among the first health & beauty sections cataloged
One positive ramification from this dustup, though, is that even Vince Brancatto wordlessly, miraculously, begins emailing him every needed addition. He no longer attempts flying by with his verbals about running such and such sale price on this item for that series of dates, nor does he bring in his miserable handfuls, baskets, shopping carts of new products, often only discovering that they don’t ring until after he has built his end caps and displays. But mostly, everyone begins to openly conjecture what has crawled up Corey’s ass. Given this platform, he’s only gotten worse.
Yet he continues to display this weird personality split, which must be tricky to pull off. They begin to notice that all of his solutions have this in common: it’s that somebody else, often an unnamed entity, needs to do something about the situation — as he distances himself from the crisis, as though standing apart from these dilemmas.
Therefore his stance commonly seems to equate to power tripping meets ego tripping meets…maybe the vague aura of drug tripping, something to that effect. This is how surreal some of these interactions have become. Mere days removed from this Arcadia battle, Edgar sends out a totally normal email to all five bulk managers, copying Vince and Corey both, listing a few items they could have sourced for cheaper elsewhere. Corey has been cc’d on hundreds of these from Edgar over the years, and responded to almost nil. This time around, however, apparently inspired to throw his newfound weight into mashing some keys, he takes the last of these five messages, and replies to everyone with:
Nothing has changed, people. Bellwether is still signing our checks. You are still to order everything you possibly can from them.
Which has virtually all of them befuddled, except maybe the “merchandiser,” Vince, who doesn’t respond in any fashion, nor discuss this with Edgar. Those running the bulk department have no interaction with the guy, either, and as the responses from Corey would appear to make no sense, they’re asking Edgar what to do about the situation anyway. The most perplexing aspect is that there’s no way Corey isn’t aware that they’ve been ordering reams of bulk from numerous other vendors all along, particularly Universal Foods. This edict about you are still to order everything from Bellwether is something Corey can’t possibly believe is true, unless he has paid attention to nothing whatsoever on this topic in the entire time Edgar’s been working here. Also, if he were to simply declare, “look, I’m telling you, starting now: order everything from Bellwether! End of story!” that would be one thing, and they would have no choice but to comply. It’s the part where he insists upon throwing the phrase nothing has changed! into every discussion that has them thoroughly confused.
Edgar is of course locking horns with Corey most of all, in email and eventually in person. There’s one particularly memorable discussion where his new boss has drifted into his office for a briefing on everything that’s going on, with training Pierre, and this bulk madness inevitably floats to the surface. What’s at the heart of this, Edgar believes, is that Corey thinks he’s really going to impress Rob with this move, and it will only serve to hasten his meteoric rise to the top. But Rob knows what the score is, and has consistently given more measured responses himself. He’s aware that Bellwether is frequently more expensive on non-organic offerings than Universal and some of the others are on their organic. He’s even mentioned to Edgar on one occasion that the reason commodities are going through the roof is that China snaps them up in mass quantities from the United States, then sells them back to us at a higher price. That as a result, small time players such as Bellwether are having an increasingly difficult time keeping up.
“He knows this,” Edgar’s telling Corey, “that’s why he’s already sent Tracy over here twice to hash this out with me, see what prices they can actually afford to match…”
“Tracy’s not Rob,” Corey says.
“No, but Rob sent her.”
“Look, nothing has changed! You’re not seeing the big picture!”
Even if this were coming from Rob, which it’s not, a little diplomacy would go a long way. As it stands, the bulk managers are up in arms, and Edgar’s not far behind them. And actually, he thinks maybe he’s seeing beyond the big picture. It’s not like if all the bulk margins come back outrageously soft next period, Rob’s going to look at the numbers and say — oh yeah, that’s right, you’re ordering a ton from Bellwether now. It’s cool. No worries. Corey is out of his power hungry mind if he believes that’s going to happen. Aside from all this, it would appear that everyone is viewing a very accurately focused picture, because from what Edgar’s hearing, the opinions sound unanimous: what this is really about is Corey beating his chest and roaring that he is in charge now, folks, deal with it.
