Dale might be impressed that Pierre remains at his desk all day, yet it soon becomes clear why this is the case. It’s true that he basically has no choice, yes. But it’s also true — and quite troubling — to learn that he has all but abandoned doing any work whatsoever in Excel. Instead, he sits there endlessly punching information directly into the Orchestra program.
This is horrible on many different levels. From a productivity standpoint, it’s positively ghastly, for this is way, way more time consuming. You also have no record whatsoever of what changes were made, and when. So while a laughable consideration, maybe, this also for example obliterates Corey’s table pounding demands for a paper trail on everything — not that he ever examined such, nor would know what to do with the information if he did. Although this isn’t really so surprising, considering how many other recent edicts have already fallen by the wayside. They do now have Pierre here every Saturday, as he takes Wednesdays and Sundays off instead. But it’s a real head scratcher as to why someone who was by most accounts excelling in this role, Edgar, was recently forced to take on an assistant…yet his replacement, Pierre, is not, despite not exactly hitting the ground running in this role.
Unless maybe you consider that his job has already been broken up into three, maybe four pieces. Valerie’s handling just about all the deli program stuff and Edgar’s still going through the invoices for cost and department coding problems. Not only that, but with Park on board making signs, with beginning and ending dates on them, Pierre’s presumably fielding far fewer complaints of the, “I don’t know…it’s just not working!” variety, and wasting his time with such.
Pierre is skirting around using Excel and most other office programs because he doesn’t feel like learning anything new. Word on the streets is that if someone sends him a new items file, he’ll upload the thing, but is rarely if ever checking first to see whether it’s already in the system. Thus the expected nightmare scenario of the existing stores having an incorrect price on their shelves is now in play. He’s not checking and correcting the brand names to match, ever, which was totally expected. Of course, many are grousing that the major vendor files are in the “wrong” order because he’s not rearranging them first before sending these off (although a sizable portion are also under the impression that every vendor magically has all their columns in the same sequence, were unaware that Edgar was rearranging everything for convenience), which means that simply copying and pasting from those files into the new items file isn’t working, which means they’re having to type everything by hand again. Aside from those who know enough to rearrange the columns themselves, that is, who wouldn’t have ever been among the complainers in the first place.
There are other major practical concerns here. Though Teri was of a mind that much of what Edgar did for these people amounted to “babysitting” — and had enough clout to pull that attitude off herself — while training him to follow her lead, he didn’t quite agree with some of her hardline stances. Back when she was doing the major vendor updates, she would upload the entire file in one shot. Anything where the price changed tripped the print flag, she printed out the entire batch, all at once, at every store, and left them to sort it out among themselves.
The problem with this approach, as far as he was concerned, is that you were way more likely to lose a tag. You would either have multiple people going through a mountain of them, or else one person making a judgment call on the entire lot, and either way if giving one to the wrong department, you could all but guarantee that was going to wind up in the trash. Separating them out by department himself in advance might count as “babysitting,” he’s not sure, but it seems to make better business sense. Actually Edgar was printing these out one department at a time and they were still having major problems at Palmyra — although that might have been sabotage.
So now, resulting from Pierre’s unwillingness to learn Excel, and blowing that master database spreadsheet all to hell, and Teri coaching him through this every time now on the phone, they’re back to the mass upload strategy. Except the only problem here is that they’ve dumbed it down one step lower even. Back in the day Teri at least would take, say, Universal Food’s category numbers, find its approximate match as far as a Healthy Hippie store department, multiply by the correct markup and round off the number. This wasn’t perfect — because there are many, many situations where their departments differ from how a supplier might categorize something, which has only gotten more pronounced after that tax rate bust — but at least it was a significant step in the right direction. Now they’re not even doing that, as Pierre’s simply uploading the supplier’s own SRP.
