“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter 67

“Well,” Corey sniffles, with a dismissive upward head tilt, “you’re probably our best option at this point.”

The thing about a dismissive attitude, though, is that it doesn’t actually affect anything. Reality keeps on rolling as it is regardless. And the aftermath of this announcement, that Edgar will be taking over for Kathy as the Accounts Payable person, it creates a ripple effect of developments, a handful of which he finds hilarious, one semi-infuriating.

By the time they posted Kathy’s job online, presumably weeded out at least a handful of uninspiring applicants, finally decided to hang their shingle out at the HSM and Duane approached Edgar about taking it, this left a whopping six days before the reigning AP overlord said sayonara to this operation. So call this comedic point #1. Correlated to his promotion, though, someone will now have to fill his vacated data coordinator role, and if he were among those left behind in the stores, he would be as up in arms as half of them are. As it stands, however, he considers this one a real gut-buster as well: Pierre O’Brien. That’s their man. And not just that they’ve appointed Pierre O’Brien, but that they have done so without even posting the job, simply handing him the keys.

“What in the world would make them think he’s capable of doing this job?” Valerie marvels, in Edgar’s office, directly in the wake of these intertwined announcements.

“I mean, shouldn’t they have at least posted it?” Dale muses, with a lopsided grin, “call me crazy but I think you’ve got a somewhat important job here, wouldn’t you say? Shouldn’t we at least pick somebody with some computer skills?”

“Yes they should have posted it!” Valerie replies, “I mean, I might have even applied, who knows?”

She’s the third person to mention as much to him, and the first two were at lot more definitive. In fact the older woman Marian, in vitamins, who continues to smirk at Edgar every time she sees him, as if still considering his data coordinator job a major joke, and the easiest gig in the world, she was the angriest of all. Then again, she seems confused about the interplay between a lot of different concepts around here, and how things work in general.

“Why didn’t you guys post your job!?” she demands, “I would be very good at that, you know! Some of us would’ve liked to at least be given a shot!”

“That wasn’t any of my doing,” he shrugs, “are you kidding me? I don’t make decisions like that around here.”

So these are the immediate facts of the case, riotous all. Although when he considers the ramifications of what this means, then it seems not so funny to him, too, a little more like maddening. Because what they’ve effectively said by passing this off to Pierre is that, eh, anyone can do your job. Anyone whatsoever. Granted, Corey has been insinuating such for the duration of his epic three weeks as vice president, but it’s an altogether different phenomenon to witness this play out for real. Which is beyond baffling. Even if you would cap his performance at the level of what Dale had jokingly referred to it as, a somewhat important job, just to halt right there, how is Pierre a fit for this, precisely?

Dale’s also always saying, “I really don’t get this place,” with a weary head shake, eyes closed, and that’s about how Edgar feels right now. He cannot fathom how you go from everyone telling you that you’re hitting it out the park, they’ve never had anyone who could sit and look at numbers all day, you’re one of the major reasons why this company is on the upswing, Duane is saying that hiring you is one of the smartest things he’s ever done…to, eh, fuck it, our worst employee can take over the reigns, no problem.

And take over with six days of training, no less. Not even six full days, mind you. Because, owing to this time crunch, during a season already hectic enough in that the year’s end is drawing near, Edgar’s got to learn his new gig and train Pierre all in one swoop. What they’ve worked out is that he will hop over to Bellwether for five consecutive mornings — Friday through Thursday — to learn a week’s routine from Kathy, then spend his afternoons at Southside with Pierre, plus just one full day, the following Friday, and then that’s it. Phone calls and emails are always at Pierre’s disposal beyond there, of course, but this is already shaping up as an unmitigated disaster.

On Pierre’s end, that is. Regarding this AP post, from the outset he had a strong suspicion that, although this is considered a “promotion” and came with a hefty pay raise, this is going to prove a far easier position. And in doesn’t take but a couple of hours to see that this is precisely the case. For example, he burned through his last pair of contact lenses days ago, and he’s still waiting on the next batch to arrive. At his desk at Southside, he can sit close enough to where it doesn’t affect him in the slightest, yet from even this marginally greater distance — a chair pulled up beside Kathy as he takes notes and watches her work, her screen is mostly a blur. He can make out where the cursor is hopping to, though, in this Great Plains software program, and believes he’s already gotten the basic hang of it.

This is a great feeling, and a relief as well, to have that madness behind him. Bosses who have clearly forgotten what kind of improvements he’s made, not the least bit appreciative of what he’s brought to the table. Corey waltzing around with his coffee mug, smug and happy, as if delighted with his handpicked thoroughbred Pierre, because he’s going to prove once and for all that Edgar is no all-star and that anyone can handle that job. By extension, of course, how brilliant Corey Brown is, that he truly does know what he’s doing and is a natural industry titan.

