“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — G1

“He’s almost eighty now, but he’s got a mind like a calculator,” Duane tells Edgar, en route to the Bellwether Snacks headquarters, “and he still works, too: two days a week, like clockwork. You can count on it.”

This trip across town was Duane’s idea. He’d stuck his head into Edgar’s office and said he was cruising over to the corporate office, and suggested this ride along. It was intended as a rapport building exercise, most likely, between the two of them, but is also Edgar’s first opportunity for meeting certain key management if not ownership figures. So they hopped into the president’s spacious, silver colored truck, and now have just about reached their destination.

Though Duane projects a brooding aura, Edgar is beginning to see that his boss is for the most part a really nice guy. Sure, nobody you would want to mess with, Edgar thinks it goes without saying, but yeah, the boss’s baseline is probably much friendlier than most would suppose. He has a ton of experience, too, having broken into this business as a meat cutter, decades ago, and slowly working his way up through the ranks, via numerous different companies. And he still has a soft spot for the meat department, it seems to Edgar — if earmarking a product line he wants to introduce, thus far it’s almost always something from this category that Duane is bringing him.