In practice, however, it’s not quite so simple. Because when the pricing is backwards on so many items, as they are here — meaning that the non-organic from Bellwether costs more than the organic elsewhere — you’re facing a range of conundrums, the solutions for which scale from Not So Hot to Very Very Bad. Plus, if Rob would catch wind of Corey’s chest-beating pronouncement, which he surely has, because there’s no way Corey would fail to boast about what he assumes will be truckloads of increased volume sent Rob’s way, then they lose whatever leverage they have built up. Like for example, with this yearly price-matching scheme involving Tracy. So all of these outcomes would likely trend even lower, as a result.
Typically the Universal Foods organic and the non-organic versions are both cheaper than Bellwether’s non-organic offerings — and they have no organic, period. In this scenario, Healthy Shopper Market sources both from Universal Foods. Yet there are still plenty of gaps remaining, items Universal doesn’t carry, such as a somewhat exotic dried fruit like lingonberries. In situations like these there are still countless instances where an organic specialty supplier, like Native Goods or something, costs less than Bellwether’s non-organic.
When this applies, they don’t even bother carrying the non-organic in bulk, because doing so is kind of dumb. To create a non-organic PLU in their system would mean…assigning the exact same SKU number to both items, if he were doing this correctly, by anything resembling solid business sense. Even so, you would have to jack up the retail on the “better” one by ten or twenty cents, just to avoid fielding the inevitable complaints that the prices were the same on both. So that’s all fairly stupid — and this is the best option.
Of course, with no gatekeeper in place, dictating what the bulk managers are and are not allowed to order, some of this unfortunate non-organic product has found its way into the store regardless. When this happens, Edgar has no choice but to create a new number for it, even though the guy who ordered this stuff is going to lose his shirt on the item. But if he wants to keep reordering it, that’s on him. Because here your choices are either to a) charge more for the non-organic than they are the organic, which isn’t going to happen, because that’s idiotic, b) shoot the organic retail through the roof to ensure it’s at least slightly higher, though this would likely kill your sales, and would also penalize all the other stores for this dude’s one wayward order, or b) price this boneheaded product ever so slightly below the organic, even though it often means only making 5% margin on it, maybe even less. In extreme cases, naturally, he’s had no choice but to raise the ceiling some by slightly hiking the organic anyway, because otherwise they would be losing money on the non-organic.
So this has happened, yes. And when it does, he makes a corresponding note, in a column on the far side of his Excel master database, detailing what is happening with this price. Otherwise there would be no way to keep all of these correlated products straight. But now Corey is basically telling him to intentionally make this happen, everywhere he can, across the board.
How this plays out in practice, though, resembles Russian Robert’s shady antics in reverse. Whereas Robert’s been covertly dumping non-organic product into organic bins, to enhance his profits, in the wake of Corey’s mountaintop tirade, they are all now doing the opposite. The only difference being that this isn’t illegal. Edgar switches over the tags to read Bellwether, or in many instances is forced to create a brand new non-organic PLU listing them as the supplier, and this appeases Corey. Meanwhile the bulk managers continue ordering their organic product from wherever, as they have been all along, and filling their bins with such.
There are some situations where the inevitable actual Bellwether order is placed, however, just like always. Many of these are at such a low retail, to come in underneath the organic’s price, though, that they’re barely making anything at all from these. Also, in the course of sorting out this madness, Edgar discovers one other hilarious wrinkle, which spices up the proceedings with a final merry twist.
He hasn’t discovered this before because it’s never supposed to work like this. As such he would never dream of comparing the two. And anyway, Bellwether’s product catalog, which doesn’t give UPCs, makes apples-to-apples comparison between the two much more difficult. But, in the course of going over this pricing information, he accidentally discovers that on virtually half of Bellwether’s proprietary snack mixes, the price on the tray packed version equals out to far less cost than if purchasing the same amount in bulk. Meaning you could crack open those trays, dump then in your bins, and save a small fortune.
Even he isn’t quite insane enough to email everyone and copy the bosses on this finding. This is definitely more of an in-person type heads up observation. After crunching the numbers endlessly, and even spot checking old price lists to confirm this isn’t a singular glitch, he confirms that they’ve been out of whack like this for quite some time. And though none of the other bulk managers have much to say when Edgar mentions this to them — Johnny pulls on his beard; Karen does her whole nonplussed, nose-raised-to-the-side-half-nod bit; Marita cackles and says, “really?” — Russian Robert, as expected, offers some priceless commentary.