Here’s how Edgar thinks this is going to play out over at the HSM without him. Let’s say you had a homeowner who’d inherited a mansion, who then hired a housekeeper, to come over every day and tidy up the place, while Corey walked around the neighborhood, coffee mug in hand, telling everyone he encountered about all the great ideas he had and all the excellent work he was doing. By the time he made it home from this leisurely circuit, his house looked pretty much the same as it did every day. Therefore this led to possibly his most amazing idea yet, which is that he should get rid of the housekeeper, because she was clearly making no impact.

And for the first week, things might look exactly the same. There would probably be endless conversations with the people along his daily stroll about how you couldn’t tell a difference, the housekeeper’s role had been seriously overblown. Even after a month — okay, yeah, he supposes you could kind of tell a difference now without the housekeeper, but was it really that big of a deal? He could skate around some of these messes, let certain tasks fall by the wayside. But then, yes, predictably enough, by the time he realizes he is fucked, be it two or three months or whatever, it’s already too late, he’s got a serious mess on his hands and it will take whomever — possibly multiple people — months upon months more to clean his mansion, restore it to its previous gleaming state.

Not that there’s much idle time, beyond perhaps the hour long commute, each way, to contemplate these matters. Arriving at this quaint little warehouse near the state line at 8am each morning, armed with his brand new key card, swiping it to climb the stairs to that cacophonous, large, cubicle divided office on the second floor. Training for now with the chatty, highly entertaining Kathy Ames, who, it’s reassuring to note, is at least on the same page as him concerning this Arcadia debacle. He doesn’t ask, she just launches into this diatribe on her own, when he asks what prompted this career change.

“Well I was already thinkin about leavin, goin back to school…,” she says, “but that Arcadia situation, that was the last straw! Let me tell you! That’s when I said, okay, I’ve had enough. I told my husband, I gotta get outta this place, I gotta do somethin else. I kept askin and askin and askin, you know, where are the invoices? Because I’ve got vendors harpin on me for money, and I haven’t seen a single invoice from that store!”

“Sounds kind of like what I was running into,” Edgar agrees, “I kept asking them if they needed help over there, or if they had anything to send me, but they kept saying no.”

“Yeah! So then anyway, one week outta the blue I finally get this mountain of invoices, all at once. BAM! I kid you not, this stack was taller than my TV set!”

“What kind of TV you got?” Edgar jokes, chuckling.

“A big one,” she laughs, “it’s pretty good sized. But yeah, so anyway, I was pretty p.o.’d, I gotta tell ya. I couldn’t help myself, I picked up the phone and called Duane, he told me to talk to Harry. So then I asked Harry point blank, why did you wait until now to turn in all these invoices? Have you lost your damn mind!? But his explanation was, he had to keep them all, so he knew how much he was spending on this opening.”

Edgar finds this not only hysterical, but soothing, because it confirms his own impression of such antiquated, Neanderthal friendly methods. Not that this would have made good business sense at any point past, say, the Industrial Revolution. But it’s a great consolation to learn he wasn’t the only one who felt they had sorely botched this opening. Also, he can’t help but wonder what Rob, Mr. Locke, Reece and the others had to say about that atom bomb of invoice payments hitting their bank account. This alone might have been enough to send Harry packing.

Not to mention that it also happens to be bullshit anyway. There’s no way Harry was tallying up figures from that gargantuan stack of invoices in any kind of meaningful fashion. Or any fashion whatsoever. But there’s a definite component to this old school mindset, whereby they find it very comforting indeed to hang onto paper copies of everything (see also: Hedges, Ralph). And while Harry undoubtedly clawed his way through the pile on occasion to reference something, the record keeping went no farther than this.

And the training with Pierre goes about as expected. Again he knows better, but again he can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for the dude. To his credit Pierre seems as exasperated with this appointment as anybody else, is found complaining to Edgar on more than one occasion — which means he’s repeating this to no end elsewhere, “I didn’t ask for this job! I don’t know anything about computers!”

But computer knowledge is one thing, and possibly the lesser point. Even if true, this sentiment overlooks the greater core, which is the work itself, the theories that are behind it. The heart of this role isn’t learning how to do a few things in Excel and Orchestra and ScaleMaster; those are just the tools used to implement what you’re actually attempting to accomplish, as in, keeping the margins, retails, tax rates, EBT settings, ingredient lists, and invoice charges correct.

