On the Spot Guidance

Earlier this month, Putin showed up in Pikalyovo to quell a workers' protest and put Deripaska in his place. Then, he appeared at an art exhibit telling renown painter Ilya Glazunov a unsolicited critique: "The sword is a bit too short, it looks like a pocket knife in his hands ... It looks like it's only good for slicing sausage." Naturally, the artist promised to fix it.

No surprise then that a local trip to an X5 supermarket in Moscow yesterday, Vladimir Vladimirovich gave another round of "on the spot guidance" to Yuri Kobaladze, the MD of corporate relations for X5:

P: "Why do your sausages cost 240 rubles? Is that normal?
K: "But these are high quality sausages. Look, these ones are just 49 rubles."
P: "Too expensive."
K: "No..."
P: "I can show you your mark-up ... Look at this kind of sausage, your mark-up is 52%!"

Then they moved to the meat counter...

P: "This is twice as much. Is this normal? It's very high."
K: "Tomorrow we will cut the price."

At this rate, VVP may begin to overfulfill the international quota on micromanagment.