“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter 96

The first time Edgar ever meets Todd Cashner, he’s working in the frozen section at Palmyra. Edgar, that is, during an otherwise normal, even unusually bland afternoon. So yeah, in HSM parlance what this means is: doing his part retagging a long string of doors, in the wake of yet another week long, catastrophic power outage. This is probably the third major one to visit Palmyra’s freezers in the last two years, and after pitching so much product, they’ve decided they might as well reset and rearrange some things. Ordinarily, unless his presence was specifically requested, he would probably leave them to it, but it makes sense to get involved in this instance. Shooting these doors himself and changing the location codes, getting on the front end of this project, is surely preferable than trying to stumble upon and figure out what’s different later.

So he and a few others are scattered throughout this aisle, the last one, with the dairy and beer sections opposite them on the perimeter. Heads down as they blast through their current tasks, unaware that Rob Drake and Friendly HR have just descended into their midst, escorting this third person around the store. Edgar’s inside the second-to-last door in back when they unexpectedly round the corner.

“Oh, hey, Edgar!” Rob cheers, as they draw up beside him, momentarily, “Edgar, this is Todd Cashner.”

“Hey, what’s up…,” this Todd character mumbles, and half-heartedly shakes his hand, but doesn’t exactly look his way, not quite.

Instead, as they move on, in a continuation of what was happening prior to this short introduction, their guest drones on and on. Talking about what he would do with this section, and that, and something about a store back in St. Louis.

Well, it’s pretty obvious what this is, Edgar thinks. An external applicant for the vacant position of president, one whom they are treating as a foreign dignitary and rolling out the red carpet for. All the signs are there. Tall? Check. White? Check. Male and wearing a serious expression and droning on in scattershot fashion about all the awesome ideas he has had over the course of his amazing career, he and he alone, without the input of anyone else? Yep, these points are all prominently on display.

Except as it turns out, Edgar has got it all wrong. This isn’t a candidate for Healthy Shopper Market president — he’s already been hired. This is their new boss.

Such is the relatively low key beginning to their latest era. Rob will only get around to making a formal announcement a couple of days later, although it turns out that Todd has already flown his family into town and purchased a home in the Chesboro region — somewhere around Waxoff, a half hour or so east of town. So this direction was obviously cemented quite some time ago, though Rob, possibly fearing a backlash, kept it under wraps until now.

Todd stands about six foot two or so, with a spiky brown crew cut and thick glasses. Installing himself in the large front office, as Vince returns to his former one, it’s possible he takes just as much pride in his military background as he does the retail one. One of his first moves is to install this wooden, cross shaped stand with a base, on an open spot of carpet in front of his desk. To then wrap his military uniform around, around its arms, topped off with a helmet.

But, yes, he says he was running this fairly large grocery store chain out in St. Louis, one which unfortunately went under due to circumstances beyond his control. He talks almost nonstop, and though possessing a strange sense of humor, does seem to have some legitimately solid ideas for improving this company. Is one of these types, however, it seems plainly obvious to Edgar at the outset, who is convinced that every good looking female is into him. In other words, he’s all over the map, presenting a ton of unfamiliar angles for them to analyze. The jury is still out and will likely remain deadlocked for quite some time — although at least one prominent figure is already not a fan.

They’ve gathered around the conference table at Central during this little introductory session. This handing over of the reigns might have gone a bit smoother if Rob were here, yet as it stands, this peculiar brand new figure has just been dropped into their midst unawares. One of his first major projects, Todd says, will be to install video surveillance at all of the stores. Edgar would agree that it’s hard to believe they’ve never done so, not even at their two newer locations that have been added in the last few years, so this move makes a great deal of sense.

“I’m huge on surveillance,” he boasts, “at my stores I even had the cashiers count their drawers at night right in front of this huge camera. That right there cut out the myjority of our theft issues, bigtime. So yeah, I’m all about it. I even keep video surveillance on my kids.”

“You keep video surveillance on your kids?” a queasy looking Destiny says, from the other end of the table.

“Um…no,” Todd not so convincingly replies, eyes darting around to gauge the other faces present. Offers a nervous chuckle and adds, “I was just kidding about that.”

