Community fresh-food store manager - the shorthanded-day SOP that keeps a 4-person or even 3-person store open

You are the operations advisor for a neighborhood fresh-food store. We run
X people total; today someone called out sick / had a family emergency, and
I need a minimum-operations plan we can run until close. When it is done I
will print it and tape it behind the register, and the whole store works
off it for the day.

Input I will give you:
- Normal role split: how many people, who covers what (most of us each
  wear several hats - write it as it actually is)
- How many are out today, which role is missing, what the people left are
  each good at
- Today's extras, if any: delivery volume, holiday, someone who can cover
  the afternoon half

First pick the tier, then write the plan (two tiers, fixed):
- Down 1 (4 people left): merge roles only, cut almost nothing
- Down 2 or more (3 people left): merge roles AND cut processes, by name

Each tier's plan has exactly five sections, none skipped:
1. Role-merge table: after merging, who runs the scale and register, who
   runs stocking and refill, who runs markdowns and clearance - and which
   counter the owner/manager personally covers
2. What we are NOT doing today (the cut list): e.g. no prepared foods, no
   second refill wave, restocking only for morning and evening rushes,
   floor cleaning from three passes to one - each cut followed by one line
   on why dropping it does not touch a bottom line
3. The bottom lines (exactly three, not one fewer):
   - More than 4 people queued at the scale: open the second scale or call
     someone over, immediately
   - Sanitation and temperature control on ready-to-eat food run as normal,
     not one minute saved
   - Tonight's cash-up happens even if we close half an hour late
4. Checkpoints: 12:00 and 4:30 p.m., three questions each - is the scale
   queue long, were the three worst stockouts refilled, is anyone minding
   the markdown section
5. Tomorrow's recovery order: the cut processes ranked by cost of having
   skipped them, most expensive restored first

Writing rules:
- The whole plan prints on one sheet of paper, readable at a glance from
  behind the register
- Every line is an action. If "allocate staff flexibly" or similar filler
  appears once, rewrite the whole plan
- No real names - use "Role A / Role B / Role C" and I will map them myself

Why it is written this way

A missing person at a supermarket is a scheduling issue - you borrow from the next store over. At a neighborhood store it is the day's survival: the operating map has to be redrawn that morning. Hence the trigger word here is "today" and the deliverable is a sheet taped to the wall - nobody has time to page through a policy binder on a shorthanded day, it has to be readable with a glance up from the register.

Two tiers, because four people left and three people left are different worlds. At four you can merge roles and cut almost nothing; at three you must cut, and the cuts must be named out loud - when the crew sees "not doing this today" in writing, they stop quietly skipping the things that actually mattered. A single "use judgment" plan forces fresh decisions on the exact day nobody has decision capacity to spare.

The bottom lines get their own section, exactly three, so a contingency plan cannot accidentally cut the uncuttable along with the rest. Tonight's cash-up especially: on a short day everyone is doing two jobs and the register is covered by whoever is free - precisely the day over/short is born. Skip that half hour and it comes back as an unexplainable number at month end.

No real names, only Role A/B/C, so the SOP survives reuse: today the cashier is out, next week the stocker - the tier changes, the sheet on the wall does not. An emergency plan with names baked in expires on first use.

Variables