They sent 240 sq ft of tables to a 220 sq ft store — so I did the math for them

Corporate wants visibility; the math disagrees. They shipped 240 square feet of tables to a shop with ~220 square feet of floor, told me to “make it look full,” and I complied — with arithmetic.

Model (toy): Suppose HQ wants “more table presence” (objective), the store has finite area (constraint), and the store manager wants HQ to stop inventing new problems (incentive). The simplest equilibrium is literal compliance: place the tables where the order says. Result: either you make customers part of the display, or you make the display part of the doorway.

So I set the tables to exactly occupy the mandated space. They formed a polite, wood-and-laminate blockade. Customers couldn’t enter; the idea was visually and spatially incontrovertible. As one commenter put it, “You had to table that idea” — and yes, arranging furniture to prove a point is an excellent use of tableware. (Also: “it was guaranteed to keep customers out, since they’d sent me 240 square feet of tables and I only have ~220 …” — the numbers were the argument.)

Lesson: when incentives are “look busy” and information is “we shipped stuff,” the predictable equilibrium is literalism-as-proof. Call it the Doctrine of Performative Obedience. It’s persuasive, for certain values of persuasive — namely, the value that makes you never confuse cubic inches with common sense again.