“Wot? Wot dis?” he says, laughing heartily as he shakes his head, “dis bullshit you say.”
“Yeah but on some of these you’d be saving four bucks a pound!” Edgar tells him.
Now Robert offers the same look that someone does when peering over the top of their glasses at you, chin tucked and nose diving, except he doesn’t wear glasses. “Four bucks a pound?” he replies, sobering up in an instant.
And so even if Robert’s initially the only one exploiting this particular loophole, though others soon catch on, Corey’s power play shakes out as distantly removed as it can from what he intended. Margins are about the same, maybe a smidge better, but same-store sales are down — probably owing to more non-organic options in the field of play — and they’re actually ordering less, dollar-wise, from Bellwether.
Robert is maybe the most receptive because he’s forced to get even more creative than usual. He’s now making do without his most trusted assistant, Marita, who has transferred to Arcadia to run its bulk department. Although far from the only person affected, considering that this new store has pulled help from nearly all corners, Robert now has himself and some partial help in the form of his nephew Sam, who continues splitting time all over the store, and that’s about it. Out of all the stores, in fact, Liberty has been hit the hardest, with Isabel bounced over to run Arcadia, and the vitamin manager, Ralph Hedges, making the lateral move over there as well.
They’ve shored up their ranks to some extent by bringing in fresh reinforcements. An intelligent, mild mannered older gent named Leroy, who has a ton of experience, is hired to run Liberty, while cashier Shad is promoted to his backup. Over at Southside, while continuing to keep it in the family, so to speak, Craig’s brother-in-law Michael joins the grocery department, and instantly proves himself an all-star; Craig’s half-brother Allen, who is not, to put it mildly, is donated as a token peace offering to Liberty.
With Ralph changing stores, Candace climbs the ladder and is now running the vitamins department here. A former airline stewardess, she still carries that convivial aura, and, though in her early 40s, remains a tremendously attractive lady. Given to dressing like an 80s rocker chick to some extent, as in tight jeans and tee shirts, with wavy, long blonde hair and no shortage of bright jewelry or makeup.
Edgar hadn’t asked, but as he’s knocking out tasks around the store today, Candace strikes up a conversation with him and is soon spilling the beans on what life was like, working for Ralph. Dale has of course mentioned such countless times, and Edgar has witnessed plenty of the same, but she’s saying it was even more maddening than anyone could possibly know, as far as his tendencies in the category of making things way more complicated than they need to be.
“He had the email set up to where, like, anything he sent, it would automatically send a copy back to himself,” she explains.
“What, you mean, like automatically CC’ing himself, on every email?”
“Yeah.”
Edgar chuckles and says, “Really? That’s pretty funny. I mean, if you ever need to see anything you’ve sent, all you have to do is go into the Sent folder.”
“Yeah, I don’t know, but our inbox was just this gigantic loop of stuff we’d already seen,” she groans and then adds, “trust me, it was a nightmare.”
This coming from a guy who is constantly billing himself as having a “background in tech,” too. That’s just vague enough to where it could mean anything, though, up to and include 100% bullshit. Contrast that against Leroy who, though he has to be five or ten years older than Ralph, was working with IBM computers and various related programs in a factory four decades ago. These specifics don’t just lend additional credibility to what someone’s saying, but they are also mighty reassuring, a calming force when you’re staring down the specter of working with these random new faces every day.
Not that you ever really know what to expect here in the land of continual curveballs. Working with Pierre has thus far proven surprisingly not so bad, mostly because they’ve tuned out Corey, and Edgar has given Pierre some simple tasks he’s actually capable of handling. This is also ideal in that Edgar would rather be in the office. He thinks he’s had some good ideas out on the floor, and made a positive impact there, but 90% of his value stems from what he can do while seated behind his computer, and he would rather be there. Whereas Pierre, conversely, much prefers walking around the store, chatting with the people, and maybe getting some work done here and there as well.
