The World's Most Helpful Employee

I went to Target today, and they had their yearly $7.99 sale on DC Universe Classics figures (normally they are $15.99). Unfortunately, the local store hasn't gotten a single new figure in in months, perhaps not since last year's holidays. What they have on the shelf are figures I've returned (or others have returned), and not a single one that's worth $7.99, let alone $15.99. But I'd discussed this so many times with my cousin that I'd planned on stripping the shelves if they ever went on sale again, in hopes that the store would order some new ones.

Unfortunately, they had three of probably the most worthless figure in their entire series, Cyclotron (it's probably more worthless than the much more-prominent Captain Cold, since he at least comes with a Build-A-Figure piece), and I was torn between buying ALL the figures, and buying all of them except for him. And an employee of the toy department just happened to come by, so I asked him.

"These are on sale," I said. "Should I buy all of them, or is leaving only three enough so that the store will order more?"

"It doesn't work that way," he said, smugly . . . then didn't explain how it did work.

"Okay, how does it work?" I asked.

"The warehouse sends us more when they have more. It doesn't matter if we have them on the shelf or not."

"Oh. But this store hasn't gotten a new figure since 2010. Since they're on sale, will you be getting some new ones in?"

"There's no way of knowing that," he said.

"Can't the manager or somebody order another box?" I asked.

"Nope. The computer keeps track of those things."

This frustrated me, since I was now getting visions of the HAL-9000, and that shitty Michael Bay TRANSFORMERS movie. "Alright, isn't there anything I can do to ensure your store gets some more in?"

"Well, you could buy all the ones on the shelf, if you want," he said.

Sigh.