“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter 98

The inaugural and, as it turns out, only, WSM fantasy football season concludes with Will and Brian making the playoffs from the East, Jack and a surging dark horse Sharon from the West. Edgar was assuming he would have to win out in order to stand a chance, and this was true, although he nearly pulled that off. His only blemish arrives in the second-to-last game of the season, where once again Edgar’s team inexplicably posts about half the projected points, just barely losing to Craig’s one man Freeman show.

Anything anywhere in the neighborhood of an average week would have been enough to send him into the playoffs. He would have finished with the same record as Brian, but with more points. As it stands, following an anticlimactic final week where Brian gets to thoroughly smoke Craig, only the second half of that equation winds up being true. From here on out he consoles himself by watching the results from the sidelines, tallying up how many points he would have had and who’d he have played, and observes that if simply managing to make the playoffs, he would have won the entire ball of wax. As it stands, the other, ultimately more successful late charger Sharon winds up taking down the crown, pocketing a cool $160 for her efforts. Even though that’s really kind of secondary to the bragging and taunting rights this title earns you.

So this is not only an entertaining diversion, but aside from its benefits as a team building exercise, there’s probably some useful correlation here pertaining to their jobs, a business application relatable to this friendly competition. Certainly those with similar roles have just as much fun talking smack about sales figures and profit margin percentages. As it stands, with such a pursuit suddenly absent from their days, the atmosphere around this office might threaten to become a lot more dull — if there wasn’t so much genuine business related insanity here to keep them occupied, a zaniness level suddenly ramped up to ten.

Edgar doesn’t question much, if anything, until their first inventory of the Todd Cashner era. Up to this point, while perpetually coming off as too busy to talk much, everything has checked out about the guy. He’s been willing to spring for equipment, has implemented a few genuinely strong ideas, and hasn’t been overly dismissive toward theirs. Has generally if not literally waved off proposals brought to him, such as eliminating Vitamins Tuesday, without a word of protest or question asked, telling them, sure, fine, whatever. He talks a good game and seems to know what he’s doing, or at least displays the confidence of a guy who is convinced he knows what he’s doing.

This initial inventory brings with it the first sour detected note. The way this is working now, having gotten rid of the LVIS crew and their profit eating gypsy moth sounding machines, is for every department manager to send Edgar their numbers. He will compile them and forward these in a single report to Todd, who will give the numbers a once over and move them along to Rob. They’d even being doing so during the transitional era under Vince, following their complete recounts after all three stores. In the weeks leading up to this one, the departments have been instructed to go through each four feet section, checking the inventories for accuracy, and committing any changes. Dale has even gone as far as to print out maps of his departments, which they have been Xing out as they go along, to chart their progress.

So this is all fairly straightforward. Edgar’s biggest task is to basically input and rearrange the information being sent to him, because Todd wants the information in a different format than what the Slingshot reports are cranking out. The simplest way to pull these off is to dump the info as-is into one tab, with formulas dropping the totals over into another tab in the arrangement that Todd prefers. Again, this part is no big deal, although Edgar does field questions throughout the day, mostly from the trickier random weight departments. Given the urgency of inventory day, it’s also one of the few exceptions where he encourages people to call him if they need to instead of sending an email.

Actually, as far as random weight stuff is concerned, the bulk department is just about as straightforward as can be, no worse than any of the packaged categories. With Corey long since out of the picture, they haven’t had to engage in any subterfuge regarding the ordering, pretending to stock Bellwether product while continuing to bring in the less expensive organic stuff. Which would never have worked with this more robust, inventory tracking Slingshot program anyway. Nowadays it’s a simple metaphorical apples to apples comparison in bulk, provided the bulk managers are actually ordering what the bin sticker says they should.

Concerning actual apples vs. apples, there are some questions in produce, though even then not a ton. Thanks to the SKU number madness from Alfredson’s, they were pretty much forced to tie all similar items together in their system anyway. Which made sense from a line pricing standpoint besides. The typically have one entry for the organic version of something and count all those together — regardless of the variety — and another of the conventional, all lumped together. Most of the questions arrive concerning whenever a third variable enters the picture, when something is termed “local” or “mountain” or what have you, and might have a different price point. Or, in rare occasions, if something is sold at such a premium (like mushrooms, for example, which are usually not line priced) that they require being treated separately.

