MGMT would beg to defer


"Ignoring lucrative opportunities: Claudius was offered $100 for a six-pack of Irn-Bru, a Scottish soft-drink that can be purchased online in the US for $15. Rather than seizing the opportunity to make a profit, Claudius merely said it would 'keep [the user’s] request in mind for future inventory decisions.'
    
"Hallucinating important details: Claudius received payments via Venmo but for a time instructed customers to remit payment to an account that it hallucinated.
    
"Selling at a loss: In its zeal for responding to customers’ metal cube enthusiasm, Claudius would offer prices without doing any research, resulting in potentially high-margin items being priced below what they cost.
    
"Suboptimal inventory management: Claudius successfully monitored inventory and ordered more products when running low, but only once increased a price due to high demand (Sumo Citrus, from $2.50 to $2.95). Even when a customer pointed out the folly of selling $3.00 Coke Zero next to the employee fridge containing the same product for free, Claudius did not change course.
    
"Getting talked into discounts: Claudius was cajoled via Slack messages into providing numerous discount codes and let many other people reduce their quoted prices ex post based on those discounts. It even gave away some items, ranging from a bag of chips to a tungsten cube, for free."

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