“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter 64

Corey has always projected this weird dichotomy whereby, long before appointed to such, he tended to act like someone on the inside circle of every discussion, wielding untold power…until a problem surfaced which might require him to do something, in which case he would deflect. Throw up his hands and remark “this place is dysfunctional” or “somebody needs to do something about this,” while remaining aloof from the predicament. It also forced him into an awkward public face when confronted by a spectacle which clearly would not have been his idea, for example drastically shrinking Palmyra’s wine set once, and then again.

He’s clearly believed this company is his meal ticket to a life of luxury and prestige, too, from day one. And while reaching for the clouds is great, sure, some of the specific steps taken in pursuit of this glory have been questionable to say the least. Edgar’s sat at his desk while listening to many a quarterly meeting, as the store managers are over in the community room recapping the numbers with Rob Drake, and overheard Corey taking credit for pretty much every great concept that’s come down the pike. Or even at actual gatherings where Edgar’s been present. At a going rate of roughly two per meeting, some of these have even been Edgar’s ideas, prompting him to stop what he’s doing, sit there with a disbelieving smirk and think I came up with that. That was my idea!

The only question, really, is whether Corey’s so full of himself that he actually buys the hype himself. Edgar thinks that he does, mostly, in fact — Corey believes that he dreamed up every concept he’s boasting about to Rob. But there’s definitely also a pinch of cutthroat, whatever-it-takes type attitude thrown in there, too, no doubt about it. And, as Edgar had begun to suspect months ago, it isn’t just that he’s a glory hound, or willing to claw out every available angle if it means rising to the top. There’s also some personality glitch whereby it clearly rubs Corey the wrong way when anybody else is receiving praise. He alone should be thought of as the in-house expert. On everything, all the time.

This phenomenon most recently reared its head mere days before their little conversation about working from home. Corey had emailed him a request, asking if he could come up with a spreadsheet and some formulas for calculating how much the deli recipes were costing them. Edgar was already a smidgen suspicious, because he’d mentioned this idea on numerous occasions before, though the suggestion fell on a chorus of crickets. And the notion that Corey would be the one to take an interest in this was especially questionable. But outweighing this thought by far was some genuine excitement for putting such together, and a belief that maybe Corey had turned the corner, realized the value in having their costs nailed down with precision. Or at least, that somebody had put a bug in his ear about it.

It only takes him a half hour, all told, to craft something he feels good about. To him these spreadsheets and the formulas were kind of like flow charts, that you pictured in your head and then mapped out. There were endless ways for accomplishing just about any of this, it was just a matter of getting the numbers to flow down to the bottom in a manner that was consistent and organized, maybe even visually appealing to you. This one was pretty basic in that you just entered an ingredient on the left, then the quantity, and how much each cost per pound, multiplied B by C and brought those over to a column that he color coded as light orange on the right. Summed this near the bottom. An entry for who was working on this, for how long and at what hourly rate (or approximate hourly salary) and added that figure to the first, totaled in a cell he shaded bright yellow, the text a bit larger and bold. Locks down all the formulas to keep people from messing with them, fires this off to Corey and doesn’t think much more about it.

At least until he arrives at Palmyra the next day. Corey is here, but they haven’t interacted much, clear up to late afternoon. At one point Edgar is working over near the deli, though, and bumps into the manager, Josey, Arnie’s wife. They exchange pleasantries and talk shop for a while. She mentions that Pat is driving her bananas with his constantly inflated prices on their in-house creations, though she’s begun circumventing this by coming up with her own recipes and just not mentioning them to him.

“Yeah, and I asked Corey if he could come up with something for determining my costs. So he sat down and figured it out, and sent me this really nice spreadsheet this morning, it’s just what I needed.”

“Wait a second. Corey told you that he came up with that?”

“Uh huh,” she nods, adjusting her glasses with the back of one gloved hand, glancing at him as if puzzled why this is important.

“Does it have, like, these light orange boxes over on the side, and then a bright yellow one at the bottom for the total?”

“Yeah…”

“I came up with that. He emailed me yesterday asking if I could figure it out.”