It really isn’t that hard to learn a few freaking Excel formulas, and in fact, Edgar would argue it’s way easier in the long run. After one day you’ve already banked a ton of time and energy, really. There are typically numerous ways to accomplish something, too, and the answers are only an internet search away. Instead of all this mayhem, you could enter one formula off the side, such as his personal fave
=VLOOKUP(H2,$A$2:$B$50000,2,FALSE)
whereby you then double click the bottom right of that cell, and have all your answers in a matter of seconds. You apply that to a comparison between your current database and the latest Universal Foods file, for example, and anything that comes back with a zero can be deleted, as those are the same retails as they were before; anything that comes back with an #N/A you cut out and save to a different file, to investigate next — these are items you’re showing were in Universal last month, but are not this month, which means they’ve been discontinued; anything that comes back with an actual dollar amount, you can sort from high to low or vice versa, check for anything that seems way out of whack and maybe fix those if necessary. As you’ve done this in your current database file, you already have the department numbers here, so now it’s just a matter of sorting out and uploading, one department at a time.
First Pierre was complaining that Edgar’s typed up lists of the steps were too confusing, because he included explanations for why they were doing such and such. Except then he was complaining that the typed up lists without the explanation were too confusing as well. But it basically just boils down to the fact that you need to get someone who understands what he’s doing and can pull off this job. While you could theoretically memorize and implement a formula like this VLOOKUP one without knowing what all that gibberish means, it would be hard to tinker with it as necessary if you don’t, on occasion, like moving it to a different spot on the spreadsheet.
Although there are ways to pull off these price comparisons without such complicated formulas, even, too. One that Edgar suggests to him is setting up the UPC fields in Conditional Formatting so that they highlight any duplicates. Sort the current database UPCs from high to low, and do the same in the supplier’s latest spreadsheet. Then copy the supplier’s entire list, paste it underneath the current one, where it should highlight tens of thousands of items in bright pink. Sort by color. Cut out the white UPCs, paste over to a new file. Figure out the ones that came from the supplier’s newest price list and delete those — this is the stuff you weren’t even carrying, which aren’t in your database. Those that remain were in your current file, but not in the new one, which means that the vendor discontinued them.
Bounce back to the file with all the pink highlighted UPCs. Scroll through and figure out where the numbers start repeating themselves. Cut from that point all the way down to the bottom, head back up to the top of the spreadsheet, paste all these numbers so that they’re side by side with the first run of numbers. Check to see that the first UPCs on each list match, are on the same line. If so the last UPCs in the entire list should also match. If you’re really paranoid, you can spot check every 1000th line or something, but you should be confident you have two columns of matching UPCs now. At this point, all you need to do is enter a simple subtraction formula off to the side, which will show you the difference between the two retails. But of course, this is also considered too confusing. And so the current half-baked methods persist.
The months roll on in steady, predictable fashion. It isn’t that Edgar’s new job is tedious, it’s that the rhythm is so robotic that his weeks are almost indistinguishable. Which is maybe a good thing! Especially considering where he just came from. Yet one person who is possibly not so infatuated with the current arrangements might be Teri. This timing is once again possibly coincidental, but she is the next to give her two weeks’ notice, after months of patiently coaching Pierre through the same stuff over and over again, on the telephone. His gratitude almost nil anyway, which is evident in that — although Edgar could have guessed this — rumor has it Pierre’s now attempting to dodge bullets by complaining “nobody is showing me anything” and that this is the reason he sucks at his current job.
When Teri leaves, she emails everyone in the Bellwether/Healthy Shopper directory, to inform them of her decision. In response Edgar replies all with the simple joke of, well, we’re all screwed now! Which was meant to be a compliment to her and mildly amusing to anyone else so inclined. Although he soon hears whispers that some were less than pleased (no one in management, however, which is really all that matters) and inspired to grouse, “did he not know that was going out to everybody?” Isabel at least found it funny, as she mentions it the next time he sees her, although she too is chuckling and asking, “did you know you were sending that to everyone?” Well, of course he did. Maybe his sense of what is appropriate is slightly askew, but he doesn’t really see what the big deal is. Others have gotten away with far wackier behavior around here. But on her last day, coming over to give him a hug and say goodbye, even Teri has some advice along these lines.
“Don’t piss anybody off!” she mutters under her breath, and laughs, before leaving for good.
He can understand people getting bent out of shape over some graphic language, but isn’t of a mind that screwed really qualifies as such at this late date. Screwed is something an HR person might even say in a company-wide meeting, which is a great method for determining what’s appropriate. At any rate, even the most zealous nut wouldn’t argue that this has any impact whatsoever on the business itself, which is of far greater consideration. To him, people remain far more worried about what things look like than what they are, and this is a warped perspective.
