“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter 102

Other developments are a lot more blatant, unambiguous. There’s not much debating what happened in these instances, like for example the fallout from Isabel’s sudden “retirement.” Though Isabel, like Michael and some other recent departures, is too classy to come right out and say so, this rash of high profile desertions is generally interpreted as no coincidence.

So a whole lot of people are not exactly enamored with the new regime. Still, this just as many or more find much of it quite comical, especially among those who have no problem with the current management and plan on sticking around. One might even go as far as to say these are often heaping helpings of just desserts, even. For example when Todd Cashner announces that to fill Isabel’s vacancy…he is transferring Destiny Davis over to Arcadia. In Destiny’s place, Craig Willis is now appointed the store manager at Central.

Though in every technical sense, Destiny’s transfer is considered a lateral move, it’s pretty obvious that this is actually a demotion. She clearly knows that it is, and accepts it with an appropriate level of cheer. Then again, the way Edgar sees it, there are certainly both pluses and minuses here, for the company’s longest tenured employee. For example, Arcadia is a much slower store, and Destiny will be able to take it even easier, overall. However, it’s also true that they have no back dock receiver there, meaning she is now among those contributing to the group effort on that front. This is one of the primary points which find her in a foul mood of late, indeed.

One of, but not the only. As Edgar winds up at his first Arcadia scan audit, following this managerial chair shuffling, Destiny has remained entrenched behind one of the cash registers for just about the entire day. The occasional intercom page disturbs her laconic rhythm, of course, for example sending her to the back dock to check in the occasional delivery, but otherwise she is planted at this checkout lane. Rather than being forced to stroll back and unlock the office every time Edgar needs another batch of shelf tags, she’s even handed him her keys.

Although, on second thought, it’s just as likely that maybe she doesn’t wish to see his face. There is a lot of undisguised hostility, floating in the air between them — even though this only flows in one direction, emanating from her. It’s true that he does think of her as pretty much a joke, and increasingly unpleasant, but has kept these thoughts to himself, to the extent that even she would have no way of knowing this. But whatever the particulars, these combustible elements drifting through the ether, they took on a solid form first thing this morning.

He had just gotten cracking when one of the day’s first customers drifts through her register. Destiny seemed to be in no fantastic disposition to begin, and the same applies as she shouts to Edgar, to summon his presence over there. As he arrives at the register, some tall and vaguely bewildered looking older gentleman is standing there with his groceries.

“He forgot his card and there’s no way to look it up? Why can’t we just look up their information? Do I seriously have to fill out a new application every time they forget their card?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he shrugs with one shoulder, “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“We can’t even type in their phone number?” she bleats, waving an agitated hand at her register’s touch screen.

“No. Todd doesn’t want us to be able to look people up.”

“Yeah but I thought there was a way to search by phone number. That’s what I heard. This is really dumb!”

“Are you taking down their phone number when you sign people up?”

“No,” she says.

“Well, there you go. How could that could possibly work, then?” he tells her, and walks away.

By the end of this conversation, that shopper had understandably looked far more horrified than bewildered, and rightly so. One wouldn’t necessarily expect this highly unprofessional exchange, in front of customers, at a Cost Merchant or Harry Teat or what have you. But for Edgar, it has him mostly shaking his head, chuckling under this breath as he does so. Things are starting to get quite ugly around this place, and he has a feeling they will only continue moving in that direction.

However, he also has occasion to reflect on how there are distinct advantages for someone working in the store, as opposed to an office person such as himself. At the store level, you enjoy greater proximity to the workforce, whereas he is one or two barriers removed from them. Therefore, someone like Destiny can get in front of complaints, she can head the “official” narrative off at the pass before it even reaches the office.

Like with these loyalty cards, for example. Working in the store, she is able to play both sides. Included in the vote for the loyalty cards, but then omitting this part when she turns around and bitches to everyone about the result. Edgar’s well aware that she is one of many whom this applies to, and not just that, but contributing to this pervasive mindset whereby everyone seems to think this whole ball of wax was Edgar’s idea, now, and that therefore the fact that it sucks is his fault, too. A mighty convenient angle to promote, to be sure, for the Destinys and Shelleys of the world.

Days earlier he had received an email on this topic from Jessie, the head cashier at Central. Now, for the record, he likes Jessie, thinks she does a great job and is a really nice person, and her email was thoughtfully composed. She also apologized profusely after he replied with a rebuttal, agreeing that he was right, when he bumped into her at the store the next day. Yet it’s just another example of how this narrative has taken hold now, willfully promoted by some of the very same ones who’d adamantly opposed him during the vote.