Most of the questions arise from deli supplies, which everyone at least recognizes remains a colossal work in progress. They’ve made tremendous strides, but there’s the still outstanding project of Vicky entering precise recipe quantities into the ChefAssist program. Even then, Edgar’s discovering that getting reports out of ChefAssist is also not the most intuitive or simple thing in the universe. Then there are the actual supplies themselves. When ordered properly, as in they’ve added the supplier under the deli account from a vendor, calling it UnivDeli or AlfredDeli or whatever to distinguish it in their system, this is not a problem. Unfortunately it’s impossible to account for every contingency, and there are plenty of occasions where due to either a shortage, an oversight, a brand new recipe, whatever the situation may be, an employee is running out to grocery or produce and grabbing something that they need.

In the heat of the moment it’s highly improbable that the proper transfer process was maintained, so this is throwing off the inventory in the moment, plus in many instances there still hasn’t been any ordering option, the so-called “supply version,” added to deli for this particular item. Which means when deli’s looking in their cooler and counting one little bottle of sriracha, and committing that, it’s totally possible that grocery reaches their condiment section out on the floor a half hour later, scans this same item, mutters what the hell? as they change the inventory from one to the ten or twelve that they are counting out here. Or it may flow in the opposite direction. It is obviously preferable that the deli always order larger, food service type quantities of everything, which wouldn’t be stocked elsewhere, but if not they’ve steadily added all-purpose type numbers for “ranch dressing” or whatever, which everyone should use during these outlier situations. The question is whether everyone is aware of this and doing so, or if they’re just messing up the grocery or produce inventory instead.

This is without even getting into the whole madness of having, say, three different kinds of mayonnaise they might use, depending upon the recipe. There are plenty of occasions where Vicky will stroll into Edgar’s office, with a deli sticker clinging to one of her fingers, and ask, “why do we have Smokemaster BBQ Sauce in this recipe? I can tell by looking at the ingredients breakdown that that’s what it is.”

“I don’t know,” Edgar will most likely shrug, unless he added this within the past week or so and actually remembers it, explaining something along the lines of, “that’s probably what whoever sent that told me to put on there. Either that or they just said BBQ Sauce, and I picked one at random.”

“Yeah but we’re using Carolina Pit Boss brand in this recipe. This needs to be changed.”

And so on. You could break this down into so many micro arguments that it would take all day to tackle them all. The most salient points are probably, umm…how would I know that? and, one level higher, is somebody going to actually police that? Otherwise even if we change this, half the employees are going to use whatever they feel like or have on hand right that second, which would make this a waste of time anyway. But, yes, re inventory, these kind of situations are one reason there will always be a lot of back and forth on this particular day.

So this is the situation throughout the latest inventory, as he’s alternately working on the numbers and fielding phone calls. As such he’s aware of and occasionally spots Todd, who is cranking out some mammoth stack of papers at the same printer all of them use, in the main room, but isn’t paying him any mind. At least not until Todd appears before him, in his office, with said massive stack of papers, handing them over for Edgar’s inspection.

“This is a new company I’m thinkin about switchin over to, for inventory,” Todd explains. As Edgar glances down at the full color top page, he can see that it’s apparently called TransContintental, and begins rifling through them while his boss continues to speak. “Let me know what you think. Cause this Slingshot’s kind of a joke.”

“Really? I think it’s actually a pretty good program overall. My only complaint really is that some of the reports aren’t that great. Of course even then we can submit a request to have them make a custom…”

Todd nods, cutting him off as he says, “and that’s what I’m talkin about, reports. I think this TransContinental is gonna be much much better. This way we can get away from Slingshot.”

“So what, this would replace Slingshot?”

“No, it’s another program on the side that we’d funnel all the information over to, see. Like it just runs and does its thing on the back end. This way we would just go there for reports.”

“Hmm,” Edgar nods, continuing to leaf through it. These full color screen captures of its various dashboards and screens certainly look robust enough, as do the graphs and pie charts and other reports, but it’s hard to say at a glance. Todd keeps talking like he knows all about Slingshot and yet, he’s only asked maybe two questions about it, tops, since arriving here. So presumably he is filled on the differences somehow regardless. Enough to be broaching this topic before even making it through his first inventory with Slingshot, for example.

“Anyway, take a look at that and kinda be thinkin about it,” Todd tells him, right before adding the punchline. “They’re gonna be here at three.”

“Three!? What, today!?”

“Yeah. You and me’s gonna sit down with them and see what they have to say.”