As long as this arrangement can hold, it might prove a winning combination. Both continue spending any spare available time at Arcadia, of course, which, soft opening and ridiculous decrees aside, still needs a lot of attention. And Edgar’s attitude for much of this is that, not that he expects gold medals or applause or even much by way of thanks, since it is readily apparent that the bosses didn’t appreciate any of the work he has done getting this store ready, and probably not a whole lot beyond that, then he’s going to just do what he feels is best and not worry about their opinions.
There are huge swaths of Arcadia remaining without shelf tags, as most other employees concern themselves with rearranging, reloading, if not stocking certain sections for the first time. The merchandisers plot these changes, continuing to introduce still more new product, while Duane has already moved some things around, and debates possibly removing one short aisle in each of the three long rows, to space the rest out a little further. It isn’t just Mr. Locke complaining, as he has feedback on this front from customers and employees alike.
Meanwhile, Edgar has sent Pierre over to grocery to hunt for missing tags with the wireless scanner. At the opposite end of the store, he is tackling healthy and beauty, with his simple plug-and-play USB scanner dropping the barcodes into an Excel sheet, so he can log their location and print them all in one fell swoop. This is slightly slower, of course — or maybe not, depending on how well the internet wants to cooperate — but more beneficial long-term. There are entire four foot sections that have only been properly filled in after Saturday’s opening, and these are where he focuses his efforts.
His days of busting ass through lunch while everyone else is off screwing around for an hour or hour and a half are probably over, too, he now believes. If it’s good enough for everybody else, it’s acceptable for him. So while the skeleton crew of the store’s actual workforce remain behind each afternoon, he troops over with the rest of the managers and merchandisers to whatever nearby restaurant Duane and Corey have chosen for the day. He is just about finished with vitamins/HBA as of this Friday afternoon, actually, and should be able to knock the rest out upon their return.
“Hey, couldn’t you, like, track the location of where everything is, and then print them out in order?” Dale is asking him, with complete seriousness, moments after the two of them and four others have slid into this diner’s long booth. The rest of their considerable mob remains scattered elsewhere around the room.
Edgar starts to respond, but a short coughing fit seizes him. Barbara asks if he’s okay, and he replies, “yeah, it’s just diner lung.”
As she chuckles and repeats what he said, Dale presses onward, adding, “no, but I’m serious, isn’t there a way to keep track of where things are on the shelf, and print the tags in order?”
“Yeah that’s…what I’m already doing. That’s why I have my laptop out there.”
“Eh! Eh!” Dale wheezes, approvingly, as he smiles and nods.
“Yeah, see? I started that a long time ago. Trust me, I’m on top of things,” Edgar says, though also wondering if Dale forgot about the times he shot down the notion of having his people help with this task, at the other stores.
Valerie, seated beside Dale, turns to him and says, “yeah Dale, Edgar’s on top of things.”
Smirking still, Dale creaks his neck in her direction now, and quips, “that’s funny, I thought he was on top of you.”
This is brushed aside as a joke, and conversation swiftly moves to other corners. When nobody is paying attention to either of them, Valerie glances over at Edgar, eyes and therefore brows raised and mouth open, one palm turned upward as if to wordlessly ask him, well? What’s the deal? Did you tell somebody about this? But he shakes his head and shrugs and shakes his head some more, lips pursed throughout — no, he had not said a word to anyone, about her or anything else.
He’s beginning to wonder about this strategy of wordlessly minding one’s business, however. Because while this is the theoretically proper way to conduct yourself in a professional setting, it’s becoming obvious that people will just run riot over you if attempting such. It isn’t just Corey with the grand asinine pronouncements. Complainers enjoy a field day, and while you would think those in power would only naturally ask for your side of any dispute, particularly if all you’ve ever heard is they consider you one of the best employees they have, this almost never happens.
Pierre is obviously playing both sides, for example. Whenever Edgar attempts to show him anything computer related, he fights it to no end. And to some extent, though continually telling himself not to, that he knows better, Edgar can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for the guy. He didn’t ask for this position, and he truly seems to have no aptitude whatsoever for anything computer related. They spent an insane amount of time one afternoon with Edgar attempting to teach him how to move columns around in Excel. Nobody on Earth would have had the endurance to just play dumb and continually try to grasp this concept for that long, a solid two relentless hours, so Edgar has to believe it’s legit.
