“Todd canceled the scales order,” Vicky announces, bursting into the employee break room.
“What!?” Edgar halfway shrieks, seated at one of the long tables, behind his laptop, “you’re kidding!”
Vicky clearly is not, however, shaking her head for confirmation now as she further explains, “nope. I just found out.”
Bolting to his feet, Edgar tells her, “oh no. That’s not gonna work!”
“That’s what I’m saying. Maybe you can talk to him. I already tried, but all he had to say was, we’re goin’ with what’s already here, they’re good enough.”
“Oh my god…,” Edgar groans, shaking his own head now as he then runs a hand down his face.
After the two of them march off across the store, Vicky suggests grabbing Felix for additional support, and this is a great idea. Felix at least has finally been made to understand that these departmental scales operate behind a completely different database than everything else, while at the same time feeding into and requiring compatibility with their other programs.
Maybe this is a more complicated subject than it appears, but Edgar feels once again like most random people you hired off the street would grasp this in an instant. It’s hard to say why most management figures or even their head of IT have had such a time wrapping their heads around this concept. They are now on their third back-of-house database program, and none of them have fed things like ingredients, shelf life, tares and so on down to their departmental scales. It’s likely something like that exists out there in the universe, but then again, this was true even when Edgar worked at Kroger, the largest grocery store chain in the country — totally separate databases. Even if you wanted a sales report on random weight stuff, that was a different process.
Todd’s big blowoff here is even worse in a situation like this. It’s akin to how they had three different scale programs in four different stores at one point, because those databases certainly don’t speak to one another, period. This is a similar predicament, but to a much larger degree. Edgar hadn’t been sweating this situation at all when expecting a bunch of brand-new scales for Lorena, which would tie in with their existing database. The deli, meat, produce and bulk departments would switch over to using their existing Wholesome Shopper Market PLU numbers, end of story. Anything they were selling that was unique to this Lorena store could then be added.
Now that Todd’s canceled the order, this has created a separate pair of huge problems. The first is that, say, PLU 100 will ring up as something completely different at this store alone, when they crank out a tag from their deli scale or whatever. As would 200, 300, 400, 9999, you name it. The other issue is that in many instances, they will have two different numbers for the same things, like for example MRI’s number for chicken salad being 544 and WSM’s being 1326. Not only that, but it also hasn’t eliminated the need to add the unique items to their existing databases anyway — Lorena’s to RU Data, WSM’s to the Lorena scales — so that job remains exactly the same on top of everything else.
Having blessedly reached the promised land of January 13, this is their first morning finally permitted inside Lorena. The scale situation is about the third major atom bomb to hit, and it’s not yet 10am. Which is expected to some extent on an undertaking such as this, though they’ve done themselves no favors once again in this ship-captain-who-forgot-water sense of drawing this magic one week figure out of a hat, and announcing that is precisely how much time is needed to open a store of this magnitude. But, okay, you anticipate that things will be forgotten, and to not work, and for unforeseeable delays to occur. Those are unavoidable. What doesn’t make any sense at all are these situations where someone has made an active decision so horrific it causes your brain to melt to even analyze it. All you can say is, as was the case in so many dealings with the Arcadia opening, and Harry and especially Corey in general, is that these figures really do believe they are experts on any number of topics, despite in fact being completely clueless. The three of them now hunting Todd down, along with Teri, wherever she is at this moment, are the four persons working here who know most about this topic, yet none were consulted on this decision. That’s because in Todd’s mind, he is a wizard, and the rest of their combined knowledge amounts to a pittance.
Well, that’s part of it, anyway. The other part is…despite his endless bluster about all the sweet deals he’s made on everything, Todd sure doesn’t act it. And this isn’t the stressed-out penny pinching of a middle-aged Dad making out the family budget, more like someone who’s boasted nonstop about his sweet deals but has suddenly realized he actually spent way more money than the family ever had. Not that he’s ever going to admit as such, of course. A character like this is going to continue boasting and putting up an unflappably confident facade forever. This entire store could fall into a sinkhole tomorrow, and Todd would be championing the two or three objects that remained above ground, insist that these are the only ones he wanted anyway and were the entire point of the acquisition.
Now that they’ve caught Todd unawares by assailing him in this manner, however, they’ve got him on his heels. This is surely the best way to approach him, it seems obvious by now — do not give him advanced warning, or the time to polish his snake oil pitch. So while Todd wants to start in right away with his backpedaling moves of hinting that this information could be sent down from RU Data, that the problem is they’re not advanced enough to behold its greatness, this defense was already expected. As such Edgar is able to immediately counter that even if that were true — which it isn’t — this still wouldn’t eliminate half their problems. For example, the department scales around here aren’t even online.
