C1

                Southside opened almost exactly three years ago, and is without question the current prize jewel of this operation. The previous occupant was apparently a Harris Teeter where, reputable sources insist, a store manager was shot to death in his office. Bellwether Snacks/Healthy Hippie Market were subsequently able to lease it for a song, though not so much because of this shooting, rather that at this time, this was somewhat of a downtrodden, forgotten district.

            Credit goes to Duane Hatley and an assist to owner Walter Locke for being visionaries, and recognizing that this would soon enough become a revitalized, trendy zone. Now, with HHM a crucial if not the original modern tenant pumping fresh blood into this region, the rebound has already begun. Understandably enough, nobody was exactly clamoring to fill that office where the shooting transpired, which is one reason it became an employee restroom, in a hallway behind the conference room. But at least there aren't any reports of a haunting (Palmyra claims all sorts of paranormal activity, however, odd as it seems), which is amazing for a building with this kind of history.

            Then again, this store, if not the entire company, represents a study in contradictions. Incongruities abound. For example, though without question beautiful, and despite a front wall consisting mostly of window, and what is theoretically ample lighting, the sales floor in this store always seems a smidge too dingy. Edgar is forever wishing they'd gone for just a pinch more illumination. At first he thinks it's just the darker color schemes forming this impression, but pictures taken within the various locations will bear this out. Then again, squinting endlessly at price tags and UPCs down here surely contributes to this nagging sensation.

                Also, this establishment must be one of the most trigger-happy companies he's ever worked for, even if they tend to fire people for what seem like weird reasons. One day he's up in Palmyra when some guy in the meat department – his name might have been Jerry – is walking around and approaching customers with two different cuts of steak in his hands, asking them which of the two looks better. It seems some new program has been introduced to bring in prepackaged cuts, which this dude is bitching mightily about. His point in this exercise is to demonstrate proof that fresh cut steaks are better; instead, what this stunt establishes is how quick he can find his way to the exit. It might have transpired anyway, yet one of the customers polled just so happens to be a good friend of Mr. Locke's son-in-law, acting owner Rob Drake. Management cans him later that day, having suffered their fill of this guy's antics.

                Others are much more understandable. Like the new hire, Max, who is walking around sticking his hands under various bulk bins, helping himself to a litany of samples. When asked what on earth he thinks he is doing, he shrugs and explains he thought the stuff was free for employees. It also maybe didn't help that he didn't seem to be doing any work, ever, as he too was immediately shown the door.

                But then on the flipside, there are a handful of folks who'd already been fired once, then brought back under mysterious, murky circumstances. Grocery merchandiser Harry Redcrow was one such individual, although everyone said he had a longstanding history with Duane which would take volumes to explain. Yet after a number of weeks, Edgar begins to gain a feel for which people seem likely to stick around. They have maybe a certain essence about them that you couldn't really explain, subconsciously cluing you in that they were, if not lifers, then certainly in for the long haul. A solid twenty five percent of them have prior history together, too, at a former local establishment named Frilly's, which had gone under a few years back, and this only served to strengthen such ties.

            Still, this isn't to suggest that most of these souls are conventional or predictable, in any sense of those terms. And one of the more baffling individuals he encounters would be the current bulk manager at Southside, this older guy who talks pretty much nonstop. Everyone says he's in his early 60s, though to his credit, he doesn't really look it. Everyone also says that he's gay, although nobody really cares about that, of course, not in these enlightened times, not in this progressive industry. Much more discussion and bewilderment stems from his often curious work performance, and also that he speaks in a thick French accent, claims to be a thoroughbred French...even though his given name is Pierre O'Brien.

            “Dude, he ain't French,” grocery manager Craig Willis declares one day in the department head office, as a few of them discuss this point in hushed tones. Though Edgar's pretty much just listening, absorbing this debate, a slightly older woman, Barbara, who works in some vague marketing capacity here, is defending the absent Pierre.

            “I've seen his birth certificate, actually, believe it or not,” Dale Paquette offers, and appears to be 100% serious, “it says he was born in Michigan.”

