It’s back.

We once again have a phone-number-driven twofer sale on a popular brand of cigarettes. Same brand as last time. The register displays the same number pad, with the same graphics and marketing message, on the touchscreen. The amount is the same. The weekly notices comparing different stores in the area are coming out again. And once again, we peons are being offered a shot at a gift card for upselling the thing, and the contest is borked in exactly the same stupid way, despite management having known about the “error” for months.

I think I can stop assuming it was an error, especially since I’ve seen a bit of paperwork from last time about the contest rules for management. See, middle managers were competing for their own gift cards, under the same contest rules, based on the sales of the stores under them… but while the eligibility threshold for us peons was 60%, it was 40% for first layer of middle management and 30% for the layer above that.

There are a couple of differences this time.

Last time, management let us know that, on top of the contest and the standing order to upsell all the things, corporate mystery shoppers would take points off if they caught us upselling something else but not the cigarettes. (And management is horrified – or pretends to be – by mystery-shopper scores under 100%.) This time, they haven’t done that yet, possibly because there’s already a corporate mandate to upsell something else.

Also, the eligibility threshold for the gift-card contest has gone from 60% to 70%, possibly because a store or two actually hit 60% last time and they felt pressured to actually give someone below management level a gift card.