“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter Two

The job sounds straightforward enough. They are a tiny chain of 3 retail outlets, specializing in natural and locally sourced products, for health minded individuals. Though Bellwether Snacks owns them, these stores have relatively complete autonomy, so long as they are profitable. Healthy Hippie Market doesn’t really have its own accounting department, and nobody inside the stores whatsoever, but Edgar Lodge will be the closest thing to it.

It’s a position that hasn’t existed before. Edgar’s primary role will be to go through every single invoice, make sure each item is charged to the correct department. Then to make sure the correct retails are charged on the products, based upon that department’s margin. He must also make sure the correct tax rates are applied to these products, based upon some truly mind-numbing finer points of this fair state’s tax code.

Still, it all sounds somewhat basic, just a lot of concentration upon tiny details and a baseline of standard math/accounting type knowledge. He had turned in his application at the Palmyra store nearly a month earlier, during which time they’d seemed extremely excited and assured him they would call back right away; it was only this outrageous enthusiasm which prompted him to call back on two separate occasions, because nobody from the store ever had. Each time a different management figure gushed forth with assurances that yes, they were still interested. Eventually, his application somehow wound up clear down at the Southside location — coffee stained, he is told, fittingly enough, and not by him for once — and they gave him a ring.

The afternoon he is hired, they explain that they had originally found someone else online, who called on the day he was supposed to start, to say this was too much of a drive, and that he wasn’t interested. That was 3 weeks ago. Prior to this, Teri Barnette, the IT person, was updating the prices and adding new items when she had time, when people emailed her such, but this wasn’t really an IT job and she was spread a little too thin to perform both roles. But sales were increasing and they needed to get more on top of things, and a whole lot more beyond that.

Though he will be working out of the Southside store, an hour south in the big city of Chesboro, one of Edgar’s first orders of business is to catalog the massive wine collection at Palmyra. If he understands the current situation correctly, the HHM at one time had a cash register slash database system called Trampoline years ago, but then got away from this in favor of hand tagging everything the old fashioned way. Only recently have they installed a brand new software program, Orchestra, but a large percentage of the product still needs to be added into that system.

This is where Edgar comes into the mix, per Corey’s chief priority. One entire aisle is taken up by this huge wooden wine cabinet, double sided, stained some dark color and really looking like something you’d expect to see in a cigar shop which also sells high priced vino. The thing is even taller than Corey and jammed to the hilt with all manner of product. Edgar spends two full days scanning every bottle, printing out a new tag if it’s missing or incorrect, and then writing down all pertinent information if it doesn’t ring at the register.

It’s probably telling that before he ever gets down to serious business, behind his desk at the Southside store, the head honcho here assigns him the exact same task, first thing. The store manager here is Destiny Davis and, unlike Corey, she majorly dresses the part of your consummate flower child. Long, flowing, multi-colored and intricately patterned skirts, billowing blouses, jangling jewelry. Haired dyed a vibrant orange, most of the time — so they have that much in common, although Corey’s is presumably natural — and granny glasses, plus this perfume just about every day which is vaguely tropical and reminds Edgar of the Flamingo casino out in Las Vegas. She also has this manner of walking which vaguely resembles someone flopping herself forward, arms advancing slightly after the rest of the body, which calls to mind a teenager maybe only halfway joking as she protests doing her chores.

Still, she seems pleasant enough, and even rewards Edgar with a six pack of Bell’s Oberon as thanks for a job well done with the wine. While he is sorting through the wine situation out here on the floor — their display is only slightly less intimidating than Palmyra’s, one side of a normal grocery aisle and then various islands beside it — she is continually bringing things in from the back dock, too, some dated as far back as 2002, for him to scan. Alcohol seems to be a matter of pressing urgency for these bosses, but apparently not that pressing.

Otherwise, the time has come for settling in behind his desk, and learning the lay of the land elsewhere. Whenever Teri Barnette has time, she shows him the ropes as far as the pieces of his job she’s been performing — beyond this, he’s basically on his own.

