first stages of a rearranged office

After five odd months working for the guy, they’re beginning to decipher some of Todd’s behavior. Which isn’t to say that this makes it any less weird. One of his first orders of business, right around the time of the kitchen construction, was to tell the once-a-week cleaning lady that her services were no longer needed, explaining to the rest of them that they couldn’t afford it. No backup plan was ever established, however, which means it’s basically implied that the regular office personnel were going to be chipping in to clean up the place. Excepting Todd and Fred, of course, and probably Vince as well.

Most of the other fellows have the attitude that they’ll keep the men’s room stocked with paper, and anything else they stumble across that’s needed there or elsewhere, and will clean up after themselves, therefore attempt as much as possible not to make a mess in the first place. But the line pretty much ends there. By default, in this endless game of chicken, this means that either Vicky or Valerie, bless their souls, often either metaphorically or actually throw their hands up in exasperation, and eventually resign themselves to tackling the more substantial cleaning projects. Why either would ever feel pressured to clean the men’s room is anyone’s guess — none of the males save Todd would ever dream of asking them to — but something about the prospect of leaving it alone seemingly bothers them.

“You’d think the ladies’ room wouldn’t be so bad,” Vicky once tells Edgar, which might partially explain why she’s willing to clean, “but no, it’s always just as disgusting as the men’s room, and usually even worse.”

He thanks her for doing so, but still, Edgar’s not about to undertake one of these massive cleaning projects himself, not unless Todd comes around and asks him point blank to do so. Thus far, however, he has limited any pointed demands like this to Valerie and Valerie alone. From virtually day one he all but came right out and told her, “mmm, you’re my personal assistant now, that’s your job,” for which the construction of the secretary’s desk made a telling symbol. Therefore, she is tasked with, among other chores, any of his many Dr. Pepper related requests.

Chief among these is making sure the kitchen refrigerator is eternally stacked with a mountain of fresh Dr. Pepper cans. Todd has some running “joke” whereby, in breezing past someone(s) on his way out the door, will point and tell them not to drink up his Dr. Pepper stash. The general response to this, though all but forced to issue a strained chuckle in the moment, is for everyone to look at one another with a perplexed shrug as soon as he’s out the door.

Because to a person, they truly have no interest in his Dr. Pepper stockpile. And furthermore would surely just purchase their own if they did. Most of all, they feel bad for Valerie, who continually has to put up with his blunt yet zany decrees. For it’s not just the stocking of the Dr. Pepper cans, it’s that she must also clean up Todd’s carnage in the wake of them. Todd continually insists upon this strange performative stunt — this is how Edgar has begun to think of it, a bizarre piece of perceived showboating, of demonstrating exactly who’s in charge around this joint and can do as he pleases — of setting not just every partially empty Dr. Pepper can but also his mostly full Big Gulps and his giant Beef Manor to-go cups as well, in the double chambered kitchen sink, until they will hold just about no more. At which point he will then fly past Valerie’s desk, usually on his way out the door, and issue another of these half threatening “jokes.”

“Hey, someone needs to check out the kitchen,” he will snicker, tweaking these lines ever so slightly on occasion, “I don’t know what happened, but the sink’s full again.” And so Valerie’s left fielding this perplexing task, of dumping out all the soft drinks and slushies, then pitching their vessels.

Edgar feels like he knows this personality type. Among other considerations, as previously noted, Todd is definitely one of these guys who is convinced that every good looking female working here is infatuated with him. Edgar also has distinct visions of Todd inviting them to some awkward get together, probably at his house, any day now. This might not happen, but it’s not a stretch at all to foresee this occurrence. In fact, it’s during a different gathering of this sort, a small little bonfire fueled party at Valerie’s place, that Edgar first mentions this compelling hunch.

“I can totally see that happening,” Edgar concludes, to the others gathered around this tiny blaze.

“It’s coming. It is coming,” Brian agrees, nodding as he does so.

“Oh god,” Valerie groans, “like I really wanna be hanging out with…some creepy douche with a labradoodle…”

So their hostess is not impressed with the guy. But Edgar has said nothing worse than this, because he still in fact mostly likes Todd. He’s certainly entertaining, and has had some good ideas, he might prove to be just what Wholesome Shopper Market has needed. Is Todd funny, though? Yes, but not at all in the way he believes he is.

One afternoon Edgar has only recently finished wolfing down a quick lunch, at his desk, while continuing to hammer away at his current slate of projects. He mostly keeps an endless supply of oatmeal packets and tuna cans on the shelf behind him, because he can eat these as-is, without even getting up from his seat. On this particular day it was the latter, moments before Todd drifts in to ask him a question.

“You smell like tuna,” Todd tells him.

“How do you know it’s me?” Edgar replies, grinning.

At this moment, Dale and Valerie are well behind Todd, in the central room, unpacking some boxes of samples for an upcoming event. Barbara is also on hand, seated behind her own desk, a paperclip’s throw away. In the wake of Edgar’s comment, all three of them explode with laughter, as Barbara even brings her hands together while doing so, snorts a little bit. Yet Todd reacts to this by nodding and beaming, turning his head this way and that to make eye contact with the others, an intended gesture of conspiratorial bonding. With this move, Edgar recognizes that in Todd’s mind, his own line was the one that had received the laughs, he has already completely rewired this whole conversation.

“‘Cause you’re the one always eatin a buncha weird shit around here,” Todd tells him.

A short while later, after Todd and then Barbara have temporarily vacated the premises, Valerie drifts into his office, a broad smile upon her face.

“Dude, that was hilarious! How do you know it’s me,” she says.

Edgar kicks back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head, and returns a proud grin of his own. “You like that?” he replies.