So there’s that, but on the flipside, he knows that Pierre then goes to Corey and Duane and complains that Edgar isn’t teaching him anything. This effectively keeps the pot stirred up, while he’s able to dance and gossip his way around it. He’s also able to slip in deceptively derogatory remarks, like the day he’s complaining to Edgar out of the blue about Valerie.
“She doesn’t do anything! She sits in here for half an hour talking to you, she’s online, she’s terrible! She doesn’t do anything!”
Which Edgar as always dismisses without comment. But the problem with this is he can’t really leap to her defense, and there’s also nothing he can do to prevent Pierre from going to the bosses, which he is surely is, with this exact same comment. And the part about her sitting and talking to him for half an hour is possibly the most conniving little backstabbing slant of all, because by extension it also implies that Edgar would have to be sitting here for half an hour, doing nothing but talking, as well.
This probably isn’t the source of Corey’s latest outrage, but then again who knows at this point. If Edgar had to guess, he’d peg it as a heady brew of many different ingredients. While no one has yet to ever explain one iota to Edgar of what went down over at Arcadia and why they’re so pissed at him about it, he can readily infer what happened. Opening day arrived and a ton of shit didn’t ring up, and sales prices weren’t firing, and he wasn’t there and half the store went berserk in throwing him under the bus. Which, again, maybe go to the accused and at least ask for his side of the story, especially if he’s proven himself a reliable employee to this point. Because do they really think that in the battle of Edgar’s Neglecting To Do Shit vs. A Bunch Of Highly Disorganized People Are Forgetting To Send Him Things, that he is even 50% responsible for that disaster?
No. They don’t seriously believe this. That’s why he keeps rallying around this notion of, this isn’t about me being more organized. This is about you wanting someone here around the clock for your last minute freakouts. The new items that nobody had sent weren’t ringing, and the sale signs that people had hung either had never been sent, either, or were copied from ones at the other stores which had in fact already expired. And they are pissed about this, and since we aren’t going to make the disorganized trainwrecks get their act together, ever, it’s up to this guy who is 3x more organized than most of them to in fact be 7x and 8x more organized, as well as that much faster, and to possibly read minds on top of it. There’s an old aphorism about if you want something handled right now, ask the busiest person in the office, and not to toot his own horn — at least not externally, anyway — he can see firsthand all the working parts that make this true, and how that applies to him.
There are other factors in play here, too, of course. Corey’s power tripping, sure, but also this angle whereby he keeps digging himself in deeper with these outlandish commands. If Edgar had to guess, there’s no way that this dude seriously believes that he is making an ass of himself in any way. Standing here in Edgar’s office on this Thursday afternoon, red in the face and pointing his finger. That thought would never occur to this fellow. He knows that he is always right, all the time, end of story. However, it’s possible that Corey has at least begun to suspect that other people might be smirking and tuning him out and rolling their eyes and that they think he is making a fool of himself. This is why he continually tops himself coming up with yet another befuddling riddle to prove that he knows what he’s talking about and isn’t just a jackass.
But what brings him here, right this minute? Edgar will likely never know. Something has clearly set him off, however. Possibly something he stumbled onto on the floor just now, like maybe an endcap with tons of different product, and a sale sign still hanging even though it ended days ago. Some situation in this neighborhood, Edgar thinks. Yet he would also swear there’s this element where Corey (although granted, true, this does tie into the whole proving-I-know-my-stuff bit, too) is now on some weird crusade to show the world that Edgar has a really easy job and that anyone can do it.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” the boss man asks, plainly fuming.
Edgar glances over from his computer screen and shrugs, tells him, “same as always, pretty much.”
“Good. Whatever else you might have going on, cancel it. I need you to be here,” he insistently jabs his finger downward, toward the floor, with every stressed word, “All day. Tomorrow. And for you to teach Pierre everything that you do! Got it?”
Which is the last straw in many respects. It’s the moment where he realizes that he is done with Corey. This showdown also makes clear that, well, though it’s not quite possible to say he’s done with Pierre, he would certainly like to be. Friday morning arrives and there’s no sign of the guy anywhere. Fortunately, Corey isn’t at Southside, either, breathing down anyone’s neck, but yeah, his little assistant has seemingly jumped the fence or something. Yet the blame will surely land at his feet for this somehow, so he pages Pierre, figuring that he must be around this building somewhere. Eventually, his breathless target reaches the phone.
