“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot”- Chapter 48

Nobody except the two parties involved in that closed door discussion really knows what happened, of course. From the beginning everyone told Edgar that those two had significant history together, so this likely plays a part. Also, Arnie was among the few whose hiring date preceded even Duane’s, and he’s heard rumors that, as a result of longevity, Mr. Greenberg was somehow pulling down more coin that even their president is.

Which might be bullshit, who can say. But this is the first firing since probably Dolly’s that really bothers Edgar, and on top of that, as far as he could tell Arnie was doing a tremendous job. The complete range of facts will likely never be revealed to him, or anybody else, though, so there’s not much sense in obsessing over it. He does attempt sending his condolences via email immediately upon hearing this, only to discover that they’d already shut Arnie’s personalized address down. He settles for sending the former merchandiser a connection request on LinkedIn, and messaging him there. Apart from inquiring as to the current “DEFCON status,” Arnie insists he is doing fine, with plenty of job prospects in the pipeline, and that he’s in some ways tremendously relieved.

What this means moving forward for the company is that Vince Brancatto has been anointed the new assistant manager/produce merchandiser. No mention is made of bulk, but Edgar’s guessing it probably doesn’t matter much. He has a good idea already of how this is going to go.

And it does — crickets. This is the sound replacing what should be a response from Vince, which never arrives, ever, as Edgar emails him the expected weekly cost updates. But he continues sending the files anyway, if only to dutifully document that he continues doing his job, amusing himself by keeping a running streak tally of how many consecutive weeks Vince has failed to respond to any of his emails.

Which makes Arnie’s dismissal all the more baffling. Granted, it’s entirely possible there are aspects that neither he nor anyone else below Duane know about. And sure, sometimes a person is doing such an actively bad job that it’s better, by default, to bring someone in who will do absolutely nothing instead. But based on what he can see, neither of these scenarios applied. They took one person who worked very hard to bring back a margin that was maybe a little bit under what Rob Drake had said it should be, replaced him with…an old guy who is very good at making serious faces while doing little observable work.

One interesting aspect of turnover, though, is that you can often use these opportunities to implement your own desired changes. Vince will give him an audible every so often to change retails, which must surely exhaust the poor fellow, as he kicks back on the bench and catches his breath for umpteen days afterwards. Otherwise, Edgar is free now to just go ahead and send the produce employees his own lists of the preferred suppliers, as these change, and crank out his own price updates for anything requiring a shelf tag in produce, which is mostly the packaged stuff, since it’s clear Vince is not going to do so.

But they are making improvements elsewhere. The latest are some great looking signs to hang above every aisle, with large, full color photographs of various employees up top, and the aisle number, row categories below. Rob Drake is so excited about these that he’s on site at Southside personally to help hang them. As a small team sorts the signs out in the conference room, Edgar is privy to their overheard conversation for however long this takes. As is usually the case, his focus upon this is random, drifting in and out at unpredictable intervals depending on how into his own work he is at that moment. This gives the overheard discussion a decidedly surreal aura — although it certainly helps that the talk itself is surreal, when viewed in pretty much any light.

“So, I guess they’re outlawing helium balloons…,” he hears Valerie say, though unsure what prompted this comment.

“Yeah! I heard about that! But what are they using instead?” Rob replies.

“What was in the Hindenburg? I think that’s what they’re using now,” says Duane.

“I think it’s natural gas,” Barbara suggests.

“What?” Rob cackles, “natural gas? Nooooo. It’s definitely not natural gas.”

Though roughly half of the employees, if polled, would give Rob a thumbs down, Edgar thinks he’s actually a pretty cool boss. Most naysayers would probably give any boss a thumbs down. As far as specific complaints, Dale has remarked on more than one occasion, “he clearly believes that we’re all bunch of idiots down here,” or variations thereof, but Edgar wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. Although perhaps Barbara’s latest comment has tipped the scales slightly in that direction. Edgar has definitely worked for far stuffier management figures, though, even in operations smaller than this. Sure, Rob has a healthy ego, and is convinced that he is a big deal. But it would be difficult for anyone in a similar position to think otherwise. And he’s not afraid of pitching in if the situation calls for it, like today; his daily uniform remains business casual with even the occasional pair of jeans; and, in a lone concession to his somewhat bohemian past — he was a saxophone playing college student when Janis Locke first made this acquaintance — Rob has kept his greyish white locks uncharacteristically shaggy for a man in his position.

He has a decent sense of humor, and might even laugh if learning about one final wrinkle to this sign hanging odyssey. Though some of these were matched up with figures in their respective corresponding departments, others were chosen at random, such as a shot of Rob Drake and Mr. Locke, standing side by side at a Bellwether snack production line, wearing hair nets and smiling at the camera. It’s late in the day and Rob has since left the premises, though the sign’s creator is so impressed with his handiwork that he’s remained on site, supervising their hanging. The team involved with doing so is on a ladder, and someone remarks that they better take care not to damage or drop this, considering that these are the owners.