Just to track backwards from the most recent, bombastic decrees makes them seem already far more ridiculous than they originally did — even when Edgar was the one receiving such. What, Pierre is going to be keeping tabs on the various inventory levels of all the sale products, at all five stores, and make a judgment call on extending them? And how is a guy who doesn’t drive going to make it up to Walnut once a week? Are they going to charter a helicopter on his behalf? Even pulling off something as quotidian as the monthly audits is going to prove a serious challenge, in other words you can probably kiss these goodbye.

But he does what he can training the guy, even though it’s probably not a good sign that Pierre has shown far greater enthusiasm for redecorating the office than he has for learning the job — there are potted plants everywhere now, a couple of them trees, and framed artwork hanging, even a lamp in one corner. Whereas, say, Edgar hasn’t even gotten around to looking through all the drawers in his desk at Bellwether yet. Pierre insists on pointing out all his interior decoration flourishes here, however, before they even get cracking with the latest day’s work. Which, to Edgar’s way of thinking, is not his fucking problem, if this dude insists upon burning up his training hours in this fashion.

Pierre is thoroughly baffled by what amounts to merely the second or third lesson, which is, how to create the retails in all of these price lists arriving from each of the vendors. This is after he finally maybe grasps how to move the columns around, that these suppliers don’t just magically send their spreadsheets all in the same order.

“We would not just use their suggested retail?” Pierre questions.

“No, because they have no way of knowing what our margins are for every department. And they’re not going to send out different price lists to every company that orders from them, even if they did. See what I’m saying?”

“Ah, mmm hmm, I see, I see.”

But does he, really? Edgar already has a strong suspicion that this meticulously constructed house of cards is going to crumble in short order. That everyone can say bye-bye to these methods, such as making sure that all of the brand names match. Or, far more critical, looking up every “new” item that anyone sends you, because a good 20% at the very least turn out to be in the system already, and you’ll have wrong prices hanging all over the place if you don’t. This notion of checking juice percentages and flour content to charge the proper tax, that is probably history, or exactly what form some of these items are in, because the tiniest detail can determine whether something is EBT eligible or not. Breaking down ingredients on the deli recipes, you name it. And while he can tell himself that this isn’t his fucking problem, it probably will wind up being so, sooner or later. Pierre will continue playing both sides, complaining that he doesn’t understand, to Edgar here, and then afterwards complaining to the bosses that he’s not being taught anything. As the carefully constructed databases fly off the tracks.

So he focuses upon the absolute must-have knowledge. Tying the produce codes together is nice, but he feels like this would positively blow Pierre’s mind, and can be skipped. Adding new items, that’s a daily task and quite crucial, however, as is this painful, multi-day lesson of multiplying price list costs by a factor, such as =f2*1.54 to hit the deli’s 35% margin, after which he has to apply the rounding formula to every retail, then sort and replace the ones ending in .09. Anyone who thinks this is something his replacement will immediately grasp must be lightheaded from cleansing and fasting a day or three too long.

He does at least connect with Pierre about the Red Screen Of Death, and why this is bad news, how to hunt down the problem and reboot when it occurs. A few different catastrophic inputs will cause the Orchestra to flash this message on the screen, eating up the entirety of your monitor with a white text message on a blood red background, at which point the program will stop collecting data. The cash registers will continue working properly, but no information is uploaded to this main server until entering a series of reboot commands.

As this has happened on occasion to even Teri (who coined this memorable name for it) and Edgar as well, it seems a given that Pierre will encounter the same. Edgar has handed him a three ring binder with detailed, typed notes accumulated through the years, and while this error is among them, a hands on demonstration is order. Two of the most common culprits are a pair of vitamin vendors — Sunrays and Blue Banner — who send over their monthly price lists in predictable if problematic form. The Sunrays issue is easy to spot, though also quite easy to overlook. The issue here is that they’ve got a lower case y with two dots above it, like umlauts, in front of every single UPC number. So while this is basically impossible to overlook if entering a stray new item here and there — because you would have to type in the UPC to see if it’s already in the system — but readily slips the mind if uploading their entire price file to crank out update tags.

This is one known cause leading to the Red Screen Of Death, if you don’t catch this ahead of time, run a simple find and replace in Excel to get rid of it. And while this is also true of the Blue Banner issue, that one is also just about impossible to spot, therefore that much more likely to slip the mind. The problem here is not that they have a space in front of the UPC, but that it’s more like a half-space, a third of a space. Running a find and replace on eliminating spaces will turn up nothing, and the UPC in question looks okay. The only thing that works is copying that tiny sliver of a space, pasting that into the find and replace box to get rid of it. Probably about once every three or four months, however, he forgets, and while it’s no big deal to reboot the server, it’s also another hassle that he could really live without. And has a feeling he’ll be coaching Pierre through this one on a monthly basis, if not even more frequently.