            Edgar feels like the vote is not yet in on Dale, although thus far, he is checking some boxes as one of the quote unquote good guys. In fact, he reminds Edgar of a specific, really close friend he’s maintained for years – which might not mean a ton, though usually a positive sign. However, without question, Craig Willis is somebody he vibed with right away, the first totally normal person he has met at this store apart from Teri Barnette (and possibly Duane, although as company president, there's always going to be a barrier there in the chumminess department). Craig is so normal it appears outlandish that he could possibly ever work at this place. A somewhat muscular guy of slightly above average height, with a shaved head and goatee, given to wearing jeans and polo shirts on the job, Craig's favorite stunt is to walk over to the famous golden fast food arches next door, grab some lunch, and trudge back here with it, perfuming these all natural aisles with those gloriously noxious fumes, before he bunkers down in the break room with his grub. After which is one of the few known for enjoying a cigarette behind the building. Safe to say, he does not toe the line with this hippie scene in the slightest.

            Well, even if Edgar’s not exactly hitting it off gangbusters with this Pierre character, there's no denying the dude can be somewhat comical at times. Pierre's comical in the way that a relentless gossiper and complainer – of which this prissy old tart is both – can occasionally hit the nail on the head, or least conjure up some hilarious one liners, ranting and raving about somebody else, or a vexing situation.

            Their first real interaction occurs down in the bulk department, as Edgar's walking the floor with a handful of invoices, attempting to decode where a few of these mystery items were going. These items are on an invoice, but Edgar can’t find any matching PLU number to indicate how they’re being sold. Instead of arriving at many answers, however, he instead finds himself besieged by one of Pierre's broadsides. His story is that he originally ran the bulk department here, then was shipped out a year or so ago, to Liberty Avenue as an assistant store manager. About a week before Edgar's arrival, lucky him, Pierre was brought back for a second tour of duty at Southside, to run the bulk department and act as assistant store manager.

            “What am I going to do with all this candy!?” he moans, in his high-pitched, French accentuated English, gesturing wildly at this section of their bulk bins, “People that shop here don't want candy! Never mind that this is supposed to be an all-natural grocery store and we should not even have this stuff. But Willie keeps ordering it! Chick-O-Sticks? What am I going to do with all of this crap?”

            Edgar is in the middle of filling out what amounts to four eventual pages of items that either have no PLU number on the bin, have the wrong price, no price, or ring up as the wrong thing. Then he turns over the remaining mysteries to Pierre, to track down where these products came from, or what their names might be – one challenge almost exclusive to the bulk department because there are no barcodes, like 99% of the items in this modern world have, nor even a universal agreed upon number like produce (4011 for bananas being the one number the vast majority of grocery employees in the galaxy would know; throw a 9 in front and you have the organic PLU). In many instances, with bulk, if unable to trace a product's origin, it comes down to an eye test, attempting to figure out what this is.

            Late afternoon, Pierre arrives up in Teri and Edgar's office, to deliver his findings. Pierre's extremely fired up about the state of the bulk department upon his glorious return, though, and it seems that Edgar's inquiries have only fueled this inclination.

            “Some of this stuff I can't find, I'm not even sure where he got it,” Pierre's commiserating to Teri, with whom he has a much more extensive rapport, “Lemon Heads? Atomic Fire Balls?”

            Edgar starts chuckling over at his desk, which causes Pierre to whip his head around and declare, “it's not funny!”

            “You're right,” Edgar agrees, straightening up somewhat, “it isn't.”

            “Last time when I got here, we had to put $5000 worth of candy out on the back dock and give it away. Because nobody wants it, it just sits there. Then I leave for a few months and come back, and Willie's ordered all this crap in again!”