From the ground, the sign company’s guru explodes with laughter and admits, “I thought they were special, like the greeters at Walmart or something!”

Well, it’s only par for the course in this topsy-turvy realm. This guy might think the head honchos are minimum wage part timers, but at the same time, Rob seems to believe Edgar has clout extending well beyond some data coordinator role. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing! It’s possible that Rob is just confused about what Edgar does…or, which is a salivating prospect to consider, perhaps he is being groomed for something more.

Mere days before this sign hanging adventure, Rob had emailed him and Duane alone. Rob was in Southside one other recent occasion, and had spotted these fancy ink pens Harry brought in awhile back, situated near every register. These look like something a 1920s banker might use, and range from fifteen to ninety dollars, with most skewing to the higher end of that spectrum. Fired up about these ridiculous novelty items — or whatever one might term them — he sends this message to Duane and Edgar, suggesting, maybe we should get out of the $90 ink pen business! And telling them to send these back.

Well, Duane certainly has the power to make this call. Just as certainly as Edgar does not. A boss grooming you for more responsibility is almost definitely a positive…a boss thinking you already possess this responsibility and expecting you to act on it, however, probably not so much. Edgar isn’t quite sure how to respond, anyway, and does nothing, although Duane does submit a vague response saying that he will look into it.

As of this afternoon, however, these pens are still here. At one point Edgar drifts out of his office, and passing through, Rob shoots a pointed glance over at him, says, “hey, I think we need to get out of the $90 ink pen business!”

A seemingly minor interaction such as this often requires such deft handling that it instead proves temporarily paralyzing. For this he is thankful that Rob at least fired off that flare gun of an email, allowing him to organize some thoughts in advance on this topic. There are five or six different angles to express here, without tripping over one’s words. The first of which is that to blurt out the complaint, however obvious, that he had nothing to do with this, is most likely a bad idea. So he can maybe tuck it into the conversation by rolling right past it.

“Yeah, I saw Harry brought those in awhile back. I guess they are a little high priced.”

“A little high priced?” Rob retorts, then shifts gears to add, “well, you guys need to figure out what to do with them. I would suggest maybe just sending them back.”

In reality, from the outset Edgar also thought these ink pens were beyond stupid. Nobody is going to buy them, and they have nothing to do with what their little health conscious grocery store is all about, unless you consider that they were purchased from some local guy. But is that dude even making them? Doubtful. They also have no barcodes, instead feature these old school price tags, little rounded rectangles hanging on white string from the pens with a hand-written price. Which arrived in that state, obviously, so it’s not even as though Edgar came up with some ridiculous, astronomical retail.

He’s not even sure how you could begin to explain this stuff on the fly, however relevant, without descending farther and farther down the rabbit hole into even tinier points. Edgar could mention that as a result of this UPC omission, they went back and forth on how to even handle these in the system. One option was to come up with twenty-some different PLU numbers, and add these to an already substantial list that the cashiers are supposed to reference at the register. They could print out a ton of shelf tag stickers, trim away everything but the barcode, and have someone affix these to each respective pen. This is something they’ve done in the vitamins/health & beauty department, but Edgar isn’t about to keep up with that madness himself, and Harry doesn’t want to, either.

In the end, they decide to come up with one all-purpose number for the ink pen line, which is price required, set to a minimum of $15.

They’re probably getting royally screwed here, too, because there’s nothing to stop a cashier from selling a top of the line ink pen model for fifteen bucks. But Edgar’s of a mind that this really isn’t his problem — Harry brought these in, and made the final call on these options, he signed off on this one. If you make things too confusing, then the cashier is just going to hit the generic housewares button, or, even worse and twice and likely, the grocery one. This doesn’t change the whole cashiers-inventing-a-price conundrum, and rings this item at the incorrect lower tax rate. But this is precisely what would happen if you created separate PLU for every item, if it isn’t already, blowing their mind with the hassle of too many options, with many already confused or forgetting about the difference between grocery (consumable) and housewares (not). And that scenario also technically wouldn’t keep them from mixing up prices, either, by punching in the wrong PLU.

Also, Rob has been known to previously complain on a couple occasions, for whatever reason, that he thinks all those lists of item numbers posted everywhere around the registers are tacky, and doesn’t want the cashiers looking at these all the time. But the store managers are certainly not enforcing this aesthetic, and even when Edgar is printing these off in packets and stapling them together, nothing stops the cashiers from taking the pages apart and taping them in sight. One final if admittedly minor consideration is that they have a handful of observers, here, and he doesn’t wish to speak his mind in front of them about how dumb he also believes this product line to be, because it would probably get back to Harry that Edgar was throwing him under the bus behind his back.

“What I’m really worried about is theft,” Rob tells him. Which is an incredibly bizarre thing to take away from this discussion, in Edgar’s opinion. “What’s to stop someone from just pocketing a ninety dollar ink pen? I think we should put the price right on them.”

