one way street of a grocery aisle

Among the first of many head-scratchers about this meeting is that by virtue of being here, this means that the five of them are not at Arcadia right now. They are seated in the semi-dark, as nobody has bothered turning on the overhead lights, with only those streaming in from the back of windows and the three offices illuminating them. Only Edgar has brought a notepad, so whatever this is, which the other four in the room already seem to know, the “new structure” must not be all that complicated or involved. This is when he first learns that Pierre O’Brien will now be his assistant.

“I’m not gonna get into…who did or didn’t do what,” Duane announces, from his seat at the head of the table, holding up one hand and shaking it around. “Bottom line is, you need some help. This weekend…well, it wasn’t a complete disaster, but it was close.”

“Really?” Edgar says.

“Yes. We have got to be more organized than this.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying.”

Yet Duane barges forward, which is right around when Edgar begins to realize that he alone is being addressed here. Are they for real? In what twisted universe would anyone consider this Arcadia opening his fault? Yet Duane continues, adding, “…and we also have got to have somebody here on Saturdays. Every Saturday, from now on. Now, you two can sort out amongst yourselves who’s actually doin’ what, but…”

The other strange thing about this powwow is that everyone is acting as though he already knew Pierre had been assigned to him. Including the man himself, who pipes up now and says, in his clipped, (faux) French accent, “mmm hmm and I was telling Duane I do not mind. I can work Saturdays, it is no problem.”

“Okay…that’s fine…,” Edgar shrugs, looking over at Pierre, more than a little bewildered still by this ambush.

He should have known it wouldn’t be long before Corey Brown spoke up, with his own warped, possibly nonsensical take on the situation, and this moment has indeed arrived. The placement of which is also bizarre in itself, not applying the least bit to this train of discussion.

“We need to see a paper trail of everything you’re doing!” Corey barks, jabbing an index finger across the table, in Edgar’s direction.

Edgar jerks his own digit of choice, a thumb, back in the direction of his office and calmly tells Corey. “There already is a paper trail of everything. There always has been. It’s saved on the Orchestra desktop. Anyone can look at that at any time. But, I mean…what’s this all about, anyway?”

“We’ve got sale prices not ringing, we’ve got a ton of items not in the system…there needs to be some accountability here!” Corey declares.

“I’m doing my job, okay?” Edgar tells him.

Duane cackles and says, “you need help.”

“And that’s fine, I’m not opposed to having help. But at the time I left on Friday, I had completely added everything that everyone sent to me. I can take you in there and show you the paper trail on that right now if you like,” he says, staring Corey down with only a brief glance at Duane in the middle. As it’s his turn to point an index finger now, in the direction of his office.

Vince, the only other person on Edgar’s side of the table, has sat beside him this entire time without a peep. When he finally does speak, it’s so surreal as to border on hilarious — no, make that decisively obliterating the border, it is hilarious — in blowing right past Corey on the ridiculousness meter as well.

“Ideally, we would like to have every new item added before it even gets to the store.”

Edgar whips his head around toward this old man, now, unable to believe what he’s just heard. Possibly out of anyone who has ever worked here, at least during his stint with the company, Vince should be the last person to make such a comment. Is this dude insane? How does he think this stuff works? That the items float through the ether and magically add themselves, as soon as the semi backs up to their loading dock?

He raises his eyebrows, and pointedly tells Vince, “I agree. I think that is an awesome idea. But I’ve still got people strolling up to me all the time, telling me to add something, or wheeling out an entire shopping cart…”

“Well, that needs to stop,” Duane interjects.

“Yeah and I mean, I added twelve hundred new items those last two days at Arcadia. A thousand on Friday alone. Nobody knew that they weren’t in the system until then? I guarantee it’s the same deal with these sale prices you’re talking about. I don’t feel like this is about me getting more organized. This is about having someone on hand to deal with last minute freakouts.”

“Yeah, well, you two are gonna be splitting your job right down the middle,” Corey says, and though this contradicts what Duane had just said about deciding themselves, whips a finger back and forth between Edgar and Pierre, “everything you’re doing, he’s gonna be doing.”

Edgar sighs, shakes his head, and fully regards Pierre before telling him, “you’re gonna have to be extremely organized with this job…”

“That’s fine. I am very good with details.”

“…I mean, like, we had Christie adding new items in the deli for awhile, and that was a complete disaster…”

“Yes…,” Duane croaks, nodding along as he recalls.

“…the brand names have to be spelled the exact same way, every time. You’ve got to make sure they’re added to the correct department, based on the ingredients, for tax reasons, and EBT…you’ve got to break down every ingredient on every deli recipe, uh…”

“Uh huh, that is fine. Like I say, I am very good with details.”

