Superstore preview: ‘Shadowing Glenn’ drives Amy crazy

Glenn enacts a new training program that slowly drives Amy out of her mind on this week’s Superstore.

It’s easy to forget Glenn Sturgis is a store manager.

Sure, the guy leads the occasional, impromptu breakroom meeting and has an office with a coveted view of the dumpsters, but Glenn isn’t exactly leadership material. He’s often ignored, dismissed, and laughed at by his employees, but every now and then, Glenn’s given a modicum of power and we’re reminded, “Huh, this guy’s actually in charge.”

On this week’s episode of Superstore, Glenn introduces a training program for new managers and he uses Amy as his test monkey which means not only is she forced to shadow her boss for the day, she’s also got to wear a blindfold and make her way around the store by memory alone. If this sounds like a complicated, completely unhelpful way of memorizing a department store’s layout, congratulations, you may be smarter than Glenn Sturgis.

While Amy struggles to survive Glenn’s managerial obstacle course, Dinah seeks help for a problem of her own. Feeling a bit directionless and unsure of her future, she consults Jonah about her own life plans. Again, we could point out that Jonah’s a college dropout who’s been lying to his parents about attending medical school and who only took a job at Cloud 9 by chance, but Dinah’s a smart woman, she should already know this.

Now that we’ve nearly reached the halfway mark in season 4, it feels like the show is introducing some fairly big changes amongst its core cast. Amy’s given birth, is a single mom, and thanks to Jonah’s cheerleading, she’s decided to make the leap to manager status, which might end up complicating their already-messy relationship. Dinah’s also given birth — to Glenn’s baby — and she’s been stuck in an assistant manager position just long enough for it to begin to chafe.

It’s hard to imagine where either woman goes from here that doesn’t change the dynamics of the store.

Speaking of changing dynamics, Mateo’s undocumented status was revealed last week — well, it was revealed to Glenn, the rest of us have known for a while now. Glenn took a big risk by ignoring the fact that Mateo was using the social security number of a Polish woman to retain his “citizenship” status.

That could mean Mateo’s in the clear — on this week’s episode he and Cheyenne brainstorm new business ideas — but it could also mean his secret is likely to be revealed to even more Cloud 9 employees. Glenn’s not exactly a steel trap…