He really doesn’t see how putting a price sticker right on these pens is going to reduce theft. This after all wouldn’t change the item’s dimensions in any significant way. And yet when the owner’s son-in-law, who is the functional operational kingpin, tells you to do something, you tend to comply. Edgar wants nothing more but to get out of this awkward discussion pronto, and agrees to discuss matters with Harry, before shuffling away.

What this whole exchange further illustrates, however, is the murky dynamic running rampant throughout Healthy Shopper Market. People remain extremely confused about who does what. Duane says Edgar should consider himself one of the upper management figures, and Rob is acting as though he is. But a step lower, other key persons such as Harry, Corey, Destiny, or even someone like Pierre or Vince send some harsh waves anytime Edgar even remotely attempts to butt into their affairs, implying or coming right out and declaring that he needs to mind his own business. Further down the food chain, some receive his suggestions affably enough, though just as many blow him off, realizing that he has no authority and they aren’t required to listen. Still others seem to think he is some sort of equipment repairman or something.

Though no formal titles have ever been handed out, Harry is generally considered to be Duane’s second-in-command, and acts the part. Of course, if you would make the mistake of mentioning such to Corey, he would undoubtedly improvise a speech off the top of his head about how he understands why someone might think this, but if you want to get technical about it, Corey is clearly Duane’s right hand man, and so on, and so forth. Vince basically already acts like he owns the place and can do whatever he wants.

Half the major players are therefore urging Edgar to get even more involved, to do more; the other half are telling him to back off. None of which makes his interactions with the resident Executive Beer Hipster/Plantation Master any easier, this Jake Gifford character, further compounded in that this clown is one of Corey’s bosom buddies. If Edgar doesn’t tiptoe around this situation just right, everything could crumble and make matters far worse.

Keeping up with the onslaught of new items is just barely manageable — though this is perfectly fine. It’s part of Edgar’s job, he likes the challenge, and he’s not a complainer. One of the major puzzling oddities of this place is that he feels like a handful of notorious characters, ones who are complainers, continually come to him with their spontaneously invented, top of the head latest kooky schemes…and then when he rationally demurs, often on the grounds that they already tried this, months ago, and it didn’t work, that this is why they’re using the current method…then they want to grouse to fellow employees, the bosses, and sometimes even H.R. that he’s being difficult.

And so it is with this guy. While yes, it’s true, that Jake typically brings in his biggest shipments of the week at around 3–3:30 on Friday afternoon, Edgar has at least manage to drill into this head that if Jake sends any new items over by 4, in other words the last minute Edgar will be working this week, then he will add them to the system before leaving. This is all fine and dandy, and working reasonably well, even if a frantic rush to the finish line. Some items inevitably slip out onto the shelves which don’t ring — which could just as easily happen if Jake typed one incorrect digit in his UPC as if he didn’t send it at all — and these will hang out there all weekend, but as long as Edgar can document that he’s doing his job, then this really isn’t his problem.

Price changes are another whole ball of wax, however. If a handful of others around the company have continually griped about this topic, you could nonetheless bundle all those complaints together and they wouldn’t equal his battles with Jake on this subject. Simply put, he cannot seem to grasp why Edgar won’t immediately change the retails on the spot, whenever a product arrives at a different cost.

Edgar doesn’t mention that this edict to changes prices on Mondays only, this came from Jake’s good buddy Corey, because Edgar would surely live to regret this. Corey would likely come up with something on the spot about why beer prices alone are different, the most rapidly fluctuating commodity in the universe, even, and therefore they are an exception. Beer prices could change whenever but only if Jake Gifford says so, et cetera, et cetera. No. He’s not getting into all that, because this level of detail is unnecessary.

“Like I said, okay, I have the invoice, I’ve already added the changes to my update file. I’ll update them on Monday along with everything else,” Edgar explains, in the latest edition of what has become a commonplace, late Friday afternoon conversation, though by no means limited to this day of the week. In fact Tuesday deliveries find Jake here just as irate, because he has to wait a whole week. And something else that’s swept under the rug, or more accurately just blown past on the highway of heated debate, is that he’s already doing this guy a favor, beyond adding the last minute new items, in prioritizing his invoices, going through them as soon as this stuff arrives. No other department behaves this way.

“Why can’t we just change them now?”

“That’s just the schedule we have in place here. The bosses only want me running updates once a week, on Mondays.”

“So we’re going into the weekend, and this stuff has to hang out there for…how many days, at the wrong price? This is stupid!”

“Look dude, I’m not updating beer prices every day of the week. I’m running one batch a week, every Monday morning. The other stores have a hard enough time keeping up with the tags as it is.”

Jake furrows his brow and bellyaches, “why can’t they keep up? We don’t have a problem keeping up here!”

“Yeah, that’s because you’re here all the time. You’re not at the other stores all the time.”

To which, his face red as a burning coal, their illustrious beer merchandiser simply shakes his head and storms off, without further comment.