Never attribute to malice, what is adequately explained by stupidity.
.88 is a near universal pricing convention for Final Clearance, Final Markdown, Do Not Replenish. In those systems, .89 has another, specific, procedural meaning. I’m more than willing to believe that his razor sharp technical staff do not know how to override a price without completely flattening the inventory system rules.
That is not to say he’s a “Stand Up Guy”, or Misunderstood, or anything other than a complete dumpster fire of a human being … but it’s a long road from carnival huckster, and Useful Idiot, to open genocide promoter - and it requires giving him an awful lot of credit to imagine him coming up with it all by himself.