            The infamous Willie in question is Willie Holt, a cashier. The specific delineation of roles gets a little murky here. Apparently Willie has also been running double duty until the moment of Pierre's return, although even now, he hasn't exactly been stripped of his bulk crown, either. They're just scaling his responsibilities back substantially in this department. Almost without exception, though, Edgar would prefer speaking to Willie rather than Pierre. Willie is a black man of roughly the same age as Edgar, and clearly, it's safe to say, located at some point on the autism spectrum. But he’s also extremely friendly, high functioning, really smart in many ways and, well, bottom line just easier to deal with than Pierre.

            Even so, a little diplomacy is in order. Edgar feels that the point of his job isn't to bust people out, it's to straighten this company's numbers. The next time around, he approaches Willie instead, with his clutch of invoices, attempts to be cheery and conversational.

            “This department is very confusing,” Edgar says.

            “Well,” Willie laughs, “I guess if you haven't worked over here much, then it would be.”

            Edgar's willing to take this bullet, in the name of getting results, because it really doesn't matter. The point is to make sure this stuff is correct, not thump chests or point fingers. And the bottom line about this kind of work, the reason he feels he is so good at it, is that it truly is fun for him to straighten out these details. It reminds him maybe of a primitive video game he might have played as a teenager.

            He thinks about that old chestnut, about how you should consider what you would do if you were insanely wealthy, how you’d spend your free time...and whatever that answer is, this is what you should be doing for a career, right now. And maybe that's true, who knows. The problem with this exercise, though, is that most of them will never have any concept of what it's like to be insanely wealthy. So he believes a better mental model might be asking oneself: if your job were a video game, would you play it in your free time? And he believes that the answer to this for him, in this role, is yes. Yes he would.

            So, sure, he might chuckle to himself, or share that chuckle with select trusted cronies, about some of the things he's encountering. It doesn't mean he's indicting anyone behind these stunts – and who knows, the current figure representing a department might not even be the person responsible. There's probably no paper trail anywhere that would explain why the Just Nutty snack mix, in an aha! moment he's stumbling upon right now, going through the invoices and asking Willie the occasional question, why this is priced at $5.85 per pound, even though it costs them $9.60. And that, in a further amusing twist, to punch in the handwritten PLU number at the register, it actually comes up as Nerds candy for yet another lowball figure.

            Not that these hilarities are limited to the bulk department. Like there's this fancy incense display that has a sign saying 20 cents each, 10 for $1.75, 20 for $3.20 and 100 for $15. But there are no PLU numbers listed anywhere – nor do any exist in the system – for breaking out these various price points. There are just baggies preprinted with a barcode, which doesn't scan anyway. He's guessing that despite the UPC, what happens is that the cashier asks the customer how many are in here, nods and hits the generic department key to punch in a price.

            There's no denying he finds this process endlessly fascinating, and would comb the store, clutching paperwork and a magnifying glass, for twelve hours a day if they would let him. And for the most part, this is what he does, armed with his growing battery of Excel formulas, and ever increasing knowledge of the Orchestra software. Duane has given him the keys to the kingdom, for the most part, in setting retail prices for this chain. A couple notable exceptions are that Arnie Greenberg, the produce merchandiser, wants Edgar to email him all cost updates, to sign off on or determine himself, and the pricing on the in-house deli creations are something that department overlord Christie Marsh pretty much has to determine herself. Otherwise, just about the only x factor is that Duane himself occasionally comes up with a pet project, usually a new product line, and has something specific in mind for it.

            One such project crops up on a Friday afternoon, after Edgar's already been on the job about a month. Duane has stepped in from the next office over, with some barcodes and a list of prices for a product line he's introducing at Liberty Avenue alone, at least for now. Furthermore, he's suggesting that maybe Edgar should drive these tags over himself, and explain what they are, because Duane doesn't quite trust that crew not to take one look at the shelf tags (Edgar can log in remotely to their office computers, and print them from here, which is how he’s operated thus far), fail to recognize the product, and pitch them.

            “I actually haven't even been to Liberty yet,” Edgar admits. Original store or not, its weekly volume and smaller size have left it flying perpetually under the radar. To put the situation mildly.

            Duane offers him a broad grin, and in his thick Georgia accent, says, “well, now's your chance!”