“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter 41

They begin moving into the Walnut location on the first, which gives them a month to get this operation up and running. Under normal circumstances, this would be nowhere near enough time, but unlike the last store opening — Southside, some seven years ago — occupying a corner space of this indoor market, the infrastructure’s in place, the permits needed minimal. Also, though a highly controversial move that Duane has hatched out on his own, they’re forgoing any sort of computerized operation here. He’s weighed the pros and cons and determined that it’s not worth the effort and money to install Orchestra here, or anything else of a similar nature. Therefore they will be hand stickering all of the product, and ringing people up on an old-school analog register.

As far as the help is concerned, Johnny is the only existing employee to transfer. Otherwise, Duane’s wife, Karen, has one other newly hired full timer at her disposal, and a couple of young part timers. Moving forward, Duane has informed Edgar and the merchandisers that he wants them in that store one day a week, after it’s open. Until then, for this next frantic month, it’s all hands on deck.

The floor is carpeted here, with the shop consisting of four short aisles, a counter with the register in front. One fairly sizable backstock room off to the side, and then two small steps in back, leading through an Old West saloon type door to the office. They have one computer, connected to the internet via broadband, but there is no wi-fi signal inside this building. And while the backroom itself is nearly equal in square footage to the sales floor, which is a bit odd — although surely the walls and therefore sizes of the shops themselves change often, whereas this backstock area was probably originally intended for the entire building — they have no access to any sort of loading dock.

This means that any product has to be wheeled in through the front door. It also leads to some hilarious situations before they even get this far, merely bringing in the equipment. Like the day Johnny and Corey are attempting to unload an upright freezer door from the company box truck. They have to drive around the block just to find a spot, then eventually secure one, though it’s across the street. After bringing the tall freezer door down to the asphalt, they wait for a break in the traffic, then begin shimmying this puppy across the road — right up until the moment that they manage to get it stuck in a pothole.

Many of the days here assume a surreal luster, as one is never quite certain who will be here or what kind of tasks are involved. One afternoon a veritable slew of employees are crammed into every square inch of this operation, during which Destiny, Dale, Valerie and Edgar are in the backroom unpacking box after box, sorting things, stamping them with prices. Until they happen to venture out and discover that the store itself is a ghost town, as the remaining Healthy Shopper Market crew has all gone off to lunch without them. But, having apparently forgotten they were here, nobody said a word. The four of them look at one another and shrug, set down their gear, and stroll around the corner to that trendy little craft brewery for lunch themselves, though it’s a mystery where the remainder have gone.

Another occasion finds Edgar alone at the store for a couple of hours, with just one sales rep from Harmony Hill. The two of them unload and dispense with an entire pallet of grocery product while everyone else is again away for a very long lunch. It isn’t that he’s opposed to screwing off, necessarily, only that there is a ton to do, and he’s also somewhat of a geek for stuff like this — although it’s not the sort of thing one can really mention to one’s superiors, as you can only come off as an ass-kisser, or full of shit, or even if they believe you, would only lead to them considering you some kind of freak and respecting you less. But mostly it’s that he also has a tremendously difficult time returning back to any sort of productivity following lunch, and as a result almost never takes one.

The Harmony Hill rep, David, is quite the comedian anyway, and can’t stop cracking up about this amusing little Walnut outpost. And while, sure, nobody expects to shatter any sales records here, it’s a nice trial run if they have designs on further expansion. Many of them have never opened a store, and almost none have for this particular company. Even those who have, like Destiny for example, were doing so under an old regime with completely different practices in place.

Edgar had in fact opened a brand new Kroger store, but that was fifteen years ago and he was working in the meat department then. So this is a terrific new challenge for him, as well, to see what does and doesn’t work. Who knows where this might lead, too — if they get to where they’re adding a new store every year, as Duane has suggested, then things might get extremely interesting with this company.

“Duane told me that hiring you is one of the smartest things he ever did,” Karen confesses to Edgar, unprovoked, during an early conversation in the Walnut store, “he’s probably never going to say that to you, but I thought you should know.”

