“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter 30

The eighth column in the new items spreadsheet is dedicated to a simple flag, to mark whether the product in question is packaged or random weight. The number 1 is placed in this column if so, to trip a function in the system that will weigh this item at the cash register, but is otherwise left blank.

For as much time as he spends arguing with alcohol zealots, heightened now by hiring Jake Gifford for what you may as well call an Executive Beer Hipster position, the random weight items — mostly in the bulk department — are easily the most confusing and labor intensive category this side of the deli. And yet they do not have a merchandiser assigned to this department, which is all the more surprising considering that Bellwether Snacks owns them, and their wares fall entirely under this bulk banner.

Since Tracy has given Edgar access to the ingredients lists on the shared drive, this makes categorizing Bellwether’s snack mixes simple enough, to keep the tax hounds at bay. But these items are almost always unique to the company anyway, proprietary, and you wouldn’t expect to find them anywhere else. Otherwise, what makes the bulk section particularly tricky is that getting an apples to apples comparison on many items is difficult if not impossible, because these don’t arrive with a Universal Product Code. You can’t match a 12 digit number for similar bulks items, in a pair of vendor catalogs, the way you would with a jar of tomato sauce.

Whether or not an item is labeled as organic or not helps, certainly. Yet there are still endless variations on something as seemingly simple as black pepper, and again the vendor catalogs aren’t necessarily all that helpful, meaning an on site examination of the product itself is in order, at all three locations, and even then it’s not always clear how a person might get to the bottom of this predicament. There’s always the ambiguous if useful “quality” card to play, like when Russian Robert insists that the expensive ground cinnamon from a specialty company out in California is better than that carried by Universal Foods — and sure, it probably is — which he has to stock because the customers at his store demand it. Yet the other two stors aren’t carrying it at all. You can’t force them to order it from there, so they continue getting it from Universal, as the shelf tag indicates; however, for him to continue ordering the gourmet stuff sends his margin into the gutter. So then you end up creating separate PLU numbers for both, and the madness continues.

Edgar receives a pointed lesson in this when he realizes there are seven different numbers for bulk paprika in their system, and thinks some of these must be unnecessary, duplicates of some sort, and makes a note to investigate this the next time he’s in each of these stores. All seven have recent sales history, but this doesn’t mean the numbers are needed, there may be doubles of the exact same thing. He has streamlined some numbers in this fashion and might be able to do so here.

However, as far as he can determine, these are seven distinct items — three at Southside, two each in Palmyra and Liberty — and furthermore, speaking in person with each of the bulk managers, all insist that the customers love these exact varieties they have and therefore cannot get rid of them. No, they would not be interested in narrowing it down to the top three or four, company wide, because these stores are all unique, in completely different demographics and therefore it doesn’t matter what Liberty Avenue is doing, as far as Palmyra is concerned.

There are other shenanigans afoot, too, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Russian Robert is up to the shadiest dealings here. Edgar realized a long time ago, in viewing sales history versus invoices, that Robert’s obviously and consistently ordering non-organic items, but then dumping them into his organic bins. Again this is a concern that doesn’t really apply to packaged items. But he’s doing this to boost his profits, and unless you had both reports in hand, it would be an impossible thing to prove: Dude, you’ve ordered 18 cases of non-organic raisins in the past three months, and zero organic ones. Where are your organic raisin sales coming from?

Even in possessing this knowledge, it’s unclear what Edgar should do about it. Is he in a position where it’s upon him to go around ratting out every employee, for every offense uncovered? He doesn’t feel comfortable with that, has no interest in that, and doesn’t feel it’s his place, anyway. Eventually he works his head around a strategy of mentioning it in vague fashion, the first opportunity he has at a meeting, and gauging how the bosses respond. A few weeks later, one such chance arrives during a conference table think tank session, a discussion about what kind of challenges they have.

“I think sometimes the bulk managers are ordering non-organic stuff and dumping it into the organic bins,” he mentions in passing.

“Really?” Duane says, as he and Corey and Harry, at the head of the table, glance down at Edgar. He shakes his head and adds, “it wouldn’t surprise me,” before moving on. So much for that, in other words.

Yet on other occasions, an opposing scenario of sorts is happening, where the bulk manager effectively says screw profits, I’d rather take astronomical sales. Once more this phenomenon is possibly most glaring at Liberty Avenue, when everyone has a different theory as to why their poppy seed sales have suddenly gone through the roof.

“It’s from all the pot fiends, they put it in their dope and smoke it! I’m serious!” Arnie suggests.

As it turns out, this isn’t quite accurate, although he’s sort of in the ballpark. And it doesn’t take a homicide detective to figure this out, for Edgar simply asks, the next time he’s over at Liberty. This is apparently something Sam takes it upon himself to order, for whatever reason, instead of Russian Robert, and the two of them are grinning mightily when Edgar brings up this topic.

Some poppy tea craze is the latest druggie phenomenon, and they basically can’t order enough of this product. Both recount tales about this one girl who shops here, and say she was drop dead beautiful a year ago, but is now unbelievably skinny and pale, has the shakes, in general just looks like death when she swings through for more poppy seeds. Are all but doubled over, cracking up as they relate this to him.

This leads to a follow-up interview, after Edgar examines some more reports. He has no idea what the difference is, other than price, although again there’s a compelling paper trail to prove that Sam is ordering these expensive blue poppy seeds, every time, but they are using the cheap black poppy seed PLU to sell it, for almost no profit whatsoever. Even though it’s clearly marked that they are supposed to order these black poppy seeds from Bellwether. Although in this instance, he mentions his findings to Sam, in person. That he should be ordering the black poppy seeds from Bellwether and if not, there’s a different, higher retail PLU for the blue ones.

“Really?” Sam replies, which is basically the stock, expected response Edgar receives to half of what he says. Yet with a lopsided smirk that plainly indicates he is already aware of all this, and doesn’t care.