Granted, insisting upon credit might make Edgar seem a glory hound as well. But this is just getting ridiculous. Whatever the case, Josey laughs, not doubting for a second that this is true. Although just to confirm it, the two of them stroll over to the vitamin kiosk, where the nearest computer sits. Josey pulls up the web version of Outlook, logs herself in, and retrieves Corey’s email to open the attachment.

“Oh yeah. That’s it. That’s my handiwork. Look, if you try to change one of the formulas, or even delete it — he demonstrates by pressing that particular button, which throws up a warning, forcing him to unprotect the cell with a password — you’ll see that it’s locked.”

“That’s really funny,” she snickers, covering her mouth now with the side of one hand, since stripped of its vinyl glove, “but yeah, he totally told me he created this all by himself.”

As far as Corey’s showboating at the quarterly meetings goes, one reason that this is so effective is that there’s no great means of combating it. Edgar has considered that the best method, really, might be to just cackle out loud every time Corey takes credit for someone else’s work, whether in his office or at the table. Either that or maybe poke his head around the corner with his brows furrowed, wearing a perplexed smirk. Otherwise, what are your options? Maybe it’s true that an extremely tactful person might be able to pull Rob aside and say, hey, just a heads up, but pretty much everything Corey’s taking credit for originated with somebody else. But he’s not really this person — definitely more of a blurt-things-out-and-deal-with-the-consequences-before-I-lose-my-nerve type guy — nor is he especially chummy with Rob. Approaching Duane and suggesting that he mention this to Rob on everyone’s behalf would likely be a waste of time as well. Beyond that, it seems as though you’re left with either confronting Corey directly, which is also not going to bring much in return, or else storming the conference room table directly and calling him out on this fraud, in front of everyone. This actually is more in keeping with Edgar’s style, perhaps most of all, although he has a strong suspicion this would also prove a huge mistake, unfortunately. That it would work out about as well as Harry’s effort with The Email.

He feels as though he completely understands what Corey’s mindset is in these spots. Long before he was ever appointed to this new post, and having authority over most of them, Corey already had the attitude that they were all working for him. Therefore, they were his team. Therefore, if his team came up with anything, this meant that he came up with it.

As a result, Edgar already has a really good idea about how this Arcadia assignment is going to go, well in advance of his finally reporting here Thursday morning. Concerning the location itself, however, it is a great one. Directly across the parking lot from a Walmart, in a fairly new retail development at the edge of town, with a lease that is surprisingly not busting the bank account. They’re paying far more for the ridiculous Palmyra arrangement, for example, which is not just $13K a month but also finds their landlord getting a cut of the store profits. Arcadia is a cheerful, west-facing shop, too, with a front wall composed entirely of plate glass window — which is also true of Southside, although for whatever reason, probably owing to deeper recesses, that store remains far gloomier.

But the mystery of why they waited so long to bring him aboard deepens. Given that they were finally able to begin cramming these shelves on Tuesday morning, this means that two full days went by before Corey sent that 3pm email. Either things are just so insanely hectic around here, or there’s just genuinely not that much for Edgar to do here, or…as he is beginning to increasingly suspect, they have a curiously dismissive attitude toward his role, as though forgetting anything he has brought to the table, considering this job an inessential trifle.

Yet none of these pieces truly fit. While Felix has been around, setting up the registers and internet and engaged with other IT related tasks, this morning also marks the first occasion where Teri’s presence has been requested on premise. She too seems baffled and disbelieving, that they’re attempting to get this operation ready for a soft, unannounced opening three days from now, though she’s as always too professional to come right out and say as much, not even to Edgar. So chalking this up to chaos would appear a reasonable fit. Except that he knows, were Duane attempting to head up this operation himself, he would have long since invited Teri and Edgar and many others to the party. Their three store operation has ramped up to five in less than a year, and Duane has his plate full enough to require delegation, though, first to Harry and now Corey. The problem with this arrangement is that neither of these figures has exuded a ton of confidence in having done this before, and they’ve both downplayed if not displayed outright confusion at what Edgar does around here.