“Those are just gonna have to go away at some point,” Edgar says, “the sooner the better. They’re gonna have to switch over to our numbers for everything. Either that or we figure out how to reprogram them or…”
“Yeah like I’ve already had this talk with a few of them back there in the deli,” Vicky counters, “I don’t care how you used to make things. This is how you’re making them now. You don’t work for MRI, you work for Wholesome Shopper Market.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Edgar agrees, “we need to get rid of their recipes and their PLUs and everything else as soon as possible. Unless it was something totally unique to this store.”
“So what would be faster, though?” Felix asks, though more in the manner of a talk show moderator, keeping the conversation moving along even if already knowing the answer.
“I think we need to order the scales we already have,” Edgar says, with a one shoulder shrug, “I mean, could I search around online and figure out how those things work? Probably, but…even then, everyone back there says they’ve always had to stand there and enter things into the scales. So who knows how long this might take, if it’s even possible. Or maybe we could get that Gary guy in here, who helped us with the ones at Central, or…I don’t know…”
“So you’re saying we should order the scales?”
“Yeah, I think we need to order the scales we already have. At least we know they’re compatible, we can send all the information down.”
Throughout the second half of this back and forth, Todd has sort of stomped around in a circle, cast his eyes around the store, nodded a bunch but not said much, scowling and obviously not real happy about any of it. Nonetheless, they eventually secure a concession from them, as he pinches together his thumb and first two fingers of one hand together, jabs it in their direction with nearly every syllable.
“Okay. Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna authorize ordering…five…scales. That’s it. Three for the deli, one for meat, one for bulk and produce to share. That’s it.”
They actually need nine scales, if they’re going to replace the existing ones, but Edgar figures he’ll gladly accept these five for now. As they’re set on their merry way, with Felix promising to place this order immediately, the three of them separate once more. This should solve some problems, although even so, there’s a huge one looming in that the meat department’s cutting room scale is actually attached to its giant conveyor belt wrapping device. He can totally understand why Todd might not wish to fork over the cash to replace that monstrosity, but at the same time, either Edgar is going to have to figure out how to upload their own info into the thing, and overwrite the existing information, or they’re going to have to get some sort of specialist out here who knows how to do so. He makes a note on his clipboard, which is basically an extra limb on a day like today, to investigate this device online, and returns to his post at the employee breakroom.
As one could imagine, today has already featured an endless string or revelations, disruptions, victories, and course changes. On the plus side, this is a mammoth store, and it should generate some serious volume for them, assuming they haven’t completely misjudged this community’s interest in such. And on the interior, the contractors Todd has hired have done an impressive job revamping things so far. Much work remains, but those guys are humming away at a furious pace, and the new décor looks refreshingly modern in here.
The Universal Foods crew is stocking shelves and now hanging the tags that Edgar brought over with a fury, too. Ken Douglas has flown into Chesboro this morning, which was a pleasant surprise, as was the arrival of Stephen from RU Data. In stark contrast to Matt Abernathy’s mumbling, subject changing, bug-eyed deflections, or even that Glen dude whom Edgar remains neutral on, he already likes this Stephen guy and is glad this is who they sent. He immediately establishes himself as very low-key, but competent, responsive to everything being asked of him and good at explaining things on top of it.
As far as the nuclear weapons detonated, as he likes to think of these, a lot of them didn’t realize just how many conventional foods the bosses have planned on selling at this store. Like, pretty much every famous conventional product one can think of, with their existing natural, organic, and/or local staples hopefully wedged in somewhere alongside them. They knew there would be some — and Edgar felt like he had a better handle on this than most, maybe, because Roberta was sending him a bunch as new items all along, rolled up with her location-specific shelf tag instructions — but even he wildly underestimated the shelf space dedicated to these.
All he can say is, he hopes these guys truly know what they are doing. They tried this in a 150 store chain where Edgar worked up north, immediately before moving down here, and never recovered from that disaster. Even after giving up on the conventional experiment after a year, and reverting back to strictly natural/organic foods, the sales remained in the gutter and they were eventually bought out. His own store went from $300,000 in sales per week to roughly half that, almost overnight.
But of course, Todd is a retail legend and doesn’t need to consult anyone on matters such as this. According to him this is such a sweet deal and the store is too large to even worry about and he’s done endless research on the demographics and et cetera et cetera et cetera. So, yes, all they can do is pray that he is right.
If preferring to focus instead on the positives, at least Edgar, Sharon, and Ken get to brainstorm for a while as a team in the employee break room. This occurs immediately after the hour and a half long lunch, at a nearby steakhouse, which Todd insisted upon taking everyone to. Having learned right around the time of the Arcadia opening that, even if seeming like some serious time wastage and having a ton of work on one’s plate, it did a person no good whatsoever to skip things like this, that it might in fact negatively impact someone’s reputation to skip things like this, Edgar joins them. You bet he does. And the place was pretty good, too, the ribeye just a tad more savory as a result of being free.
