“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter 19

The sixth and seventh columns of the new items spreadsheet are dedicated to cost and retail, respectively. Cost obviously doesn’t appear on their shelf tags, and there’s nothing they are doing within the Orchestra system that involves these numbers — the monthly margins are calculated at the invoice level, i.e. the sums coded to each department based on how AP is entering them. They are giving their shipments the ol’ eyeball test on the back dock, but there is no check-in process otherwise, no logging of item by item inventory into their system.

The cost on this spreadsheet therefore is somewhat ceremonial, outside of the job Edgar’s doing, calculating retails based on each department’s markup. But it had been in place when Teri trained him, and they changed nothing when he took over this role, even if nobody else needs to know this particular information. And as anyone who has trifled with these Excel spreadsheets endlessly knows, it made the most sense to leave that field right beside the retail one, just for simplicity’s sake, when applying and dragging down formulas.

It also pertains to a second function of his, comparing costs between vendors. The Universal Foods invoice is somewhat baffling to decipher on this front — they don’t display the blanket 16% discount line by line on there, unless there happens to be some other, higher discount in place, in which case it does show the discounted cost — but there’s no reason they need to trouble themselves with this, anyway. He compares cost, month by month, shipment by shipment, and those ordering only need to pay attention to the vendor listed on the shelf tag.

Nobody really questions him on this front, anyway, outside of maybe Harry Redcrow. Everyone else either assumes that he knows what he’s doing, or else will admit they’re not the most technically proficient when it comes to this topic. However, these two diverging stances alter drastically, somehow, when talking about the retail field, in which case objections are flying in from every angle.

Despite his best efforts, the occasional retail ending in $.09 will occasionally squeak beneath the cracks, particularly when it comes to those pesky $1.09s, often baby or pet food, whereby the cost continually creeps up by a penny, maybe from 93 cents to 94 cents to 95 cents over time, yet the margin is tremendously low to begin with, and they’re forced to drop the retail still further, to a $0.99, which will happen all the way up until just about the break even point. The question then becomes, at what point do they want to bite the bullet and jack these up to $1.19, instead, or maybe even just leave them at the eyesore $.09 price a judgment call he’s usually kicking over to Harry or up to Duane. But these are no big deal, and easily fixed once somebody points them out to him, that he somehow overlooked rounding this one down.

Other concerns are much more difficult to explain, the reasons why he’s not doing anything “wrong,” even if having trouble driving this point home to them. One of these concerns the concept of line pricing. About half of the employees seem to grasp what he’s saying when he explains, the other half either befuddled or acting as though he’s just making things up.

One crucial application of line pricing concerns produce, in that there are seemingly endless varieties of something like an apple, yet they wish to have these all set at the same retail — or two, in an operation like this, one organic, one non-organic. This policy has been in place since well before he got here, which Teri was changing by updating every PLU on an Excel sheet, and uploading that. It just so happens, as Edgar discovers during a relatively slow day where he was wondering about this topic, that the Orchestra system has a function for tying all of these together. You set one as the primary, connect all the others underneath it, and you only have to change the price on one. This is especially useful in that produce generally has no use for endless shelf tags of more or less the exact same thing — these items are stacked on rolling carts, and they typically create their own signs for them. Also that Arnie dictates the pricing to Edgar, and this doesn’t always happen on a Monday, the only department that deviates from this procedure.

For the most part, this is a tremendous improvement over updating every single apple PLU in existence. The only exception is when they happen to get in a PLU they’ve never carried before, though this is rare, considering that the produce ones are universal numbers every grocery store uses. In this case he might field the expected cashier gripe that this item “used to” ring up and they don’t understand why it doesn’t now. But he can add that simply enough, another secondary number under the primary, in which case he doesn’t even need to know the variety, if they don’t have it, because it doesn’t matter: call it Apple and move on.

Line pricing on all the other departments is far trickier. The computer system isn’t magically going to do this on its own, even the major vendors often don’t carry every single flavor of a particular line, new ones are added all the time, while old ones are discontinued. Each scenario brings with it a peculiar set of circumstances.

“I thought you said we could automatically line price things in the system,” is the common complaint, or variation thereof, from those who don’t quite understand, whenever some seeming discrepancy crops up.

“Well yeah, but first we have to identify what these things are,” is typically his reply.

It isn’t always clear what every item in a line is, for example, every 3oz variety of canned cat food they have from Tasty Morsels, not even within a single vendor such as Universal Foods. The descriptions are vague, and sometimes a size is just listed as “each” or some other such nonsense. And this is only compounded when they’re forced to order half the product line there, half from Harmony Hill or elsewhere. Granted, over time, these situations are getting clearer and clearer, but there is still much work to be done. They just have to work on ironing these lines out over time, after which they’re pretty much on autopilot.