“Hey! I’ve been looking for you. Corey said he wanted me to work with you all day today, show you some things.”
“Oh no, I can’t do it today.”
“No?”
“No, hmm mmm, see I already told them I would plant the flowers in front of the store today, so I can’t do it, yeah, hmm mmm…”
Well, now he has heard everything. He gets off the phone thinking this, also how he didn’t even mention that Corey was insistent that Edgar teach Pierre everything that he knows, in the space of one day. Never mind it took Teri a month to show Edgar what she knew, and went to Duane raving about how quickly he caught on, and that, to blast his silent trumpet again in this office corner, he has added some improvements, figured out a few nifty solutions, tacked on a little to the body of knowledge since then. But no, if this weren’t ridiculous enough, that he could somehow impart such to this tech backwards con artist, who is furthermore generally acknowledged — as far as Edgar has ever known — as the worst employee they have, in the space of one day, the dude is able to back out of it anyway with the equivalent of a bogus doctor’s note. And then surely complain still that Edgar’s not teaching him anything.
As expected, the dreaded Corey phone call arrives mid-afternoon, as he wants to check up on Edgar to see what kind of progress has been made. “We’ve made no progress. I haven’t seen the guy.”
“Really. What do you mean?”
“Well he’s here somewhere, but he said he couldn’t do it. He said he had to plant some flowers all day instead.”
As it turns out, Edgar is possibly not the only person at odds with the new regime. While possibly just coincidence, the HR lady, Doris, and their AP person, Kathy Ames, both put in their notice within a couple weeks of one another. The human resources position isn’t something that is typically posted in-house, and that holds true now, though they almost immediately have a replacement hired. Kathy, meanwhile, is kind enough to give them a month to find someone, rather than the standard two weeks. And yet they inexplicably take about…two weeks to post the job internally anyway.
This one is eventually taped beside the time clocks, apart from its listing on all the standard job hunting sites. Though he’s heard a smattering of speculation about who will wind up with it, Edgar hasn’t even considered it, and doesn’t apply, because it sounds like a really boring post. All this changes during a meeting at Palmyra, held in the cafe area, where the new HR woman is introducing herself to everyone. She seems like a kind and bubbly person with great people skills, in other words pretty much the antithesis of Doris. As this meeting is wrapping up, Duane, standing behind all of those in the seats, calls Edgar’s name and motions him over.
“Have you given any thought to taking that Accounts Payable position?” he asks.
“No, not really,” Edgar admits.
“I think you should take it,” Duane tells him, adds that he thinks it’s a good idea if Edgar wants to continue rising through the company, which is great. But also that it pays about $5 better per hour, a figure Edgar never would have dreamed, and this is even better.
During this discussion, the new HR lady, Carla, drifts past and personally introduces herself. As she moves onward and Edgar continues chatting with this boss, he says he’s open to whatever, if this is where Duane wants him. The next day, he is down at the Bellwether conference room, with Rob and Duane and Carla, interviewing with them, followed by a video conference via GoToMeeting, flashed up on the mounted television, with their accounting department head Reece Leibovitz down in Orlando. He’s exchanged some emails with her, and heard the name plenty otherwise, but they’ve never met before. She’s quite a bit older, sounds like she surely smokes anywhere from two to five packs of cigarettes a day, is no-nonsense and sassy but often quite hilarious as a result. She asks him why he is attracted to this line of work, and he blurts out something about being a geek for tiny details, and hunting down mysteries, and that he loves it when you’ve done all this work and everything comes together at the end exactly as you thought it would.
“It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?” Reece agrees, flashing the video screen a broad smile.
He was already pretty certain he had the job, but this is possibly the moment that nails it. Within the next day or so, he’s seated behind his desk, cobbling together the year end reports for employee purchases, which they are each receiving a 5% bonus for in the form of an HSM gift card. Corey glides into the room, looking about as non-amused as always, and asks Edgar if he’s taking the AP position.
“Yep,” Edgar says, spinning around to beam an intentionally slathered on, overly cheerful smile, “I sure am!”