Yes, it is a stupid set up. He had told them it would be a stupid set up, and everyone disagreed, half of them acting like he was being weird or difficult on top of it, for arguing that they should be doing this themselves at the store. The loyalty cards were not his brainchild. Todd remains adamant that they are changing nothing about this — and for all Edgar knows, is probably also among those saying, “I don’t know, ask Edgar, this is his big idea,” should anyone complain to him. He can’t quite seem to get through to people that this was not his baby. He is only. The guy. Entering. The information. Into. Their computer system. That’s it.

Todd remains eternally breezy and dismissive whenever Edgar approaches him about anything, actually. He always lends the impression of being too busy and having much bigger fish to try, although the visible manifestations of this are a bit wacky and head scratch provoking, to say the least. Now that they’ve finally gotten the conference room cleared of boxes and other displaced construction detritus, they are able to conduct their Monday morning meetings over there. These meetings remain essentially unchanged from the Duane days, with everyone in the office gathered there, the store managers piping in on the conference call speaker, to recite their applicable portion of the same numbers from the same sheet that Edgar emailed to everybody as an attachment per Todd, copied into the body of the email per Fred, and was also forced to verbally recite to Vince during his morning fly-by. In other words, a near total eclipse of time wastage blotting out this hour or more of their day. Todd speaks a lot during these meetings, but whenever anybody else is, he mostly sits there at his laptop and either goofs around with pie charts or, to a much greater degree, scrolls up and down throughout his vast sea of unopened emails.

They know this because Todd does the same thing every time. He hooks up the HDMI cord from his laptop to the mounted TV, for reasons unknown. Seated where he is at the head of the table, this screen is actually over Todd’s shoulder, so he can’t even see it. All they can figure is that this is another strange performative stunt, that he thinks he is impressing them, or something, by how many emails he has? Either that or how colorful these pie charts are that he occasionally glances at?

It’s curious any way you slice it, and all the more so when considering that it’s plain to see the subject lines and the sender. Though even Todd isn’t quite insane enough to open some of these sensitive emails while broadcasting to the big screen, you can infer quite a lot by what’s visible here, for example whether Todd has or hasn’t opened your most recent emails. This point consistently amuses Edgar. Considering that his boss has a habit of bursting into his office at approximately 3:37 on a Friday afternoon, breathlessly asking for some crazy ass report that Edgar has to assemble by hand, such as -

“Can you send me a comparison of…ice cream sales…on Wednesdays only for the past six months…and then show the cost of Harmony Hill versus Universal on those items…?”

“Umm…I mean…we don’t have an ice cream department, so I’d be sorting by the brand or the item name or something, which might not…”

“That’s fine, that’s fine, whatever you can come up with.”

“Okay…when did you need this?”

“Can you get it to me by the end of the day? I really need this ASAP.”

- which Edgar, despite cobbling together with a fury, possibly staying over and racking up some last minute overtime, can see is now parked, unread, in Todd’s email inbox, a week and a half or two weeks and a half later, as it will continue to be, surely, long past the point it has any relevance. It’s a mighty curious phenomenon, given that Todd seems to be genuinely in some sort of panic when asking for these reports, but then what is Edgar to think about the timing of these requests, that they always seem to arrive well past 3pm on a Friday? And he clearly doesn’t do anything with them anyway?

They still aren’t quite sure what to think about this character in general. While on one hand, this tendency to tune out the meeting when he isn’t the one speaking, and blatantly just scroll and click in pure unfiltered aimlessness, it sure looks like someone who is only pretending to be doing some work. But if that’s the case, why transmit it to the screen? It seems as though you would disconnect that HDMI cable if this were the case. Therefore, many are left believing it must be some sort of ADHD thing, this inability to pay attention when anyone else is speaking (itself feeding into the obvious, probably inevitable, behind the back jokes about this being his “ADHDMI cord,” to facilitate Todd’s preoccupation with, as Valerie so succinctly puts it, “ooh, bright colors! Shiny objects!”)

Yes, there is clearly a little bit of that factor in play, to be sure. But far more troubling are these little tingles lighting up Edgar’s brain every now and then, where he wonders if just maybe Todd doesn’t possess as much knowledge as he’s claiming. To hear this guy talk, he knows every aspect of this industry backwards and forwards, down to the most arcane detail. And then if you happen to challenge him on something that maybe doesn’t quite seem to make sense, he just barrels through this with the expected bluster laced bravado, saying he already knew that, too, that this is simply how he wants to do things, so deal with it.

