Christie Marsh is the next to make her exit, putting in her two weeks’ notice shortly after this incident. Though insisting the timing is coincidental, she does confess to Edgar that even she had never really liked Ruth, either, and only hired the woman because she was desperate. So now the hunt for her replacement is on, and while this two weeks’ notice business has been industry standard for who knows how long, it’s possible that this entire concept needs to be revamped for modern times. After all, everyone generally concedes that things move much faster nowadays, and that the…
Following that whole Inside Scoop phone call from Scott Wickander, and the controversy over removing dates from products — a charge Corey denied, incidentally — the bosses learned that this wasn’t even necessary. As it turns out, it’s perfectly legal to have expired product in your store. You just have to place it in a designated, separate area, and mark it as such. So they go to the trouble of rearranging some things along the back wall at Palmyra, to set up one four foot section for marked down outdates. …
The eleventh column of the new items spreadsheet is an all-purpose, generic remark field, as Teri had titled this, when she created the template. She was only using this cell to make note of the original cost from certain vendors, before the discount was applied, for reference purposes alone. The actual price they paid would go into the cost field itself, obviously.
Nobody else has any use for this column, though. When Edgar started creating that Major Vendor File every month, with a different tab for each of their five biggest suppliers, he rearranged the columns in each of them…
Jack really doesn’t get this place. It’s one thing for his fellow grunt-level peons, for example, to email IT and inform them about missing clock punches, which they do quite a bit. When the guys pulling the strings seem to have no clue who does what around here, though, this is cause for concern. Rob Drake emailed their database coordinator and company president at 9:15 last night to complain he learned they have an outdated version of Transaction Server, but didn’t include Jack or Felix. …
The so-called multitasking revolution has recently been debunked, but if you ask Glenda, the flaws with that approach should have been obvious to anybody. That foolishness kind of reminded her of the cold-shower-in-the-morning trend. Or the bullet journaling trend. Or the Eisenhower box trend — so-called productivity and/or life hacks you saw in 1,000 articles for about six months but then no one ever mentioned again. Granted multitasking had a longer shelf life than most, but thank God that scourge has mostly been eliminated. Although it does still have its adherents, true. …
The next morning, he’s in the wine aisle at Southside, inspecting a curious development. Though coming down here to figure out whether a couple of items on the latest Benevolence Vineyards invoice were new or not, this other anomaly jumped out at him, and then a couple more. Now he can’t stop hunting for them. At issue here are a ton of those idiotic little hand-tagged stickers, from the old school pricing gun.
With his attention draw to it, he’s going through every single bottle in the wine aisle now. Or at least this is the intent. Edgar is maybe…
“Destiny is totally different away from work,” Valerie’s telling him, the afternoon of the beer tasting.
“Oh, I’m sure,” he says.
This impromptu discussion has cropped up on the back loading dock, on this glorious late spring day. Edgar had been wandering the building, looking for Craig, to ask him a burning question about the latest invoice. And eventually found him out here, smoking a cigarette with Valerie. The question was long since answered and Craig went back to work some minutes ago, but Valerie’s in a talkative mood and the conversation has continued flowing freely between the two of…
“Well, I’m engaged!” Chef Anthony announces with a broad grin, in Edgar’s office just a few days later.
“Oh wow. Congratulations! Who is it? Anyone I know?”
Anthony tilts his head slightly to the left, in the manner of someone cocking their chin because they can’t quite believe what was just said. “You don’t know who I’ve been seeing?”
Edgar shakes his head and shrugs, because he genuinely has no clue. Although based upon the way the chef is acting, it almost certainly has to be someone who works here. If that’s the case, then he’s guessing it must be…
Nobody except the two parties involved in that closed door discussion really knows what happened, of course. From the beginning everyone told Edgar that those two had significant history together, so this likely plays a part. Also, Arnie was among the few whose hiring date preceded even Duane’s, and he’s heard rumors that, as a result of longevity, Mr. Greenberg was somehow pulling down more coin that even their president is.
Which might be bullshit, who can say. But this is the first firing since probably Dolly’s that really bothers Edgar, and on top of that, as far as he…
Melissa quits after about one month as the company driver. But then a few weeks later, she is hired back in the grocery department at Southside. Though this seems like a strange development — and objectively is — everyone keeps mentioning that Duane did so as a “favor” to her dad, the former president of this company, who is not even connected with this industry any longer. And whatever the case, it’s no more strange than any other development around here, or your average day.
Edgar likens it to driving a car, at exactly the speed limit, down one lane…
Jason McGathey
Habitual writer. http://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com Also: https://lovelettertocolumbus.com/ (Columbus OH minutiae) https://aknownhistory.com/ (family stuff)
