Last week, my supervisor was complaining to me about his information gatekeepers, the “scanning department.” In any grocery store these people are the slacker elite, denying tag and sign requests from the lowly peasant class that do not have the access code or ability to use the pricing machinery that drives store sales. I ruled my scanning crew with an iron fist—and with humor as well, though it often went unappreciated. When I would walk into their office early, or on my day off, or after I had left for the day, a collective groan would fill the air.

Now, as a lowly clerk, I am once again at their mercy, unable to move new or overstocked items before they go out of date for lack of a sign.

It is the way of the retail food world.

But Joe had had enough, and complained to me, asking my advice about what to do with an employee that answered his request for a sale sign with, “I’ll take care of it when I get around to it,” before returning to her non-work related gossip.

Remembering an invention of my father, Ted LaFond, who managed a print shop in the 1970s, I employed my box cutter and pen on a sheet of cardboard, and in minutes armed my boss with three rounds of anti-slacker ammunition. They were not printed on 20-bond Hamermill like Dad’s, but they would do.

He now had in his hands three round cardboard disks, inscribed with “To-It.”

For now on, he need only hand out the missing round To-It to his procrastinating scanners and all will be well.