Observing that he’s arrived, Corey meets Edgar near the front of the store, and gives him a quick tour. First up on the docket is the front right corner, where produce is traditionally kept, although he’s not seeing any here. Instead, there’s an upright cooler with refrigerated drinks, and a few random displays of potato chips and the like. In many respects, Edgar feels as though they’ve come full circle, hearkening back to a similar tour years ago, up in Palmyra, back when he first started. The only difference is that one of them exerts much more power than he previously had, while the other has gained a few years’ worth of experience around this place, meaning that they can never quite reset their interactions to the smooth, complication-free dimensions of those early days.

“We decided we’re not gonna have any produce here,” Corey tells him.

“You’re not gonna have any produce?”

“Nah,” Corey shakes his head, explains, “I mean, yeah, maybe some mountain apples or something when they’re in season and we’re running a hot promotion, something like that. But like, Liberty can’t seem to give produce away, so we’re not even gonna bother with it here.”

Well, that is an interesting verdict, to say the least. He’s astounded that Duane would even sign off on this, in fact, which is maybe another testament to how haywire this opening has gone. Yet other curiosities abound, everywhere he turns. For example, Pierre O’Brien is on hand, apparently has been for days, although Edgar’s not sure in what capacity, and has difficulty understanding why this would have been a priority. Also, while the smoothie and coffee bar has been outfitted with a proper touch screen register, which Edgar can remote into and deploy changes to the same as everywhere else, the bulk department has just been given a regular old Hobart scale, on a table in the middle of the back hall, with no internet connection anywhere in sight. It’s another of these perplexing twists, where he’s having trouble figuring out what mindset would even lead to this development. Once again, nobody consulted him in any fashion on this. He will have to drive over here to update anything on this scale. But did Felix really believe he was such an expert on these matters that there was no need to ask anybody else? Or was the attitude there that this couldn’t possibly be important?

Precious little time remains to ponder these points right now, however. Tour concluded, Corey gives Edgar his marching orders, for today and beyond. “Yeah, so I need you to go through and scan everything that doesn’t have a tag.”

“That’s cool,” Edgar nods, adds, “I assume they’ve got a bunch of new items to add here. Nobody has really sent me anything, aside from Dale. So that’s probably the best way to identify them.”

Corey has been studying him as he said this, then nods a few times, lips pursed and looking away, basically the essence of someone who wants to look knowledgeable but has no idea what has just been said. “Okay, well, yeah, so just go ahead and crank out tags. I need you to have this entire store tagged by the time you leave tomorrow.”

Edgar doesn’t protest, but he’s already thinking, well, he’ll see what he can do. Barring complications, and not a ton of crazy horseshit flying in from elsewhere, and less than a mountain of new items to add, he might be able to pull that off. But he isn’t the official Tag Hanger Guy, primarily because that’s a simple task that anyone can do. He’ll certainly do all he can to help, and isn’t opposed to hanging tags — in many ways, a mindless task like that, far removed from answering emails, staring at the computer, or fielding phone calls from bellyaching coworkers, can be a relief, a welcome diversion. But he can’t shove aside his other pressing work, most predominantly adding new items for Arcadia, to putter around hanging shelf tags all day, at the exclusion of all else.

He and Teri aren’t the only ones bewildered by some of these choices. It’s an attractive store, no doubt, and this is much of what Duane’s been concerned with, the design. The stained concrete floors, for example, are a great looking modern flourish, as is the darker earth toned color scheme, like health store meets coffee shop. One angle he may have possibly botched, however, is the aisle layout, although this is relatively easy to fix if need be. As Edgar gets to work in the front right corner of the store — his natural mode of operation with projects like these, for some reason, surely related to the shopping experience itself — he passes an aisle where Mr. Locke, also apparently here for the first time this morning, is grousing to Duane.

“Whose idea was this? These aisles are too damn close! You can’t even get two carts in here at the same time!”

Considering that Mr. Locke already has a bit of a Don Rickles-esque presence about him, a short, stout old man, in his mid-80s, prone to bugging his eyes out and not exactly afraid of speaking his mind, this underscores its comedic effect, and Duane nods dutifully at this input. And Edgar hadn’t yet noticed this, either, but Mr. Locke does have a point. In lieu of the more traditional, long, vertical aisles, they’ve opted for three separate columns of short horizontal ones. Which in turn, yes, have been slotted mighty closely together.

