores even have loss prevention, to catch the employees. Basically it was a pain in the ass to catch customers who might make it out with a few hundred dollars worth of stuff once, and you could almost guarantee the store would have to go to court, or you could catch an employee who was probably stealing every shift and who could take you for weeks or months before it became obvious. 

[Harvey]

19 hours ago, Fostersmom said:

She was behind a customer at Kmart one time who hauled in a big old box for a late 90's stereo system, tossed it up on the counter and said it didn't work. The cashier wasn't even batting an eye as she started to process the refund.

This is really interesting. It reminds me of something that happened to me a few weeks ago, where I bought a mouse for my laptop and took it back the next day because it did not work well. When I returned it, the girl at the desk didn't check inside the box or ask many questions, she just processed the request immediately. I assumed they do it this way because customer satisfaction is more important than getting 1 sale on a particular product.

[Fostersmom]

3 hours ago, Harvey said:

This is really interesting. It reminds me of something that happened to me a few weeks ago, where I bought a mouse for my laptop and took it back the next day because it did not work well. When I returned it, the girl at the desk didn't check inside the box or ask many questions, she just processed the request immediately. I assumed they do it this way because customer satisfaction is more important than getting 1 sale on a particular product.

It was always a crap shoot then And I'm sure it is now. Its not like you can check out a product to see if it works or not, but you can certainly check the box before handing back a couple hundred dollars. So many people seemed to think a store wouldn't take things back because they changed their mind, so they would instantly say it was broken when it wasn't. Just say you changed your mind so they can resell it. Back then that particular chain had a person who had to try to figure out if things were actually broken or not and then pack up the broken stuff to send back to god knows where, its been almost 20 years since that chain went out of business, so I can't tell you where they sent the damages anymore. I do remember we had paper store credit slips at that chain for returns without receipts that we would stamp with a red stamp. You could get like $5 back in cash if you spent the majority of it. So you returned something for $30, spent $25, we'd give you the change back. Known thieves would get their slip stamped 3 times, this meant no bills back at all, loose change only to you. We also had a band of roving thieves that we never could catch. Once a year a group of guys would drag in bags and bags of things to return without receipts. They would never question the amount we'd give back. Oh, this $80 comforter set is going to get you $10? Ok. They'd end up with a 3 red stamped credit slip for a couple hundred dollars which they would spend that day. Best we could tell, their wives would steal all the stuff and then send the guys to return it. They would say they just lost the receipt and not try to say the stuff was broken though. 

[AnimeMania]

I can see Dina now talking to the Police, "I will send you the interrogation room footage where he admitted to the crime, after I edit it a little bit".

[Grundoon59]

I always like the background moments of the show.  For this episode, it was the CEO using the exact same script for the call at two different stores without Amy, Jonah or Sandra noticing.  It also made me wonder if that was what led to the Lyft discount, rather than the goodness of the CEO's heart.

[wknt3]

On 2/14/2020 at 7:50 PM, Fostersmom said:

They really need to give her a story line about employee theft, employees steal way more than customers off the street. That's pretty much the whole reason stores even have loss prevention, to catch the employees. Basically it was a pain in the ass to catch customers who might make it out with a few hundred dollars worth of stuff once, and you could almost guarantee the store would have to go to court, or you could catch an employee who was probably stealing every shift and who could take you for weeks or months before it became obvious. 

 

They really do need to do this storyline if only to address how shaky the evidence is for the idea that most shrinkage is employee theft and how draconian the measures to stop it can get while management and loss prevention are handcuffed by corporate lawyers when it comes to combating shoplifting and by management stupidity when it comes to other types of shrinkage like vendor fraud or simple bad inventory management. It's taken as an article of faith and is largely based on extrapolating what can be proven since employee theft is much easier to prove and document than shoplifting. There is certainly a lot of potential there and I'm surprised that they've never done it that I can remember since there are a lot of chains out there with policies and procedures that it is easy to take a half step further into total absurdity.