The second floor at Southside consists of a conference room, one wall a bank of windows overlooking the grocery store floor, the opposite one behind it opening up into three offices. As Edgar and Teri work from a pair of desks in the middle office, they’ve got the company president, Duane Hatley, on one side of them, and then the department heads on the other. Edgar knows spreadsheets, and basic accounting principles, anything else he’d pretty much need to be aware of on that front, but the Orchestra software is foreign to him. Teri’s a bit older, somewhat of a tomboy — or possibly make that a self-reliant country homesteader, at least in appearance and mannerisms, situated directly between Corey and Destiny — and does a tremendous job explaining everything to him. She’s also kind of funny, extremely level headed, and really one of the few like-minded individuals he’s met at this company thus far.

It’s going to take a while to sort out impressions of his Southside brethren. From what he’s seen of the Palmyra crew, they are a bit more streamlined up there, as far as personalities and demographics represented. And while Edgar has yet to meet a single soul over at Liberty Avenue, or set foot inside that store, he’s guessing they’re not quite as wide-ranging as this Southside bunch, either. Also, he is reminded of what it was like moving to a new school, for example, where it seems like everybody already knows a ton about him, but he has no clue who they are. One afternoon in the early going he steps into the department head office and encounters the vitamin merchandiser, Dale Paquette, and one of the vitamin employees down there on the floor, a short, squat black woman given to wearing cab driver hats, Rachel, mid-conversation.

“Edgar’s the partner in crime,” Dale says, looking up and roping him into whatever this is, as soon as he enters the room.

“With what?” he questions, grinning.

Dale’s a tall, gaunt, somewhat skeletal guy of indeterminate age, given to wearing baseball caps. Which, along with his glinting, gold rimmed glasses, somehow lend him the appearance of a slightly mischievous little kid. Even though he’s heard from a handful of others that Dale continues to suffer all sorts of health problems, he is one of those people whose somewhat frail and sickly state has, however improbably, made him appear much younger.

“Oh, it’ll be like that Will Ferrell skit from Saturday Night Live, what was that, him and that other guy were…,” Dale explains, as he does his weird, repetitive neck tilting maneuver.

“Night at the Roxbury?”

“Yeah. Think that’ll work?”

“If it were the late 90s, maybe…”

Rachel, briefly silent up to this point, pipes up by inquiring, “so what’s Edgar’s game, then?”

“I don’t have any game,” he tells them.

“Should I tell the girls I work at Healthy Hippie Market? Think that’ll impress them?” Dale wonders.

“Mmm, not so much,” Edgar replies.

“Okay, what about a fry cook at McDonald’s? Would that be better?”

“It might,” Rachel admits.

Dale offers a knowing grin and a sort of what’s up? nod in Edgar’s direction and tells Rachel, “you know he’s mackin’ on all kinds of girls, how many girls you mackin’ on right now, Edgar?”

“A gentleman never tells,” Edgar drily replies.

Rachel howls and brings her hands together in a clap, once, holding them there. “Ooh hoo HOO! Now we know he’s got a lot of ‘em!”

“That many, huh?” Dale says, then tells Rachel, “you know, he sits over there in his office and sends Duane emails on everything we talk about. He just sits there quiet and records everything.”

“I’m on your side,” Edgar insists.

“Mmm hmm,” Rachel says, not buying it.

About five minutes later, he’s sitting in his office, poring over a spreadsheet. He has no idea that these two are peeking around the edge of the door, watching him, until Rachel starts cracking up.

“Look at him! He always acts so innocent!” she declares, now that he’s aware of their presence.

“You know he flipped over to that screen real quick,” Dale agrees.

The weird thing about this exchange is that this is for all intents the first conversation he’s had with either of them, apart from being introduced by Teri, briefly, days earlier. That and he has absolutely no idea what any of this is about. He thinks he played along admirably under the circumstances, but yeah, not a clue what their conversation meant.