At least, this is true up until a new flavor is introduced. If for some reason the new item comes in at a lower cost than the old ones, then he doesn’t even worry about it, he just adds the thing at the same retail. If it turns out the entire line is going down, then they can see about lowering the retail maybe on the next major price update. But if the new item comes in at a higher cost, this sets off a tiny bit of detective work, in which case someone is complaining about each of the three responses he has to this.

Well, he could just ignore it. That is one of the three possibilities and nobody would know the difference. But then he wouldn’t be doing his job, and anyway that’s just delaying the inevitable. If you made a habit of this, someone would notice, and complain. So that’s not realistic. Regarding the subset of complainers though, which he would characterize as maybe half the employees, half of those fall into one camp, half the other, when it comes to how he chooses to handle this:

Option A: print out a shelf tag for the new item with the new price. Because they are certainly not timing their new items to arrive on Mondays — not that this is even desirable, or possible — and definitely not only sending him the new item sheets on Mondays only. But then, you’ve got those who find it “stupid” (ridiculous, weird, a mistake, uh…) that this one item has a different price than all the rest. Even as he explains he will bring those into line with the next price update. Can he not do it right this second? No, because Corey Brown made it very clear that the “random” price updates are to crank out on Mondays alone, because otherwise it was just confusing people.

Option B: print out a shelf tag for the new item with the current line price, then change the entire line on the Monday to come. You still however have those who find it “stupid” (ridiculous, weird, a mistake) to hang a tag at one price now, then change it 3–6 days later. In truth, he doesn’t like this option, either, and will only do so if somebody like Harry Redcrow or something makes a specific request for this strange scenario, which has been known to happen.

As far as discontinued items are concerned, there’s no good answer for this. Or for that matter, items people have stopped carrying completely. The Orchestra software doesn’t track perpetual inventory, and even if it did, they’re not logging shipments by the piece anywhere, when checking this stuff in. Which means they are printing reams of shelf tags for items nobody is currently carrying. The best Edgar can do for now is omit items that haven’t sold in the past x number of months, but even so, items are inevitably going to be skipped when it’s time to print tags, especially at Liberty Avenue. The best they can do is mark this stuff down and blow it out, yet that’s a constant battle which will never go away, not with the current software.

He thinks he does a pretty good of fielding their complaints, really. Even though to stay calm and reasonably explain this same stuff over and over again has some complaining one is humorless, or what have you, which leads to making a point of interjecting lame jokes into emails, which still others do not like. And yet he can take this stuff in stride, too, for almost all of it is better than dealing with Zaire Patterson.

Palmyra’s vitamin/health & beauty manager is particularly feisty and frequent with the complaints, like for example emailing him to gripe that he needs to let her staff know when he is grabbing their folder of invoices to make copies, because they are always looking for it and this wastes a great deal of their time. Even as the copier machine is within eyesight of the vitamin desk and, well, if they are confused as to why the entire folder isn’t in its usual spot, then this must imply he’s not the only one grabbing it and not telling everyone.

But whatever. Even these email squabbles are better than conversing with her, which is blessedly rare. Which is why a lead weight of dread settles into his stomach when Dale pops into his office one afternoon, right around this time, and says Zaire is on the phone, she wants to talk to both of them. The issue is of course yet again this bonkers dry versus liquid weight crap.

They stroll over to the merchandiser’s office, and put Dale’s desk phone on speaker. Zaire’s complaint is two fold this time around. Her first beef is that, she insists, a customer is complaining that he is using a dry weight cost to calculate the retail price, on their pump bottles of soap.

He thinks this is completely preposterous, but doesn’t even bother addressing it, because that part of the debate really doesn’t matter. They can skip right on to the second part of it. As they’ve already covered this ground on more than one occasion, neither side has really budged much, and therefore his response is essentially the same: yes, what you’re saying is technically true, but it doesn’t matter. You have one scale in your department that everyone is setting bulk items on to weigh — be it medicinal herbs, or Dr. Bonzo’s soap. The cashiers have the same when these items generate a price at the register. We are treating a dry measurement the same as a liquid one in both instances.