[tennisgurl]

It sounds like there really are some perks to be taken over by this big corporation! Well they get cereal, Lyft, and mental health days, so thats something at least! The CEO was apparently just saying the same thing to every branch, but she also did listen to their concerns, so who knows where this heading? 

I really wish they would give Amy and Jonah some episodes where they get along, they always seem to be fighting. Even the random on off characters dont get that they're actually in a relationship!

Garrett might have been faking needing a paid day off for mental health, but it sounds e might actually need it for real?

[chaifan]

On 2/14/2020 at 7:50 PM, Fostersmom said:

They really need to give her a story line about employee theft, employees steal way more than customers off the street. That's pretty much the whole reason stores even have loss prevention, to catch the employees.

I think a fun plot line would be the employees having a contest to see who can actually steal something past Dina.  There are so many opportunities for mad hijinks with something like that.  And then they find out the employee who "won" has a houseful of stolen Cloud 9 merch going back years. 

[Harvey]

On 2/17/2020 at 2:30 AM, tennisgurl said:

 

Garrett might have been faking needing a paid day off for mental health, but it sounds e might actually need it for real?

It's clear he's been somewhat depressed for years but he accepts it as normal, he does not recognize it as a problem. He has been hating his job since day 1 and he always just looks for ways to slack off and get paid for it.

[Kiddvideo]

I worked for a tech company. “Unlimited” time off (that they monitored and when you hit 15 vacation/sick/pto days you got to talk with your manager!), “free” lunch once a week (catered food that needed to be microwaved but saved us from buying $7 sandwiches and kept us at our desks for an extra 30 minutes), bagel Fridays that saved us from spending $1 on equally stale food at the cart on the corner (and the service was so small you had to be at the office early to get any), unlimited cereal if it hadn’t run out, unlimited $0.50 bags of potato chips if they hadn’t run out, a keg (“free” beer though they monitored who drank how many and if you had one beer too often in someone’s opinion you got to talk with your manager! People just stopped drinking it because if you fell out of favor management would use “drinking on the job against you” even though they provided it and you worked 15 hours a day and missed every $5 happy hour and by the time you could join your friends they were 3 beers in and having a great time...that you missed), and let’s not forget discrimination against older workers, women, and all POC. It was the worst job I’ve ever had, and I’d had a previous boss at a “mature” media company who used to throw things at us. At least there I got promotions and raises. With Superstore’s new tech company owner, even with a female CEO, Jonah might very well become the new manager.

[Trillium]

On 2/16/2020 at 7:30 PM, tennisgurl said:

I really wish they would give Amy and Jonah some episodes where they get along, they always seem to be fighting. Even the random on off characters dont get that they're actually in a relationship!

This is my main issue with them as a couple. I’m not opposed to it and when they write them as being on the same page, they are very sweet.  But too often since she became they manager, it seems like they just make them bicker about everything and it’s not fun to watch. I don’t want the angst of a breakup, so just have them get a long and move on with it. I do appreciate, even despite the conflict, they’ve never made Jonah seem insecure that Amy makes a lot more than him now. At least that is something, I guess. 

[msrachelj]

On 2/18/2020 at 5:29 AM, Harvey said:

It's clear he's been somewhat depressed for years but he accepts it as normal, he does not recognize it as a problem. He has been hating his job since day 1 and he always just looks for ways to slack off and get paid for it.

Speaking of Garrett, who I feel a motherly affection for for some reason, did they ever tell us why he is in the wheelchair? Was it an accident or something else?

[Harvey]

4 hours ago, msrachelj said:

Speaking of Garrett, who I feel a motherly affection for for some reason, did they ever tell us why he is in the wheelchair? Was it an accident or something else?

They did not tell us and probably never will because then he would be defined by the event that caused him to end up in the chair.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 3/8/2020 at 3:11 PM, msrachelj said:

Speaking of Garrett, who I feel a motherly affection for for some reason, did they ever tell us why he is in the wheelchair? Was it an accident or something else?

There was an early episode where Jonah tried to figure it out, but he never got Garrett to divulge the information.