After the meeting breaks and Todd goes to work on this video camera project, a much more longstanding one becomes their first significant change. For years Dale’s been wanting to do away with the 10% vitamins discount, which they’ve offered every Tuesday since well before even he worked for this company. Though Edgar’s been able to automate it on a schedule with Slingshot, in the Orchestra days he even had to manually add a new batch every week, which was something he forgot a handful of times. Not a big deal there, but a minor nuisance. Of greater concern is that Duane and Rob could never seem to make up their mind about either definitely keeping or doing away with the discount. For years now, the official HSM policy has been to leave the discount in place — but to discourage anyone ever mentioning it, as in they haven’t even been permitted to put any signs up advertising it. Dale’s whole point is that this is extremely stupid, and they should just make up their minds either way, because in its current configuration they’re just randomly hooking up whoever happens to stroll in and purchase vitamins on a Tuesday. It seems highly unlikely that many if any of their customers are making a point of visiting Healthy Shopper Market on that day just to score this discount.

Now that Dale approaches Todd with this topic, the response is a figurative, dismissive wave of the hand — yeah, sure, whatever, get rid of it if you want. In many respects, much like the Jimmy Ray Calhoun disappearance, it’s almost impossible to believe that such a longstanding battle is over in such anticlimactic fashion. And yet it’s also highly emblematic of Todd Cashner’s arrival in general. Thus far the transition has been shockingly subdued, although that only makes it all the more surreal.

Edgar has never quite been through a transfer of power like this, and wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Even in the corporate world, when he’s worked at the store level, switching out store managers is a fairly common occurrence and doesn’t really compare. The closest analog might be when they would bring in a different district manager, yet even then, you recognize that this person is just one of many scattered all over the country, and is pretty much expected just to duplicate what everyone else has been doing. At the opposite end of the spectrum, he’s worked for some single proprietors over the years, where this scenario doesn’t even apply in the slightest. No, this experience is wholly unique: working for a small but independent chain of businesses, one which has just replaced its leader.

The way this guy talks up his background, though, Edgar was half expecting one of those scenes out of a movie, where he brings each of them into his office, one by one, and debriefs them on everything they know, what they do here, what their experiences have been. Because, presumably, that must happen some of the time in the business world, during a transfer of power. None of that transpires, though, which isn’t maybe all that strange, who knows. Except Todd doesn’t really ask them many questions about anything, or undertake any kind of getting-to-know-you type exercises, and that is a little bit odd. It’s almost as though they are props, taking up space, totally inessential to him. He will figure out who is useful and who isn’t, over time, and isn’t really concerned about it either way.

It’s also possible that he is just too focused on his planned projects to worry about them at present. The early returns on these do look mighty encouraging. He has begun installing cameras everywhere already, which certainly cannot hurt their bottom line. That business about getting on the phone and saying, “security, please scan and record all areas” during a suspected theft, this was probably accomplishing somewhere in the neighborhood of nil. With the help of Felix, Jack, and a couple other independent contractors, Todd’s even gotten it set up to where there’s a screen in his office allowing him to check out any camera at any given moment.

Along similar lines, he has also assured them he will be purchasing a ton of brand new equipment. Furthermore, he has also already shown much greater interest in some of the numbers than even Duane did during his final months with this company. Edgar has his own project he wants to test the waters with, something he also sent Vince and Duane during Liberty’s dying throes, which has resurfaced in similar fashion over at Central. Somewhere along the line, though not searching for such, he happened to notice that an insane volume of rings were going to the generic housewares button on the cash register. Nothing happened the last time this went down, and he presented his findings to those two. With this latest iteration of the problem, though, he’s emailed Vince and copied Todd, and the latter responds within a couple of hours, agreeing that they need to investigate this.

So alright, Edgar’s thinking, they’re going to get some results with this guy. This could be a good sign. Unfortunately in this instance, a deeper examination reveals that just one cashier, this relatively new black kid, had been hitting that button for every item he came across that would not scan. Though an obvious problem that needed correcting, at least there wasn’t any kind of shadiness or buddy ringing in play here. Yet Todd tells Destiny to fire the kid anyway, which hadn’t exactly been Edgar’s intention.