Baffling decisions that still trace back to either overconfidence or disorganization continue to haunt this place. Well, perhaps not Bellwether — unless you consider the whole tray pack vs. bulk pricing irregularity, which he still hasn’t mentioned to anyone and which still persists — but it’s certainly a problem at Healthy Shopper Market. Somehow they’ve already blown through the summer, with Pierre remaining in place at his data coordinator post. Late in the month, Duane and Corey take to the streets, so to speak, to visit all five stores and deliver some state-of-the-biz type announcements. Among the key developments are that they are raising the employee discount to 20%, but also, in light of the whole lunch credit disaster, decided they are going to rebate employees at the end of year for 5% of all purchases.
Which is certainly great news. It indicates they are moving in the right direction as a company. This announcement is made in the last week of August, stating that these policies will go into effect September 1st. Somehow, however, which is completely par for the course around here, they only get around to informing Pierre on September 1st, which is a Saturday, assuming this will be an easy thing for him to figure out. He attempts all day in vain, also fires off an email to Edgar, who is the only backup resource now that Teri has quit. Except Monday happens to be Labor Day, which Pierre might be working, but Edgar and most other office/management type folks are not. So it’s Tuesday afternoon, September 4th, before Edgar himself first learns of this massive policy change.
Raising the employee discount to 20% is a simple enough task to figure out. The only problem is, even he doesn’t have the security clearance to go around bumping up a customer’s discount level. So they have to get Felix involved for this portion of the project. So this adds another day to that piece, as Felix turns off this restriction long enough for Edgar to make the change, before turning it on again.
Yet it’s the 5% rebate at the end of the year which is proving far trickier to pull off. Rob and Reece are asking Edgar what report in Orchestra you can generate to see the grand total on everyone’s purchases for the year. He informs them, because this has come up on occasion before, there is no report in Orchestra to see a grand total on everyone’s purchases for the year. It seems that they mostly believe him, but double check anyway, clear up the ladder to the program’s developer Jacques, who confirms that this is true.
Jacques says this would be a custom built feature for them, and has to charge extra for the report. He also sets a target date of October 18th for making this available. At this point one gets the distinct impression that, had Duane and Corey not already made a tour of all five stores to announce that this was happening, the idea would have been nixed right here. But Rob has no choice but to proceed now, particularly after the lunch credit PR flap.
The Coreys of the world are treating some of these developments as “proof” that they need multiple people all doing the same data coordinator job at once. See! This is what I’m talking about! We shouldn’t have to wait four days to get an answer on this! But this isn’t Edgar’s takeaway whatsoever. His opinion is that, no, this is another example of what I’m always talking about, getting more organized. Here’s something else that was once again rolled out at the last minute, with the actual people needed to implement it only notified after the fact. Grand pronouncements delivered to everyone else, however, quite naturally, before anyone even checked to see if it were possible.
Of course, the Coreys of the world also think charges of disorganization don’t apply to them, just as a charge of overconfidence in knowledge/ability would not apply to them. He sincerely believes he knows how everything works, and the last 18,000 conflicts have not dissuaded him in the slightest. The problem is, again, that everyone says this Orchestra program was basically designed for checking in product on the back dock. Except they’re not using it for that whatsoever, and have instead Frankenstein’d it into a cash register program that is admittedly mostly functional. Until you run into something like this.
Off the record, a couple people are asking Edgar what he thinks they should do about the rebate situation. These days, he is dating someone, Elizabeth, whose sister is a cashier at Palmyra. It started out casually but is fairly serious by now. Many days the sister, Catrina, is working side by side with his mom, both manning a cash register there. As one might readily suppose just by taking a lucky stab, of course it’s Palmyra that is in hysterics over these developments. He’s thankful to at least have those two in place at that outpost, to help balance the hysteria.
Some woman who works in vitamins is asking store manager Brian what report they can run to see how much they’ve spent so far this year. He chuckles and says there is no report to see how much they’ve spent so far this year, but she can pull up the Transaction Journal and tally up receipts on the calculator if she likes. She is not the least bit amused, in fact becomes somewhat livid to hear this.
Corey happens to be in the store that day and tells everyone, after a mild panic breaks out, not to believe the rumors, there is no need to save your receipts and that everything will sort itself out eventually. Understandably, they don’t exactly buy this wholesale.