Because applying any other explanation to some of these occurrences often proves impossible. Like yet another late Friday afternoon, where Todd calls Edgar instead, with another of his breathless requests. He hasn’t been in the office for hours, and from the sounds of things must be driving somewhere right now, but he asks Edgar to go crack open this pair of giant boxes that have been sitting in the main room for over a week. These would contain a brand new, top of the line Windows computer, and then a dual screened monitor rig, respectively.

“Can you set those up real quick? They’re for Valerie, they need to go on her desk.”

Edgar agrees to this, of course, even though it’s a few minutes shy of four. He does kind of wonder about what’s prompting this mild panic, though, considering Valerie herself has already wrapped up her week, had left about a half hour ago. Also thinks to ask, “what should I do with her current computer?”

“I don’t know, just move it over to the side or something. She can deal with that. But yeah, I need you to go ahead and set that up before you leave today.”

Which is all well and good, and he supposes it’s a compliment that Todd trusts him to handle this — even if this is a ridiculously easy task, and comes with a large, simple, fold out step of instructions reminiscent of those Ikea assembly manuals with their mute ogres. But does he think this is Edgar’s job? He does after all continue to introduce Edgar as his “techie guy” whenever they meet with anyone from an outside company. Though Edgar always chuckles and says something like, “I’m actually the pricing coordinator,” when shaking their hands, and though 99% of his conversations with Todd involve numbers, is it possible that none of this sinks in and Todd doesn’t really know what he does?

As he begins unpacking and setting up Valerie’s admittedly slick new machine, Edgar begins to ponder this angle. Then, maybe five minutes later, his phone rings again — which all the bosses have because Todd demanded everyone’s cell number, though Destiny and a couple others flat out refused — and here’s the man of the hour once more, with yet another urgent request.

“Can you download a compatible version of Google?”

Edgar’s so stunned by this request he feels as though his brain has temporarily shut down, as he stammers, “uh…”

“Make sure she has a compatible version of Google,” Todd reiterates, “she’s gonna need that.”

“Uh…yeah. She’ll have access to Google.”

“Please make sure that she does. Thanks,” Todd concludes, and hangs up.

Okay, so now it definitely doesn’t seem so farfetched that Todd might be clueless about someone’s job role. Download a compatible version of Google? This sounds like something a comedy sketch show would have an old person say. Which you might expect out of Vince, maybe, but Todd is in fact a couple of years younger than Edgar. Not to mention the entire most obvious angle that Valerie surely knows how to use her internet browser of choice.

But, okay, maybe you can brush aside a little tech related weirdness. We all have gaps in our knowledge, he thinks, and not always the most obvious ones. But a series of emails a few days later, concerning the coding of some paperwork, raises a red flag that’s much harder to ignore.

Their new permanent controller, Wanda Robinson, emails Edgar out of the blue, asking if he knows why a bunch of invoices just arrived on Glenda’s desk, all of them coded to “bakery.” Wanda’s an older black lady he hasn’t met in person yet, as she just took over that gig a couple of months ago. Following that temp guy, Andy, there had also been this short lived Lewis character, a middle aged dad type who had assumed that role while Edgar was still over there in accounts payable. Come to think of it, actually, Lewis must have lasted about two years, and while it’s shocking that much time has gone by already, not so much so the fact that the dude had moved on — though intimidatingly knowledgeable about anything accounting related, and pleasant enough if you happened to speak to him, he did have a distant, breezy aura about him, the distinct vibe of a chronic, mercenary job hopper, forever climbing upwards. A fact perhaps best exemplified by a stipulation he apparently had written into his contract, in that he was permitted to hit the gym for an hour and a half every afternoon, right in the middle of the work day. And he did, too.

Edgar has never met Wanda and for that matter not yet had any interaction with her, period. So he’s more than a little surprised to receive this message from her, although plenty flattered that she would ask him. Unfortunately, as he relates to the woman, this is the first he’s ever heard of any quote unquote “bakery” department as well. Yet promises to look into the matter, all the same.

The most perplexing aspect of this mystery are that they arrived marked as such from all three stores. So it wasn’t just some left field glitch generated by a single person, like the notorious parking ticket or “herbal classes” invoices that have been turned in over the years. Glenda, obviously recognizing this as well, was so baffled that she took the invoices straight to Wanda, rather than even bother contacting the stores. They agreed that the stores must have reached some decision about this new department, yet failed to inform them, and decided that Edgar would be the first, best person to contact for an explanation.