As he gets to hopping on this scanning project, generating a tag for everything that doesn’t yet have one, he feels that he’s making surprisingly good progress. Maybe this is only a two day project, he begins to think, at least the scanning part. He’s encountered far fewer new items than expected, thus far. Granted, there are still plenty of holes, which he has no choice but to pass over for the time being, but he can circle back around to these later. Someone else, like Pierre perhaps, can come in and hang all the tags behind him. Except he gets about halfway through the store, and is scanning one of their highest profile items, the largest size of Mr. Banks’ Apple Cider Vinegar, when dread doesn’t so much seize him as drag him to the ground, like an air balloon someone has just filled with cement blocks.

$18.99, the price on the scan gun says. You could scan hundreds if not thousands of items without much jumping out at you, because most of these prices are anonymous. He trusts that he’s making correct decisions on the back end, armed with all the necessary information, but for the most part, these aren’t points you’d have committed to memory after a week or two have passed. Except for something like this. The Mr. Banks product line is so profitable that they put off raising the retail on this size for as long as possible, without crossing the next dollar amount, to where they were making only about five percent on this item. It’s been on the Exceptions sheet all along, until mere weeks ago, when the cost went up yet again and they reluctantly raised it to $19.19.

He stops what he’s doing right there and drifts to the back office. Just to confirm that he isn’t losing his mind, he connects into the main Orchestra terminal back at Southside. As expected, the price displays as $19.19 here, and his stomach sinks a little lower. In one final desperation move, hoping that maybe there’s just some glitch with the display on the scan gun, but everything else is fine otherwise, he prints out the current tag batch now. Miracles aren’t exactly forthcoming here, however: $18.99.

Edgar’s first move is to get Teri. Corey’s already acting like something of a jackass, Edgar has gotten a bad vibe around here from the moment he set foot in the building. Having Teri as a witness seems like a really good idea, but also, more importantly, he has no idea how to handle this predicament, because it’s never happened before. If one of the store servers happens to have gone down overnight, before the automatic database sync, he’s had to manually do so once that store came back up. Yet doing so doesn’t correct the problem in this instance.

She investigates the situation, having also never seen this particular scenario before. They’ve run into some weird occurrences here and there over the years, like when Liberty Avenue alone inexplicably would not one ring up particular line of meat substitute frozen products, even though the UPC was shown in the database there, just the same as everywhere else. That one required enlisting Jacques’ support, up there from Orchestra headquarters in Montreal, and it looks like they’ll need his help sorting out this one as well.

Edgar fires off an email to Jacques — because he is never, ever initially reachable by phone, but also for documentation reasons — and is sure to copy Teri, Corey, and Duane on this email. The reason this doesn’t make any sense is that the Arcadia server isn’t down. Theoretically, is should be syncing with Southside’s main one overnight, every night. Somehow Arcadia has received an old price batch, not just on this apple cider vinegar update, but everything else that Edgar spot checked in the same file. But even so, you’d have thought this would correct itself after just one day. Not so in this instance, however.

Fortunately Jacques is highly responsive for a change, and jumps on this situation immediately. It’s possible he recognized his blunder as soon as Edgar’s email hit his inbox, or if nothing else at least understood the urgency of this request. He immediately responds and confirms that yes, somehow he sent a month old version of their database over here to Arcadia. Though unable to explain why it hasn’t corrected itself, on any of the successive nights since then, he assures them that after he addresses this issue, everything will begin syncing properly from here on out.

Which is great and all, and Edgar’s glad he stumbled onto it when he did. Unfortunately, this also means that he must start over now and re-scan every existing tag, while the batch he’s already completed today goes straight into the trash can. Though he’s dreading this prospect, and feels halfway disgusted over the time already wasted, at least Teri is able to pitch in and help him hang tags — they’ve only commissioned one scanner thus far for this store, another curious decision, which Edgar continues using — and eventually enlist Pierre for this task as well.

