When I was working minimum wage at a gas station many eons ago, we would have ‘2 for $x’ specials where x is less than 2 times the individual price of whatever item.
People would often not want to buy 2, but I would ring up 2 in the till for the special price and charge them for the single. Then when the next person did the same, I would charge them for the other single.
So over the day, I would sell 10 energy drinks at say $4, but ring them up as 5 ‘2 for $6’ specials. This would put the till up by $10, and then I would use that $10 to have a free meal.
Anyone else do anything like that?
It might be more obvious if you increase the volume.
Immagine that your employer has instructed you to sell 1 bottle for $3, but you can sell a whole pallet containing 500 bottles for $1000 (coming out at $2 per bottle). So you ring up the whole pallet and pay it off over the next few days by adding $2 to the cash register and keep $1 for each sale. Over those days, you have made one single sale of a pallet, while pocketing $500.
The work hours which was meant for you to generate sales of $3 bottles has been reduced to effectively selling $2 bottles, while the remaining expected value ended in your pocket.
As others have said, I don’t really care about big corporations losing out on some money, but you are 100% stealing when you reduce the expected sales value and pocket the difference during your work hours.