But after returning, yes, they enjoy a little powwow in the cavernous breakroom, which is off to the side of the offices at the front of the store, and is about the size of your average school cafeteria. They discuss the Microsoft Teams concept, and who will be doing what. Actually, though keeping this thought to himself, Edgar is kind of wondering what Sharon is even doing here. She is after all the back dock receiver at Palmyra. That is her job. He is thankful for her presence, though, no doubt about it — he will personally accept just about all the help he can get. And whatever the capacity, whether she shoehorned her way into this assignment or was asked by the bosses, she is probably too smart and too industrious to leave out of the mix, for sure. Still, it’s kind of funny to picture Todd’s mental image of her job, him explaining to Fred and Don that Sharon was in the Good With Computers department, or maybe even his “techie girl,” and this being the extent of how well he grasped her position.
“What do you think about RU Data so far?” Ken asks Edgar. Ken, who is seated on this floral print couch that’s been left behind in a somewhat weird spot, as the other two pace around somewhat, but mostly stand.
“Eh, I think it mostly works just fine,” Edgar tells him, with a one shoulder shrug, “although it does seem a little buggy.”
Ken chuckles and nods, agrees, “yeah. It’s definitely a little buggy.”
This amounts to idle chitchat, however, in comparison to the topic du jour, for the three of them and the other pair of equally fired up employees — merchandisers Dale and Vicky — who are more than a little troubled about the ordering standstill. As things are right now, they can use the proprietary guns to order MRI products, which is fine considering Todd has instructed Edgar to set them as the primary distributor here, as he had months ago at Palmyra. Although this does call into question why he’s got reams of Universal Foods reps here hanging shelf tags with their name all over them, aside from his wife being on that team and it representing an army of free labor. But Edgar figures they can iron out that relatively minor wrinkle down the road. Other than MRI, they are stuck reverting back to calling and emailing everyone with their orders — and it’s really hard to imagine that some of the larger vendors are going to be thrilled with this, if they even honor it at all. There’s talk of maybe even drifting further into the past by implementing this primitive Scan Tree program, which they last used about eight years ago, but does communicate with a handful of the major players.
“I even asked Matt Abernathy point blank when he was here, one of those days he spent with me and Sharon,” Edgar explains, dipping his head in her direction, “I’m like, Jungle Jim’s is the largest grocery store in the world, and they’re using RU Data. What are they doing for ordering, and why can’t we just do that, whatever it is?”
“Oh yeah? And what did he say to that?” Ken replies.
“He didn’t say anything at all. My impression was, he has no idea what they’re doing. And meanwhile he hasn’t made any progress on all the other vendors, the ones we have set up to fire off an emailed purchase order.”
But this is a situation that they presume will sort itself out sooner or later, only because it has to. You can’t run a grocery store without any product, so something will give. They agree to approach Stephen and see if he can make something happen on this front, as soon as he isn’t swamped, and leave it at that. There’s plenty else to focus on without dwelling upon this single topic.
It’s been a major relief to get here today and discover that, not only have they retained a huge chunk of the former MRI workforce from this store, but that so many of them appear to be awesome employees. He and Dale have already shared a brief conversation about this, in passing earlier this morning.
“This seems like an awesome crew!” Edgar enthuses.
“Oh, I know. Tell me about it,” Dale marvels with a chuckle, “it’s like, where have these people been for the past ten years?”
More specific to his own needs, Edgar’s stoked about the presence of not one but two pricing employees here, Ashley and Amanda. This is the way it always should have been, everywhere. Even as far back as the Duane administration, there was talk about hiring one such person for each store. Though Edgar will continue to operate the same as he always has, having a dedicated pricing employee means someone in house at every location to personally hang all the tags. Todd has continued talking up this aspect, which is another point in his favor, that at least he finally came through on that promise here. A couple of advantages are that the dedicated tag hangers tend to take their job a little more seriously than the random departmental employees assigned to this task — especially as many department managers not so secretly appoint their lowest ranking employee to that job. The other is that it frees up people within the department to spend more time doing what they are best at. Another plus is that Ashley and Amanda both come across as sweet, funny, and easy to get along with, in addition to already knowing their jobs quite well.
And any number of the other employees strike him as awesome, too, from the grocery manager, Megan, to the vitamins manager, Katie, to their own receiver, Leslie, who reminds Edgar of a much less grumpy version of Shelly. Even store manager Shane gives every indication of being cool, in a laid back, good ol’ boy kind of way, unlikely to blow his top over just about anything.