And Edgar does not take these compliments lightly. He thinks that most of us basically know, deep down, what kind of job we’re doing, wherever it is that we go, and with this one, he has felt from the beginning that he is crushing it. There are jobs he did extremely well, others average, maybe a couple his heart was never really in. His performance here has exceeded them all, for the probably obvious reason that this is his favorite thus far. But the crazy part is, even if you start off on a strong note, and believe that you are doing a great job, it’s amazing to discover all the different ways you can improve what you’re doing, which are often stumbled upon by accident months or even years down the road. It’s a process that never ends, really, so long as you keep an open mind for it.

The jury’s likely to remain out for some time concerning this non-computerized setup. For one thing, they won’t be able to run any movement reports here. But his job as it pertains to Walnut shouldn’t change a whole lot, in fact simplifies it to some extent. When it comes to price changes, he can still connect into their lone computer, via VNC, and crank out tags the same as everywhere else. But there’s no actual file being deployed here for the cash registers. The price tags go up on the shelves the same as everywhere else, so the customers can readily see them, and someone working here will hit the products themselves with the sticker gun — in theory — to update the price there, so the cashier has the correct one. Considering he’s in a habit of starting out at Southside on Mondays, and finishing up at Palmyra, he will almost never be the one stuck re-stickering the products.

Regarding a major, vendor-specific updates, they can handle these a little differently as well, if it seems that this will be easier. That’s a judgment call to be made on a case by case basis. It’s almost assuredly counterproductive to print out thousands of tags for a Universal Foods update, for example, like they’re doing everywhere else. Instead they can perform this operation in reverse, if so desired — determine what items are here, for the vendor or product line in question, and just print a new tag for those.

Technically, they also might not even need to add new items here, if this is the only store carrying it. But for clarity’s sake he thinks he will add these to Orchestra anyway, if at all possible, though it remains to be seen how on-board some of the new hires will be with that particular process — especially if word gets out, or for that matter they reason their way through it, and see that it’s not 100% necessary.

There are other questions that come into play here, too, unique thus far to this location. Many of these are related to logistics and/or time-management, like for example how an hourly employee, such as Edgar, who is expected here one day a week, is supposed to handle his email inbox in a place with no wireless internet connection. He has one of those jobs where avoiding Outlook for even one day is pretty much out of the question. Yet he’s already discovered that, say, to sit in the office and attempt using their lone computer for such typically generates a bunch of grumbling and interruptions, complaints that they need to use this terminal. Which is probably legitimate for the most part, sure.

Is there some sort of broadband cord splitter, or some similar gadget? Probably so, although thus far he’s just mentioned these concerns to IT and waits to see if anything will happen on this front. Contrary to popular belief, being proficient with Excel or whatever does not make one a computer equipment wizard, although he could surely figure that predicament out if he really had to. Also, there’s definitely the option of buying a little wireless gadget to stick into his laptop, to pick up a signal from this indoor market’s modem, although if he’s not mistaken you would need to be sitting relatively close to the modem and in this cavernous indoor space, quite naturally they are a great distance removed from where the tech equipment is stored.

Rather than bog down into this quagmire, he opts for a much simpler solution: sitting in the coffee shop across the street. Of course he already knows once certain figures catch wind of this, there are bound to be complaints about that as well, someone who is on the time clock but not physically present with the officially ordained walls of the operation. So he keeps this little routine on the down low. But the procedure thus far has been to arrive in the coffee shop early in the morning; VNC over to the Walnut desktop to clock in; sit here and handle anything urgent before drifting across the street to begin, as far as anyone else knows, his workday; then meander back over here with maybe an hour left in his day, to input the day’s new item file, and check his email once again for anything that needs tackled right then. Before clocking out remotely as well.

So this is working out really well. It’s proven a lot easier to concentrate, actually, when he’s removed from the store’s internal chaos. Another added bonus, however slight, is that he’s able to leave fliers up front here, concerning store events, not only for this Walnut location, but the other ones, too.