A gallon of this soap would weigh somewhat differently than a gallon of water, sure. And if the margins in this department were razor thin, you could make a case for being more precise. For going through and weighing every bulk item and seeing exactly what a gallon translated to, weight-wise, for each of them, and Edgar storing that formula in a column on his master spreadsheet, and dividing the cost by that every month to generate a retail. Of course, even then, there would likely be some differences between products in the same line, which he would be averaging to generate a line price anyway. Or knowing this place, going with the highest one, regardless, and applying that to all of them. But the margins in this department are plenty healthy, so this precision seems more than a little wacky. And have we verified that the climate maintained a consistent temperature while conducting this experiment? Because that could also throw off our calculations. Buying it bulk is slightly cheaper than even the largest package’s unit rate, and this is how it should be. Not to mention, this entire product line is on sale pretty much every month anyway.

Zaire is not happy with this answer, however. She insists that this random customer came in and basically said, pulling on his beard, with a sage, haughty chuckle, “ooh hoo hoo, I know exactly what your pricing coordinator did here! He took the gallon cost in the supplier’s price list and divided it by 128 to determine your ounce price, the fool!” And that she merely agreed to pass along this information when he said it.

To which, Edgar feels like saying…bullshit. No. She won’t admit as much, but he thinks the exchange went a little more like this: the customer was complaining about the retail, and she agreed with him. Then launched into her own diatribe, her theories about why Edgar is way out to lunch with this pricing. The two of them then shared a very touching and meaningful conversation about how exceptionally wise they were, which was all the confirmation she needed to make this call.

And yet, even Edgar’s theory about this conversation is beside the point, too. The bottom line is, if you think the price is too high, then tell Dale the price is too high, and have a discussion about that instead. Let’s just skirt these silly, endless discussions about the reasons why. One other angle that he mentions to Zaire is that as far as he knows, Universal Foods itself, their supplier, is using 128 ounces to come up with their cost. That’s what it says in their price list and he has seen no reason to think otherwise.

After they blessedly, mercifully get off the phone with her, Dale says, almost cringing as he does so, “sorry, I didn’t know what she was talking about. That’s why I said, hold on, let me go get Edgar.”

“It’s cool. It’s like I keep telling her, though, yes what you are saying is true. It sure is. But what is your point?”

“I don’t think the price is too high on that. I mean, we sell a ton of it. That’s always one of our top movers.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

And yet, this topic isn’t quite nailed shut, not just yet. During his next trip to Palmyra, Edgar happens to be up in the office chatting with Corey, who changes tack at one point to interject, “oh, uh, listen — do not speak to Zaire in person any more.”

“What? Is this about that Bonzo soap situation? That was actually on speaker phone, with me and Dale.”

“Whatever the case. Just…don’t talk to her. Email her instead, and make sure you copy me.”

This ruling doesn’t exactly bring a tear to Edgar’s eye. He would rather email anyway, because then there’s at least a document of what was said, and when. Which is presumably the whole point of Corey’s edict, anyway. Although Edgar does realize, later, replaying this conversation in his head, and chuckling over it, she actually placed the phone call. What is he supposed to do in these situations? Instantly hang up when he discovers it’s her on the other end of the line?

Corey certainly has his hands full, babysitting thirty or so grown adults, and a smattering of teenagers. Though many have remarked, up to and including Duane Hatley, I don’t know how you sit there and look at numbers all day, Edgar wouldn’t trade places with any of them. Well, Duane, maybe, but certainly not the store managers.

It’s like an endless game of whack-a-mole, staffing these departments. And then even if they are fully staffed, tweaking still, if the numbers aren’t coming back as expected. Not to mention finding one’s hands tied should certain figures prove capable, yet obnoxious.

For instance, they’ve found a replacement for Tara in produce, a good old boy named Johnny, a farmer type who is given to wearing straw hats atop his thick beard and dusty jeans and flannel shirts. He was just hired off the streets but seems to be a hard worker with a great attitude, loves dealing with the customers. And they manage to hire a guy with some meat cutting experience, Jimmy Ray Calhoun, who is apparently dating Duane’s daughter and renting a room from him.

Yet on the flipside, Thad is the next to put in his notice, deciding that he would rather work at this kiosk in the middle of Southside Mall. His second in command, Trudy, is swiftly whisked into the grocery manager role. Meanwhile, over in the deli, though Natasha was doing just fine as a worker bee, it’s turning out she doesn’t possess quite the experience needed for running a department. Therefore the decision has been made that she will be stepped down into a backup position. Therefore this can only mean one thing, which is that Edgar’s mom is now the deli manager.

She has been with the company for exactly three weeks. And while this is theoretically some great news — after all, they throw a little pizza party at her house, with a few select cronies invited — and it comes with a pay raise, she can’t help but shake her head and laugh at this development.

“This is the wackiest place I have ever worked!” she marvels, to him, “what did you get me into, here?”