It might seem that Edgar is taking it easy on Duane throughout much of this turbulent period, which is undoubtedly true. But Duane has already earned his respect as a knowledgeable and capable leader. Some of the recent wackiness might land at his feet, but he has after all publicly passed the baton to Corey for a lot of the day to day operations, is focused more on the big picture administrative stuff.
There’s no denying that Duane also seems a lot more distracted than he used to, however, overall. Well, Edgar suspects, it might be half that he has much more on his plate, but half that his energy isn’t quite what it was. Which is a natural progression for everyone, sooner or later. Even as Duane is one of these good ol’ boys who has aged well, is surprisingly older than people think, and comes across as vaguely indestructible.
They’re just so used to him keeping a tight reign on the operation that it’s shocking to see some of this attentiveness falling by the wayside. Though maybe the wacky foibles on a person-to-person level have proven difficult to iron out, for him the same as everyone, and plenty of weird personalities prevail. He does make a concession to Mr. Locke’s rants about the aisles at Arcadia by removing one rib, so to speak, in each of the three long rows, and spacing the remaining short aisles out accordingly. They also added a small produce section there, within weeks of opening, after receiving an earful of complaints from pretty much everyone. Yet elsewhere, the responsiveness, or lack thereof, would have been previously unthinkable.
For example a whole chain of events during a day Edgar strolls by chance past Mr. Locke’s office, bound for elsewhere. The two of them make eye contact, and even from here, Edgar can see that their ever attentive founder is clutching a handful of Sustainable Garden invoices. Though crossing paths is pure happenstance, and while still possessing not a clue as to his current AP person’s name, the old man is nonetheless sharp as a whip at 83 and recognizes that this here younger fella continues to study the costs on these invoices.
“Hey, come here a second, young man,” Mr. Locke says, as Edgar halts in his tracks to accommodate this demand, then corrects his course. The fractional owner, though relegated perhaps to a ceremonial figurehead at this late date, maintains his vested interest in the outcome, 4% stake or not. “Why is the price on produce so goddamn high? This is ridiculous!”
“Yeah…,” Edgar chuckles with what he hopes is the right tone, respecting the seriousness of the subject, though not too bleak. He shakes his head and concludes, “I don’t know, that’s a good question.”
“Well, I’ll tell ya, here’s something I’ve noticed,” Mr. Locke says, and reaches for another nearby stack, with one shaky hand drawing it nearer. He halfway lifts it from the desk, though Edgar can’t see specific figures from this distance. “Now, here’s an Alfredson’s invoice from Southside. This is just one invoice but I can already see there are a few different items they paid far less for than Palmyra did. Far less. And this is without even getting into the shipping. Now, can you tell me why in the world Palmyra’s even ordering from this, uh, Garden, whatever the hell’s it called?”
Edgar exhales out the side of his mouth, choosing his words carefully. Not that he would have the slightest concerns about Mr. Locke blabbing to HR about anything said right now, but nonetheless, he’s just in habit of not selling his coworkers out, behind their backs. Yet if you’re too light here, it comes as though you don’t care and aren’t doing your job.
“I mean…I’ve mentioned this a couple of times to everyone, but I’m under the impression that they must have their reasons…”
Which is true. And he has plenty of ammunition in the email sent folder to confirm it. When Arnie was around, this was almost never a problem, as he told his produce managers where to order what from, every week, and checked to ensure they were following his orders. Whereas with Vince, this has plainly turned into complete chaos. Nobody has responded in any meaningful fashion to any of Edgar’s occasional messages on this topic — oh, on a weekly basis, he’s continued to email the produce managers, along with Vince, Corey, and the store manager in question, outlining what they could have sourced cheaper from elsewhere. Occasionally someone, though never Vince, might have a few words to offer on that front. But as far as these universal blasts sent out to everyone involved, asking why they were using so many different produce vendors, suggesting they tighten it up: no, these never went anywhere. It was another situation where Vince was like a made man or something, in mafia parlance, and the bosses would politely hint that Edgar drop this subject.
“Well, you might be under the impression,” Mr. Locke croaks, “but let’s just say I’m not exactly convinced.”