Neither of the bosses respond to this email chain, or give any indication that they have read it. However, he can see that Duane is busy, hopping around and discussing matters with Mr. Locke, consulting Vince on various displays, breaking out a tape measure in the course of continued strategizing. Corey at least comes up at one point, right after this debacle has been sorted and they’ve gotten back to work, to ask Edgar what kind of progress he’s making.

“Eh, it was going pretty good! But then I got about halfway through grocery and noticed the price on the Banks’ apple cider vinegar was coming up wrong. It turns out Jacques sent a month-old database over to this store.”

“Really,” Corey says. Accompanied by that same non-amused half-smile he often breaks out, when displeased by a certain development — for example, if someone mentions the shrinking of Palmyra’s wine section — but also in this instance as though not believing Edgar.

“Yeah. So everything I’ve done so far today has been a waste of time. Actually, it’s even worse than that. Now we have to re-scan any tags that are already hanging, because those might be wrong.”

Corey nods and then drifts away, coffee mug in hand, without another word said. Knowing this guy, though, Edgar’s somewhat surprised that he wasn’t halfway gloating, taking this as validation of his brilliance in having Edgar scan and hang tags. See! See?This is why I wanted you doing it! But, one accidentally favorable outcome does not a good decision make. If he would have been here days earlier, he would have discovered this much sooner. For that matter, if he had started in either vitamins or else the small packaged deli/meat section today — because, like Liberty, they do not have a deli/meat counter here — then he would have stumbled onto this likely far sooner, because Dale and to a lesser extent Pat are the only ones who’ve sent him new items specifically for this place. Which would not scan, period, not with a month old database in place, and would have also sounded off alarm bells. Vince has walked up to him a few times today, object in hand, pointing out that something needs added. Otherwise, he continues to creak his way through building various displays. Harry had given him almost nothing for this store, and even those were merely items that he planned on carrying everywhere.

But instead of thanking Edgar for catching this, or even acting the most bit grateful or relieved that they have done so — even if keeping this sentiment to himself — Corey remains suspicious. Well, he has been on the job a whole three days now, so his intuitions are surely sharpened to a razor’s edge. Whatever the case, it’s 3pm and as Teri had gotten here around 7 this morning, she’s headed out the door. Edgar happens to have wrapped back around to the front of the next aisle, is near the first cash register, and can readily witness the entire next sequence of events. Corey, Vince, and Duane standing in a row, surveying their kingdom and discussing who knows what, with broad smiles on their faces. Then, having glimpsed Teri as she breezes past, Corey and his coffee mug follow her right out the door.

Through the plate glass window front wall, Corey is visible asking Teri either one long question, or a series of shorter ones, pointing inside with the index finger of his non-coffee-mug-holding hand. Teri is facing him and, beyond his shoulder and slightly to her right, toward Edgar as well. She shrugs and insistently nods, glances inside, where he and she make eye contact, returns her focus to Corey as she continues replying throughout. Then she strolls away to her car and the grizzled vice-president returns inside, to his eagle eyed post.

Well, he would bet his $100 Christmas bonus that Corey had been grilling her over this incident with the database, asking whether Edgar was telling the truth. So he has apparently not checked his email inbox this afternoon, not at any point, although this isn’t so surprising considering that Edgar hasn’t really witnessed the guy doing any work. Unless stomping around and making pronouncements counts as such.

He thinks this is a real good time to maybe wrap up this operation for today, actually. Print out what tags there are, leave them for whomever to hang, while he cracks open his laptop one final time and finishes up the daily new items file, as well as responding to whatever emails remain. These tasks usually clock in at around an hour, which is just about perfect, a fully realized day.

Say one thing about these frantic two days at Arcadia, nearly every moment is permanently inscribed upon his brain. He will not forget these anytime soon. On Thursday he’d furiously added about two hundred new items for that store alone. Maybe you could cut Vince some slack considering he basically had to take over for Harry at the tail end, like a president had been assassinated with about a month remaining in office or something. The only problem with doing so, however, is that this is how Vince has operated throughout his tenure with the company, and gives no indication of changing in the future — i.e. stocking shelves if not building shippers, cramming end caps, rollaway carts, you name it, full of product, then going to make his signs or tags, discovering then that the product is new and therefore doesn’t even scan. Then doddering his way back to wherever Edgar might be, handing him the item and asking him to add it.

