I just had a friend send me this via e-mail. I wonder, too, to what degree this sort of nonsense goes on, and I hardly think it's restricted to Transformers. I doubt they'd do this with fancy electronics!

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I went on a short run today that included a Target that is a good ways
from where I live. I managed to strike up a conversation while there
with a guy who worked in the toy department. (He was trying to figure
out where to put some TF toys, and I pointed out which ones went on
which pegs which is really not that hard to figure out.)

I asked him why it seemed so many of the boxed TFs they had were
completely crushed. Did they come that way in the cases? Were they
crushed by the people stocking the shelves? Or was it just kids who
shopped there doing it?

He told me that the nighttime stockers do what they call "bowling"
after the store is closed. The figure out which aisle a boxed toy to
be stocked belongs on and then just toss/roll it down the aisle like a
bowling ball. Afterwards, someone (the morning guy?) picks the items
off the floor and puts them on their respective shelves. They guy who
told me about it said that he did not do it (he was the helpful type),
but he knew that some of the other toy department people did after
hours.

Now, I do not know about you, but I think that kind of practice
strikes me as incredibly loser-ish. If I was a manager at Target and
found out my employees were damaging store goods like that, I think a
few guys would find themselves fired. It really explains why some of
the boxed TFs on the shelves look like they were handled by that
gorilla in old Samsonite commercials. I have to wonder how widespread
"toy bowling" is at Targets or in the industry at large

If we are talking about sliding cases of figures down the aisles, I really don;t think that would do that much damage. The point in them doing it (other than fun) is to get the case to the destination with the least amount of walking. So they likely slide the case down the aisle which wouldn't do that much damage if any at all. If it is rolling end over end, then yes it will be banged up.

If you want to talk about loserish or childish, then that would be me and my friend at 18 or 19 years old working at a sandwich shop. We used to play "Turkey bowling". The turkey meat was processed and came in a large roundish vac-sealed package. The package was double sealed so they were always hard to get open. So we setup various cups and spray bottles as pins and rolled away. Then we opened the package and sliced it up for serving. And yes, I would eat it. The meat never actually touched anything so we were at least that considerate. But we were stupid kids, it is what stupid kids do. Sometimes I miss that job.

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