Still, though the big man seems fired up, he gets fired up fairly often, and usually nothing comes of it. That’s about what Edgar expects of this latest outrage, right up until a few minutes later and he forgets it entirely. Except late in the afternoon, he receives an email from Reece on this very topic. Mr. Locke isn’t copied, and neither is nobody else, but it seems obvious that this can’t be a coincidence. She’s asking him to look into why they’re using so many different produce suppliers to cover the five stores, and if they can’t drop a couple of these.
She’s at least aware of the power dynamic here, that he can’t actually make this happen. If that were the case, then he probably would have already done so. And he appreciates that maybe some of these superiors are seeing that he is reliable, that they can count on him to pursue his end of the bargain, investigating and making some suggestions. So it is that he assembles some of the more glaring recent examples, scans and saves these as PDFs, and composes a carefully crafted email going out to Duane, Corey, Vince, and the produce managers, as a forwarded message so that they can see Reece’s original one. Duane is the first to respond, almost immediately writing:
Now that’s a whole can of worms you’re getting into with that. There are many legitimate reasons why the stores might be doing so. But I think I’ll let the others weigh in on that.
Which is a highly detached response, coming from him, not at all like the guy he’s been working for these past few years. And this is plenty perplexing in its own right, though paling in comparison to what Edgar’s hearing elsewhere. As in, nothing whatsoever from Vince or the five produce managers. Meanwhile, some more improvised wackiness from Corey, no less outlandish for being totally predictable:
Sustainable Garden should be matching all of the Alfredson’s pricing.
This real stumper of a response is pure top-of-head nonsense, Edgar’s all but certain. Yet just to err on the safe side, he asks for some clarification, because once again this whole “should be” business can be interpreted many ways. Is Corey saying in an ideal world it would be great if Sustainable Garden matched Alfredson’s on cost? Or is he making some preposterous claim that a deal like this is already in place?
What I mean is we have an agreement with Sustainable Garden. They are supposed to be matching Alfredson’s on price.
No one else has yet chimed in, but there’s probably a good reason for that. All Vince or the produce managers would likely have to say is that they’ve never heard of this alleged arrangement, because Edgar hasn’t, either. He’s been analyzing these invoices for years and has sent countless emails about the cost, not to mention interacted on occasion with the suppliers themselves on various pricing related issues. The only reason Corey’s even responding to this thread, obviously, is because Reece is copied on it — otherwise he would just ignore it. Whatever the case, this is a totally bogus answer, invented whole-cloth just now.
Edgar doesn’t feel that this is the forum for getting into a public argument. Though privately confessing to Reece, in a separate thread, that he has never heard this in all the time he’s been working here, he thinks of a more measured response to send in the existing chain. His eventual solution is casually asking Corey if this is something new that he and Duane and Vince just hammered out.
Corey insists that no, this has been the case for years. And though this response is baffling on too many levels to count, the conversation ends right here — because it will only devolve into finer semantic arguments if continuing. All the cards are on the table for Reece to make up her own mind.
Yet even beyond the fact that this is fiction, Corey’s answers are pure bullshit on a functional level. Whether or not this “should be” happening, it clearly is not. Shouldn’t the first answer be that you will look into this, if buying into your own fairy tale? Sustainable Garden still shows Tara as the produce manager and contact person on their invoices, though she walked off the job years ago. The idea that they are somehow in touch with Alfredson’s or anybody at Healthy Shopper Market about pricing and adjustments is laughable. And how would this work, anyway? Particularly as figures as disparate as Mr. Locke, Reece Leibovitz, your former and for all intents current cost analyst guy, as well as presumably the longstanding produce merchandiser have never heard a peep about this. Edgar is tempted to keep playing dumb and pressing Corey for more details and to see how deep a hole he will dig himself. Oh really? So what, they cut us a huge check at the end of every year? That must be the case, since we’re not getting credits and it’s not reflected on any invoices. Cool. We’ll be on the lookout for that.
There are a handful of examples on display here, and reams upon reams of others that anyone could investigate. Nobody does, however, and certainly not Corey, as not another word is said on this subject, at least not until it rears its head again a year down the road. The reason for this is that, though fond of stomping around and philosophizing about the way things “should be,” coffee mug in hand, or perhaps standing beside the customer service counter with such, setting it down only to type out these nonsensical answers on his shiny new iPhone, he doesn’t want to do any actual work. And this is coming from their de facto leader.