So it will be on this Friday, too, albeit to an insane degree. While it’s perhaps not exactly the coolest thing in the universe that Dale and Pat are also bombarding him with new items, just now, they are at least doing so via the easily uploaded spreadsheet. The few times he has dared mention this to Vince over the past nine months or whatever, the old man has given him a blank stare, nodded once, then continued doing exactly as he pleases. Today that means baskets and carts full of product trundled back to Edgar’s makeshift workstation — one tall round table in the hallway, officially known as the employee breakroom — and also a bunch of panicked, grand opening sale batches that they’re having him add at the last minute, too.

He also finds himself served a healthy portion of Corey’s bullshit, slathered right across the top. About midday, he approaches Edgar, and asks if he’s going to have this store completely scanned by the end of the shift.

“Nooooooooooo. There’s no way. If we hadn’t had that setback with the database yesterday, maybe. But not now.”

“Well then you’re gonna need to come in this weekend.”

“I would be on overtime,” Edgar states, which is really just a diversionary tactic.

“That’s okay,” Corey quickly replies.

Yet the reason Edgar blurted out the bit about overtime had nothing to do with that. It’s knowing that the actual reason, while technically also none of your bosses’ business — unless it pertains to a competitor — is nonetheless something that typically gets their blood boiling. Therefore he already knows this is not going to go over well.

“I’m working my part time job,” he shrugs. “Saturday and Sunday both. I can’t do it.”

Corey visibly reddens upon receiving this news, clamps his jaw down tightly, and storms away.

Well, Corey can think whatever he likes. Truth is, Edgar would love to be here over the weekend. This store opening is a fun project, he enjoys being more involved, and the overtime pay could definitely come in handy. But you can’t spring this on somebody with about four hours to spare on a Friday afternoon, with a crisis that only came to light yesterday morning. If they want him to give up the part time job, they can make him salary and demand that he be here whenever the situation calls for it. Until then he is an hourly employee with a set schedule.

Here’s what working with Corey is like: Corey in general, but this situation in particular, reminds Edgar of a ship captain who forgot to pack any water. Never occurred to him. However, after they’ve set sail, he happens to discover one jug of water. Upon finding this, he instantly convinces himself — and believes it! — that this is coincidentally the precise amount of water required for a ship full of men for a Transatlantic voyage. But then, upon explaining this to his crew, that one jug of water is all they collectively need, becomes angry when they challenge his declaration. Which they are challenging, not only because it’s total nonsense, because they know how Corey arrived at this answer.

Edgar has to shut down his little tag making operation for the day, anyway, soon enough. The reason for this is that the merchandisers have collectively sent/handed him about one thousand new items for Arcadia today. Not to mention the grand opening sale prices, which again they have to either run for just one day or else extend to all three other stores — owing to Orchestra’s limitations — and are also being brought to him seemingly as soon as it pops into someone’s head.

They are mostly all scrambling around now, too, he gets it, even if many at least received their invites to the party on Tuesday if not sooner. Although it’s a mighty long reach to describe Vince’s effort as scrambling, and the same could be said of Corey’s strolling around with a coffee mug. But much is a product of disorganization, there’s no question about it. And with the new tyrant in town having already made such a stink about this topic, though Edgar debates slipping out of here on the clock to go work at the nearby diner, he sits right here, at the tall, three seated break table, punching in everything that anyone brings or emails him. He sticks around long enough this afternoon to pick up some overtime, too. As of the hour of his leaving, 5:30pm, he has entered absolutely every new item, sale batch, and anything else that is dropped into his lap. His email inbox is 100% caught up, which makes this a terrific stopping point.

Still, it’s not exactly a weekend of mindless bliss. Late afternoon on Saturday, Corey sends him this email, copying Duane, Vince, and for some unholy reason Pierre O’Brien as well. Though not provably shitty, it certainly sounds that way, and is nothing if not short:

meeting at Southside 11am Monday, to discuss the new structure.