Yet now that they’ve switched to Slingshot, he no longer sees the invoice, not unless someone emails him one with a question or a problem. The product automatically goes into the correct department when the receivers check these invoices in, on the store end of this equation; as far as the department managers continuing to code them, though, before turning these in to Glenda, this is only done because Felix still hasn’t gotten around to implementing the seamless connection between Slingshot and Great Plains, which would make everyone’s life a lot easier and eliminate these types of shenanigans. Actually, Reece is so fired up about the situation she’s taken to hammering Rob and Todd of late, complaining about Felix, asking for an explanation on the delay.

Still, although this is relevant to the issue at hand, it’s kind of beside the point right now. Right now they just need to figure out what happened. As it turns out, this doesn’t take nearly as long as expected, for in sending out a mass email to everyone potentially involved, Edgar has a response within a couple of hours, from Todd. He did it. He had somehow intercepted this week’s invoices, crossed out what was written in their department code box and wrote bakery instead.

Wondering what motivated Todd to take this outrageous measure in the first place is itself a question for the ages, but Edgar doesn’t even bother to ask, because it doesn’t really matter. Instead, as a separate email chain is created that involves only the two of them and Wanda, they attempt to figure out what he was hoping to accomplish. To this, Todd says, albeit with his typical bravado and lack of any apology, as though this were a perfectly normal set of events, he says they need to create a new Bakery department, effective today. He had switched the invoices himself to get the ball rolling on that front, so yeah, get the word out to everyone, this is what we’re doing now.

Edgar is able to talk him down at least partially from this ledge, by suggesting that instead of an actual new department, they probably just want to a sub-department under deli, right, a la Meat or Grab & Go or Juice Bar? Well, no, Todd insists, the bakery is going to be its own separate entity, but he supposes a sub-department will suffice for now.

There are almost too many questions to tackle with this one, that to do so would send the body into catatonic shock. Instead, Edgar attempts to just slow down and focus on the biggies. What will the margin be for this sub-department? And what kind of items are getting switched over to it? Considering that the people who are working in these delis haven’t even been informed, should he do so, or should Glenda? Shouldn’t the back dock receivers get a little heads up on this development as well?

But perhaps the most crucial question is a big picture one that nobody is bold enough to ask. Namely, how could the president of a grocery store chain, with the alleged reams of industry knowledge that Todd claims to possess, think that this is how you would go about creating a new department? You launch a sneak attack against some invoices en route to accounting, and scribble whatever gibberish you like upon them?

This isn’t maybe an Emergency Broadcast System alarm going off, but it’s at least a little bell chiming beside him on the desk. He does begin to wonder if Todd was as major of a player in the St. Louis grocery store business as he purports. It’s just really hard to get to the bottom of anything with the guy, though, as you ask him one question, and he fills your head with an endlessly swirling half hour monologue, rapid fire, that you are in such a panic to extricate yourself from, that you only realize later he had not answered your original question, not even remotely.

Not to mention, a ton of other mayhem flying at you, from all corners. Just to drill down to the Todd-specific ones, though, he’s constantly returning to a few stock phrases, such as “Universal’s ripping us off, I know they are,” and “I’m getting us away from email, it’s costing me too much money,” or most bewildering of all, possibly his favorite, “a year from now, we’ll be completely free of Bellwether,” all said with conviction, and the assurance that he is working these angles, hardcore. Furthermore hinting that none of them could even hope to comprehend the masterful moves he is pulling off behind the scenes.

They can’t have a cleaning lady, and email’s days are apparently numbered, but then the next thing they know, the largest Keurig machine any of them have ever seen arrives at the office, a Todd purchase for their HQ kitchen. The approximate size of your average lunar module, this thing eats up a good third of the counter on the side next to their fridge and, like that refrigerator, surely did not come cheap, especially as it’s brand new.

Todd wants to pitch their regular old coffee maker, until Edgar pipes up and says he will gladly take it for his own office, because he would rather have this than constantly fool with the Keurig cups anyway. With a shrug, Edgar is given the coffee maker, then, which pretty much makes his day, although space is pretty tight now that they’ve moved the communal printer in here, right beside Barbara’s old desk. In fact the only available space for this coffee maker seems to be on top of said desk, the only item upon it. The first time Valerie sees this — which doesn’t take long, as she is constantly coming in to retrieve documents sent to the printer — she takes one look at the coffee pot and starts cracking up.

“Is this your new roommate?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he chuckles, adds, “she’s a little less annoying than the previous roommate. We get along great.”

Valerie strolls over to the maker and picks up its lid, begins moving this up and down, as if this device were speaking, her motions timed with every syllable. “Rar, rar, rar,” she says, and laughs. Then, “have you guys seen my sheer cape?”