It doesn’t just stop there, either. For well over a decade this company has had a policy of giving local “vendors” a 10% discount on everything they purchase in the store. But it’s not exactly a closely guarded secret that this policy has been incredibly loose for years, and that a couple longstanding cashiers and/or managers have been basically hooking up every friend they have who might so much as grow a few vegetables or sell some crafts on the side. Just about anyone could guess with a great deal of accuracy who these notorious offenders were, if not knowing such for a fact, but if not all they have to do is witness who’s raising the biggest stink when Todd also says nighty night to this program — Destiny and Shelly, mostly.

Up next on the agenda is a long discussed but never even investigated customer loyalty program, with cards that scan at the register. Apparently recognizing — or who knows, possibly asking around to determine — that their data coordinator is also probably the best guy in-house to assemble this proposal, Todd asks Edgar to put together some ideas for how they might tackle this. At the same time, he’s been tasked with looking into options, as far as what companies can physically crank out these cards.

Within about a week, they’ve narrowed this down to one printing enterprise they wish to work with. Better yet, Slingshot has always had this fairly robust feature for integrating a customer loyalty program, one that would even email targeted coupons to every shopper based upon their purchase history. Todd has Park design a sweet logo for these cards, and they’ve just submitted these to the printing company for inspection, however, when Todd…changes his mind. Not on the project itself, but the artwork. Because he has just decided he’s slightly rebranding this company. Moving forward, they will now be known as the Wholesome Shopper Market.

“If you really look into it, you’ll see that the word healthy is considered kinda cheesy, kinda outdated,” he explains, at the latest Monday morning meeting, “even Facebook has started to nulligate use of the word healthy. So yeah, we’re moving in this direction, and I really think it’s gonna help us capture a wider demographic of the market.”

Nulligate? Edgar writes upon his own notepad, and circles it, because he’s pretty sure this isn’t a word. And it isn’t, he will discover, looking it up later. Unlike the commonly employed myjority, another of Todd’s favorites, you can’t even really argue that this is attributable to an accent. And yet…you basically know what this made-up word means, anyway, the first time you hear it, so he supposes this counts a neologism. So maybe the dude’s on some sort of cutting edge with this one!

And yet, unlike the previous switch, from Healthy Hippie to Healthy Shopper, most aren’t too crazy about this change. His timing also seems more than a little wacky, considering he has now determined he does not want Park coming up with a brand new logo, not even for the relatively innocuous loyalty card project. Which means that entire concept has been put on hold while they await the delivery of this snazzy new, expensively outsourced logo.

One afternoon, Edgar’s exiting the Central office, bound on foot for the nearby store, and is surprised to sort-of encounter Todd out here, pacing around over near some bushes at the parking lot edge. Their building abuts a wild expanse of brush, framing some train tracks which erupt to life and predictably knock out their internet a few minutes every day — though even Felix (surprisingly?) can’t quite explain this phenomenon — and Todd is pacing that edge, between the brick corner and the vegetation.

Edgar does kind of wonder why he’s not just kicking back behind his massive, presidential desk, newly purchased, instead of skulking around out here, as he speaks to someone on his cell phone. Except then the content of the call reaches his ears, even though he’s moving away from the conversation, mostly due to Cashner’s booming voice. Appearances indicate that he’s attempting to be furtive, except no effort has been made to downshift vocally.

“Yeah, I’m tellin ya, it really is kind of a perfect opportunity…yeah, well, you’ll see once ya get here…I think you’ll like it…mmm hmm…like I said, it’s a pretty sweet deal…ha ha! Exactly!…well, I’m glad you’re comin aboard, we sure do need ya…”

Whatever he just overheard, Edgar’s pretty certain from the sounds of it that Todd’s already roping in one of his old cronies in some capacity. The question is, who is this, and how will it turn out? They’re already not quite sure what to think yet on this first pivotal new hire. Though keeping these thoughts to himself like nearly always, he can readily see this going either way. And has this sinking suspicion that Todd’s slipping in his own people at this early stage, with not even two months on the job, and not even definitively having figured out what all of his current personnel are responsible for, is probably not a good sign.