And they do, as the two of them hunker down at the conference room table with a pair of reps from that company. Todd introduces Edgar to them as his “techie guy,” which he thinks is a little weird, but whatever. The meeting eats up nearly an hour, yet is still fairly inconclusive, with Todd only committing to thinking things over and weighing their proposal. Of course, this means Edgar has to stay over now, out of the blue, to finish up what has to be done regarding inventory. But he figures this is no big deal, he can make up the hours — and anyway, he’s of a mind that if your boss tells you to put everything on hold for a meeting, then that’s precisely what you do, no questions asked or protests raised.

That nothing more is ever said about TransContinental again is somewhat beside the point, and not even all that surprising once he gets to know Todd a little better. Much more substantial and disturbing is how, the day the inventory numbers come back, Edgar and the merchandisers receive this bizarre email from him, with no advance warning. It’s only three lines but is no less perplexing for its brevity:

Okay everyone, incomplete vendor information cannot hold up perpetual inventory any longer. Please contact your suppliers for the necessary information as soon as possible. And be sure to forward all files to Edgar.

It’s amazing how many different ways a somewhat straightforward, if kooky and unexpected, message can be interpreted. Brian and Vince don’t respond at all, actually, which is perhaps the best strategy in this instance. Vicky shoots Edgar a message, asking him what else is needed because she thought he had everything and this is the first she’s heard about this. Dale is pretty ticked off, meanwhile, and seems to be under the impression that Edgar had gone to Todd and complained about them. Which is certainly understandable given the way their president has phrased his missive.

After thinking about it for a while, Edgar replies to Todd and copies all merchandisers with his own response, which is meant to corral this wide range of notions. Where would Todd even be getting this? He has surely conversed with Rob about the numbers, which came back way softer than expected. But it seems fairly obvious that he’s also fallen under the spell of the complainers, i.e. walking to the stores and being accosted by them with their endless, though mostly groundless, series of beefs.

Todd: Actually, our information should be in really good shape. If this is about how the inventory came back, then in my humble opinion, it’s the stores themselves that are not holding up their end of the bargain. We’ve been telling them for about a year now that they have to stay on top of their inventory counts and continually spot check them. I think the actual problem is that some of these department managers need to go bye-bye.

Naturally, even this response has him feeling like somewhat of a troublemaker. But what other recourse is there? You’re not allowed to confront people directly, because you have no authority, and would likely end up in hot water with human resources — or, at best, the person just ignores you, because he can, because, again, you have no actual authority over anyone; copying them in an email is considered “passive-aggressive” and also derided, frowned upon; busting other people out in an email where they weren’t included is considered gossipy and/or defensive, keeping the pot stirred up, so then what? You just take the heat personally for everything even if it wasn’t your fault? Or ignore every message from up top entirely?

The only answer, of course, is that there is no other answer except to note that having a job sucks! That is the answer! There is no other rational way to respond! But this tyranny of the complainers, this is basically the textbook example of anecdotal evidence. They will never stop complaining, because they can keep it vague and never have to provide specifics. Meanwhile Edgar is actually throwing down the gauntlet suggesting that Todd take every vendor file if he likes and compare that against what’s in their database, and see if he seriously believes that “incomplete” or for that matter incorrect information is the culprit here.

Or that the receivers are even checking things in wrong. This is another common go-to, although the notorious gripers have apparently steered clear of it in this instance. But he thinks Sharon and Sarah are extremely accurate with their work, which for that matter becomes increasingly so as they are often mostly just confirming that the electronic files match what they received and that the case quantity format is correct in Slingshot. Actually, one major reason the complainers don’t play that card here is surely because they are checking in their own product at Arcadia, which is also the home of many prominent bellyachers. Complaining about the receivers there would be complaining about themselves, so they clearly weren’t taking that route. Or admit to not exactly spot checking all sections (or any sections, in some instances, Edgar is certain) even when Dale printed out those maps for his vitamins people. Some of the most notorious ones with horrific attitudes have said all along they’re not doing this, and they just let whatever inventory numbers were showing ride as-is into the inventory count.

There are other factors in play, too, which he doesn’t even get into now. The complainers generally hate the non-complainers, those who get it, especially those who get it in regards to these newer programs, and Edgar is at or near the top of their list. Additionally, he knows that some of these department managers and other assorted hippies are convinced that if they just complain about Slingshot enough, then this company will go back to its old way of doing things. And that’s what they really want, most of all — to bring LVIS back and count their inventory so they don’t have to stay on top of it, to walk around writing orders down on a clipboard instead of learning how to set up CAO.