On the downside, well, there’s Marla. Not an employee, of course, but bound to haunt these aisles every day for who knows how long. Late in the afternoon, she comes flying into the breakroom, clutching one of the manila folders filled with shelf tags. There wound up being three such folders, all told, with the sheets not only in order but the tags sequential upon them, based upon the lists Roberta has sent Edgar. He happens to be standing, going over some handwritten notes on his clipboard, as Stephen and Sharon are seated across from one another at the nearest table. Roberta must have given Marla one of these folders and told her to get cracking, and whatever the particulars, it’s plainly obvious that — if he couldn’t take a wild stab in the dark and guess such anyway — that she’s highly displeased about something with this situation.
“I need these sorted out,” she demands, no hello or any other form of greeting, as she thrusts the envelope in Edgar’s direction.
“They already are sorted, actually. I printed them out in order.”
Stephen, who had been focused on his own set of problems behind his laptop, couldn’t hardly miss this exchange and glances up now. “Do you have the locations entered in the system?” he asks.
“On these? Yeah. I entered them as I went along.”
“No, I need these sorted,” Marla repeats.
“I can print those out for you in order,” Stephen offers.
“They already are in order,” Edgar explains, then to Marla, adds, “they’re already in order, section by section down the aisles. Roberta sent them to me that way.”
“Yeah but I need them sorted!”
“I can print them out again in the right order,” Stephen says once more.
“Are you saying you need them separated?” Edgar questions.
“Yes!” she blurts out, as though he is just about the densest character she has yet encountered.
He makes an exasperated okay, whatever face and reaches into his laptop bag for some paperclips. Extracts the sheets of stickers and, because they are visually not the least bit difficult to distinguish, as when one category of product changes drastically to a different one, is able to clip them off into different stacks by aisles, without even necessarily having even seen the aisle yet himself and certainly not committing them to memory. Marla snatches these up and, without another word said, marches back out of the breakroom.
“I could have printed those out for her in order,” Stephen mentions for the third time.
“No, they already were printed out in order. She was complaining because I didn’t have them paperclipped into different stacks.”
“Oh. Really?” he replies, as equally bewildered now himself.
While this isn’t exactly a bombshell revelation, Edgar begins to realize now that he is never going to escape the wrath of that chick. She’s going to continue being a complete asshole to him over…what, exactly?…for the remainder of his days with this place. Surely he is not alone in this regard, but whatever the case, she will never stop, she will continue finding ways to act completely horrific because she can, because she is the boss’s wife and on top of that doesn’t even work for this company, which means nothing can really happen to her from a punishment standpoint anyway.
His first great revelation of the day, though, had occurred when he pulled up to the building this morning. The sign outside, just a banner hanging from the front of the store thus far, announcing that they are COMING SOON to this three-way intersection at the edge of town, features their snazzy new company logo. It is admittedly a pretty cool looking design, one that Todd has bragged endlessly about without getting into specifics, only alluding to this “rebrand” that is set to transpire at some of the stores. The background is a very muted grey brick pattern, atop which is a drawn online of a barn in brown, and their name in an arsty array of differing fonts, and this same brown along with some vaguely pine green lettering. Again, this all pops from a visual standpoint. As far as the name, however, he’s not so sold on this: Stable 2 Table From Wholesome Shopper Market. Yes. It actually says all of this on the sign, as it will when a glowing one goes up for real on the streetside pole, as it will at their Palmyra location. The other two will continue bearing the same old name and color scheme, Wholesome Shopper Market in primary green and purple.
The thinking behind this is somewhat difficult to fathom. Not only the division between the two sets of stores, but behind the name itself. The bit about going from stable to table implies that this is an extremely fresh, locally sourced outpost — when in fact this is by far their most corporate location, with huge displays of, for example, every Pepsi product known to man, and a Little Debbie endcap, et cetera. And apparently a remodel is scheduled at Palmyra as well, to jam in reams of totally normal conventional product that people can buy everywhere, often at a much lower price than the WSM.
It’s about a 55 minute drive home from here, which makes it roughly equal to the Chesboro commute in time, even though twice the distance. As such he has plenty of time to contemplate this and just about everything else. Still, when he barges through the front door at about 7:30pm, this business about the name is the first thing he’s chortling about to his wife.
“Stable 2 Table By Wholesome Shopper Market.”
“What!?”
“Yep. With the number 2 in there. That’s what we’re called now. Well, at two of the stores. The other two are gonna be the same.”
Elizabeth is sprawled out on the couch with her own laptop precariously perched upon her belly, and begins typing in the name. This is a great idea, actually, one that never occurred to him today. Then again, it’s not likely he would have had a spare moment to investigate even if it did, apart from maybe surfing the web on his phone during that extended lunch.
“He’s already used this name,” Elizabeth concludes.
“What!?” it’s Edgar’s turn to halfway shriek now.
“Oh yeah. Well, either him or somebody else. But yeah, there’s already a Stable 2 Table Foods in St. Louis.”
“Oh my god…that’s hilarious…not that I’m really surprised. But wait — is this place still open or what?”
“Mmmmm…no. It looks like it went out of business.”
