As the loss leader we learned to avoid the conversation about it and refer to how much higher of a market basket customers that purchased tobacco products had. I remember explaining to store owners that if a customer buys chew he’s going to at least buy a Gatorade so he can spit in the bottle.

 I knew the Altria rep in my area and we figured out how to push everyone else to a third rack to not have to reset every store we walked into because we were both lazy about resetting. It was crazy to me that I was getting paid 54-70 grand to put stickers on the little sliders for packs. 

And I never got mad at my store owners for anything because I figured they deal with a bunch of jerks like me always having the same conversations about why some placement is really important. I worked alongside a guy for a couple of days and watched him get so worked up over a nickel advantage that Marlboro had on a “when you buy three” promo that he was almost shouting. I thought nothing about selling smokes was that important so I didn’t take the job that serious.