“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter 106

Edgar emails both files to the duo as soon as they’re off the phone. In so doing, he admittedly feels kind of cool for coming up with that simple workaround which should help speed up the transition phase. It once again highlights how the true dynamic here, as far as this master Excel file is concerned, is really completely flipped around from how most people perceive it — even those who deal with these programs every day. It all started with Teri, who in turn impressed this notion upon Edgar. And he agrees: this Excel file is the database. What you are calling the database, be it Orchestra or Slingshot or RU Data, or even ChefAssist or ScaleMaster or any of the lesser programs, those are interfaces.

Because he makes all his changes in this file first. It is way more flexible and comprehensive than any of the other programs. If attempting to dispense with this, the first inevitable snag you run into is that no single report has quite the same information, in its entirety. Meaning you must run multiple reports, then combine them, and almost always have to rearrange or reformat certain fields on top of it.

This has become all the more true thanks to some recent enhancements he’s been able to make, after John Arthur from Slingshot coached him through them. John’s expertise extends far beyond merely the company that employs him, as he’s simply one of the most knowledgeable people Edgar has ever met when it comes to office applications and the retail industry as a whole. Even Dale, who by chance happened to attend some random conference where John was speaking, and sat in for one of his sessions, has returned raving about the guy.

“That dude is the man!” Dale enthuses, in Edgar’s office, the first day of his return, “I’ve already got a ton of ideas, just from listening to him talk.”

Edgar knows exactly what he means. That two day session Arthur spent here went by in rapid-fire fashion, as Edgar and many of the others took a flurry of notes. He’s only recently had a chance to implement one of the points he’d circled back then, this being how to connect an Excel file to a SQL database, to where the spreadsheet is actually “live.” Upon emailing John about this, the latter almost instantly replied with a series of steps on how to implement it. With this connection in place, all he has to do is hit this Refresh button, and it automatically updates the fields he wants. This has proven especially useful when it comes to inventory, which is one of the few exceptions that has always required downloading multiple reports. Now there’s no need for that, at least not for him. He has an inventory column for each of the three stores and simply hits the Refresh button in Excel, at which point it drops in the latest numbers for every item in the database.

Another issue, as evidenced by even the RU Data team and their inability to translate directly from Slingshot, is that these programs don’t necessarily speak to each other. It is maybe not as big a deal for something like this, which is intended as a one-time handoff, or at least a very brief one, in switching operating systems. But for those who are expected to continually communicate, in ongoing fashion, this can be a huge problem indeed. The greatest concern right now is that all the work they’ve put into getting these supplies and recipes right, in ChefAssist, might be for naught. It has already occurred to him to ask Todd, and, without even mentioning as much to Vicky, she’s in the Palmyra break room right now, having thought of the same potential roadblock. They both happen to be in this store today, and she paused after seeing him in here, making a slight detour from wherever she had been headed.

“Is ChefAssist even gonna work with this RU Data program?” she asks, “I mean, what do you think?”

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that myself. I have no idea. I’m gonna have to ask the RU Data guys when I see them. I mean, I actually asked Todd about this last week, but…”

“Oh really,” she chuckles, “and what did he say?”

This is one of those situations where office politics, and concerns about professionalism, get a little dicey. He hates slinging rumors around, creating hysteria, and would rather the person in question were just here, so they could all discuss this as a team. Talking behind someone’s back like this always feels a little childish, too, on a personal level. Yet at the same time, he’s not going around spreading gossip about Todd. This is someone coming to him with a specific, somewhat confidential question about what he really thinks. And in instances like these, it feels more correct and useful to simply tell them, instead of couching his answers in politically correct officespeak.

“I don’t know…,” he sighs, leaning back in the chair, “anytime I have a question for him, I feel like he gets off on some weird tangent that has nothing to do with what I asked.”

“Yeah…,” she croaks, nodding first but then shaking her head, as she exits the room.

In regards to what he just said, though, Edgar feels like there’s a definite purpose behind this phenomenon, and it isn’t what most of them initially thought. In the early going they were all inclined to chalk this up as, “oh, Todd’s mind works a million miles an hour! He’s bursting at the seams with all these ideas!” at one end of the spectrum, to “man, this dude has some series ADHD issues,” at the other. And there is probably some of this going on, sure. Yet Edgar has begun to suspect that the reason Todd talks so much, particularly prone to spinning off a massive, rambling rant when you ask him something, is that…he has no idea what you are talking about. And doesn’t want to admit it. Yet for you to sit there and make repeated attempts to drill down into this question will only eat up more time, increasing the frustration exponentially, which eventually leaves the questioner throwing up his hands and concluding, screw this, I’ll just figure it out myself.

Well, Todd either takes that tack, or its polar opposite, whereby he simply insinuates or even confidently declares that he has something much better in the works, and they therefore don’t even need to question these things, even though he has not provided any specifics. They’ve received this response quite a bit as well, especially concerning anything to do whatsoever with RU Data.

A great deal of this should become clearer, however, by this summer, with a conference to be held at RU Data’s headquarters on Long Island. Todd has already booked plane tickets and hotel rooms for himself, Edgar, and Jack, which is itself the kind of development that makes them think, okay, well it seems like he at least halfway gets what’s going on, anyway. You’ve got your database guy and your dedicated tech person attending with you, which makes total sense. In the past the likes of Vince, Harry, Corey, in some combination, would have probably been included, for who knows what reason. Maybe Destiny and her husband, too. The database and tech guys might have even been left at home, knowing this place.

Yet it’s still unclear whether all these moves represent the proverbial shuffling of deck chairs on a sinking ship, or if there’s a substantial plan in place which will help right it. The latest addition finds yet another old crony joining them, in the form of Don Evans’ wife, Diane, who is hired as a cashier at Arcadia. As far as subtractions, though, right around this time it’s announced that accounting overlord Reece Leibovitz has been relieved of her duties.

“So Reece is gone, huh?” Craig’s asking Edgar one day, during a rare pitstop at HQ, drifting through his office to say hello. He shakes his head and chuckles in disbelief, asks, “what’s up with that?”

“I have no idea,” Edgar tells him. All he’s received on this topic is the same terse email as everyone, and knows nothing else.

“There was a whole lot goin’ on there that shouldn’t have been!” Todd shouts, from his own office halfway across the building. The fact that he feels the need to interject in this manner is odd, mostly unprecedented, although nothing at this point really surprises them all that much. “And that’s all I’m gonna say about that,” he concludes.

Edgar finds the notion that Reece was doing something inappropriate to be extreeeeeeeeeemely unlikely, but whatever. Though Todd is hinting at something darker, maybe it’s just a case that her performance wasn’t up to snuff. No immediate replacement is announced, though Wanda Robinson is given Wholesale Shopper Market to handle on her lonesome, for the known future. Of course, Todd keeps making these cryptic comments about how, “a year from now, we’ll be totally on our own,” which nobody really questions. Not because they believe it, rather that they don’t even want to hear what kind of kooky plot he thinks he has in the works.