The irony, she thought as she began to pace, walking parallel to the line, was that until yesterday Little Will’s constant badgering about the backlog had bothered her far more than the thing itself. Unlike unload times, which had to be reported daily, the existence of the backlog was unknown to anyone outside the store. The only way corporate would find out about the backlog was with a surprise site visit. And those were rare. In practice, corporate almost always gave advance notice. On the other hand, managers’ ability to operate within budget was pretty much the most important metric used to evaluate performance and determine raises and promotions. You didn’t have to be a genius to understand that corporate’s willful blindness to conditions in the store, compared with its hyperattentiveness to the budget, was a way of telegraphing to managers what they should prioritize if they wanted to be successful.