He had bought something from a cafe recently and thought it would makes a nice gift. So off he goes to the cafe only to be told the item was sold out due to the festive season. He asked the staff when the new stocks will arrive and was told it's not confirmed. He asked if the item is still available at other outlets and was told he could try going down.
He went to another cafe the next day and got the same reply that there's no stock.
One of his friend knew about this and offered to get it for him at one of the outlets in the suburban shopping mall he will be passing by over the weekend.
That Saturday's morning, his friend arrived at the outlet at 10am and saw that the cafe will only opens one hour later. He didn't have the time to wait till then as he has other things to settle. Just then, he saw a lady at the counter and approached her for help.
It turned out that this outlet has stock of the item.
He asked if he could make the purchase now and was told by the lady that the cafe is not opened yet. She asked him to come back at 11am.
And despite the friend telling her that he is rushing for time and wouldn't be able to come back again, she just shrugged her shoulder with the look that there's nothing much she could do and insisted that he comes back one hour later.
Why did the lady turn away a customer ready to hand over his cold hard cash? Did she do it out of revenge against the company? Was she unable to complete the sale because the point-of-sale system is not ready? Was she trained to follow the procedure so well that she cannot do anything differently? Why couldn't she make the sale and do the paperwork later (keying order into system and sending receipt to the person)?