Edgar considers this pronouncement suspect at best, but there’s not much that can be said about it — his bosses have told him this is happening, and that’s that. Still, there are things Pierre can be useful for, no doubt about it, like for example the hanging of the shelf tags, or even those scan audits. Those don’t take any special skill, pretty much anyone capable of paying attention for ten seconds at a time can pull that off. Time consuming but entry level stuff, in other words, and as long as they hew closer to Duane’s vision, rather than Corey’s, the arrangement should pan out alright.

As the meeting breaks up, the three head honchos stand around chatting. Pierre follows him into his office, as they too remain on their feet, discussing how this will play out, from opposite sides of the desk. “It will be fine. Like I say, I can work Saturdays, it is no problem. This will help because I know you cannot always finish everything.”

“I’m staying caught up with my work. That’s not what this is about. People are going to have to get more organized, that’s all there is to it,” Edgar tells him. “Like even tagging Arcadia — I’m not the official Tag Hanger Guy, I never have been. Anybody can do that. Pretty much everyone should be doing that.”

“Yes, but…” Pierre attempts interjecting.

“I mean, the last time I was up at Walnut, they had a girl there on her second day, she was scanning and printing tags!” Edgar barges onward with this rant, “and actually, now that I think about it, even at Arcadia, someone must have been doing some of that before I even…”

Pierre nods and says, “oh yeah, uh huh, I did a lot of that, mmm hmm.”

Having obviously overheard much if not all of this verbal barrage, Corey can’t resist drifting into the office now himself, and chiming in with his own deranged but apparently prevailing viewpoints. “Okay, but it’s not just about that. You need to be a little more on top of, okay, this store is still heavy on such and such product. So even though, yes, the sale has ended, if you know this, you need to go ahead and extend it.”

“I need to be on top of what stores have how much of which product, and make the decisions on extending sales?” Edgar blurts out, dumbfounded by this remark.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that. And anyway, we have plenty of situations where, okay, an item’s still on sale, but store A has already run out of it, so they’re reordering it at normal price. Meanwhile stores B and C are sitting on a ton of it, but nobody thought to check.”

“It’s a process, okay? But we’re getting there,” Corey says, and leaves the room. Edgar shakes his head and sighs — or not so much sighs, rather flips a lever to allow some steam to escape — as he and Pierre exchange a glance. Then Pierre also exits the room.

Up next to enter is Dale. Anyone in the merchandisers’ office had front row seats for this performance as well, and they’ve really gotten their money’s worth today. Dale’s smiling, but has both middle fingers raised as he approaches Edgar’s desk. Then he stops, and rotates his hips so those middle fingers are now directed toward the conference room. Drops his hands and grins over at Edgar, wordlessly.

“Oh yeah. Totally,” Edgar tells him.

After he leaves the room, Valerie is next to make an appearance. Edgar still has not sat down. She sidles over and rubs one of his arms, while peering up at him and smirking. Now it’s her turn to shake her head.

“What just happened?” he mumbles.

“I don’t know, but…I was gonna say we can go grab a beer later if you wanna talk about it…”

He nods and says. “That sounds great right about now.” Then, in a highly atypical move for him, mutters under his breath, “what a fuckin jackass…”

“Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure,” she says, laughing and looking back at him as she walks away.

Well, he hadn’t actually named any names, so it’s not as though he threw one specific person under the box truck. She can draw her own conclusions — at least up until maybe they go grab that beer. Maybe she already knows exactly who he was talking about, or maybe she was just placating him. It doesn’t really matter. As fired up as he is, he could have said much worse.

O to be a tall white male, stomping around with coffee mug in hand, making grand pronouncements! This is after all what most people mean, when they describe someone as seeming very “managerial.” Wearing a serious expression at all times also helps, if you can swing it. But who are we kidding here? Some people are truly gifted leaders, but most have no further qualifications than these superficial ones. If he and Corey were to switch places right now, he’s certain that one of them would crash and burn in horrific fashion, the other would…well, at the very least hold his own right out of the gate, and probably even excel.

Yet the paradox here is that those smugly delusional enough to believe that they bring mad qualifications and insights to such a lofty position, oblivious to their shortcomings, those are indeed often the ones earmarked as having that elusive “managerial” aura. So yes, concerning Johnny’s point that this promotion went straight to Corey’s head, that might be true, but the attitude was already there before that happened. He has always had this very managerial attitude that runs something like this:

WHATEVER I’M MAKING UP THIS VERY INSTANT = CORRECT

ANYTHING ANYONE ELSE MIGHT BE SAYING = INCORRECT

Edgar’s first order of business is to sit down and fire off an email, once he has calmed down, explaining to every relevant figure that per Corey Brown, they are no longer permitted to bring him anything in person. Everything is to be submitted via email, which was always the stated policy anyway, though they’ve slowly drifted away from this as he attempted to be as accommodating as possible. Yet for reasons of time, and also to establish a proper paper trail, he has no choice but to reject anything submitted to him in any other fashion.