“Yes! I knew exactly what you meant, too,” she says, and turns to regard the other, currently empty desk. Shakes her head and sighs, mutters, “oh, poor Barbara…”

As he continues unpacking boxes in the main room, Dale offers, “since when is a can of tuna considered weird shit anyway?”

“We’ve got a lot weirder shit than that, over there at the store,” Vicky throws in, just breezing past their conversation, en route to parts unknown.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Dale agrees.

One person who is probably not as amused by Todd’s antics would be Barbara herself, however. Edgar never does learn any specifics about what happened, and isn’t quite nosy enough to ask around, either. It just never comes up. All he knows is that he’s sitting in their shared office by himself, late one afternoon, when Todd comes storming into the room. He’s red in the face and plainly boiling mad about something, but doesn’t say what.

“I am so…fucking…pissed off right now!” he half whispers and half hisses, to Edgar, each slowly enunciated syllable accompanied by this very Bill Clinton-esque hand gesture, i.e. the thumb and first two fingers of his left hand pressed together, as he stabs repeatedly at the air in front of him. “So fucking pissed off!” he reiterates, and with an askew glance over at Barbara’s desk, clomps his way back out again.

These points would seem correlated, but who knows, maybe not. It’s only a couple of hours later when the mass email goes out, informing everyone that Barbara no longer works for this company. Receiving this news, much like that of Pierre O’Brien’s departure, strikes a curious note of comedy and sadness both. Edgar laughs out loud, and relishes this thought of having this room to himself, but at the same time, already kind of misses her. These people may be nuisances, but they are our nuisances. We like them just where they are.

Speaking of Pierre, the last Edgar hears, Barbara winds up as the same place as that mighty peculiar character. Same as former vitamins stalwarts Zaire and Rachel and one or two others, if he’s not mistaken: Sunnybush Farms. Despite the name, this is actually an ever smaller, standalone store, something of a competitor that sprung up right around the same time as the first Healthy Hippie Market location. Barbara goes immediately from here to there, within a week, which cements Edgar’s impression of that place. Or rather, this place. This place, whether known as Wholesome Shopper Market or something else, is like the great local sieve. Those who couldn’t cut it, or maybe just couldn’t stomach something this “corporate,” they sifted down to Sunnybush Farms. Anyone who outgrew this place, on the other hand, they were presumably scooped out and transported somewhere better. What this says about those who remain is hard to pinpoint, though — it most likely means they have just not yet been sorted.

As one such person, Edgar still has his last conversation with Barbara, ringing in his ear. It’s only from the day before, yet already feels quite distant, as though spoken by a ghost. She was sitting at her desk and out of the blue, with nothing said between them for hours, when — staring wistfully at her desktop phone while doing so — she suddenly declares, “I wish my extension was 3320 instead of 3303. That just sounds cooler, you know?”

When Edgar glances up, he’s conveniently wearing a genuine expression of concern, but this is only because his head was buried into the latest spreadsheet and it takes him a moment to replay what she just said. Therefore, it appears as though he is seriously weighing those words. All the better, then, when he lightly chuckles and nods, mutters, “yeah, really.”

Other developments are a lot more blatant, unambiguous. There’s not much debating what happened in these instances, like for example the fallout from Isabel’s sudden “retirement.” Though Isabel, like Michael and some other recent departures, is too classy to come right out and say so, this rash of high profile desertions is generally interpreted as no coincidence.

So a whole lot of people are not exactly enamored with the new regime. Still, just as many or more find much of it quite comical, especially among those who have no problem with the current management and plan on sticking around. One might go as far as to say these are often heaping helpings of just desserts, even. For example when Todd Cashner announces that to fill Isabel’s vacancy…he is transferring Destiny Davis over to Arcadia. In Destiny’s place, Craig Willis is now appointed the store manager at Central.

Though in every technical sense, Destiny’s transfer is considered a lateral move, it’s obvious that this amounts to a demotion. She clearly knows that it is, and accepts it with an appropriate level of cheer. Then again, the way Edgar sees it, there are certainly both pluses and minuses here, for the company’s longest tenured employee. For example, Arcadia is a much slower store, and Destiny will be able to take it even easier, overall. However, it’s also true that they have no receiver there, meaning she is now among those contributing to the group effort on that front. This is one of the primary points which find her in a foul mood of late, indeed.

One of, but not the only. As Edgar winds up at his first Arcadia scan audit, following this managerial chair shuffling, Destiny has remained entrenched behind one of the cash registers for just about the entire day. The occasional intercom page disturbs her laconic rhythm, of course, for example sending her to the back dock to check in the occasional delivery, but otherwise she is planted at this checkout lane. Rather than being forced to stroll back and unlock the office every time Edgar needs another batch of shelf tags, she’s even handed him her keys.

Although, on second thought, it’s just as likely that maybe she doesn’t wish to see his face. There is a lot of undisguised hostility, floating in the air between them — even though this only flows in one direction, emanating from her. It’s true that he does think of her as pretty much a joke, and increasingly unpleasant, but has kept these thoughts to himself, to the extent that even she would have no way of knowing this. But whatever the particulars, these combustible elements drifting through the ether, they took on a solid form first thing this morning.

He had just gotten cracking when one of the day’s first customers drifts through her register. Destiny seemed to be in no fantastic disposition to begin, and the same applies as she shouts to Edgar, to summon his presence over there. As he arrives at the register, some tall and vaguely bewildered looking older gentleman is standing there with his groceries.

“He forgot his card and there’s no way to look it up? Why can’t we just look up their information? Do I seriously have to fill out a new application every time they forget their card?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he shrugs with one shoulder, “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“We can’t even type in their phone number?” she bleats, waving an agitated hand at her register’s touch screen.

“No. Todd doesn’t want us to be able to look people up.”

“Yeah but I thought there was a way to search by phone number. That’s what I heard. This is really dumb!”

“Are you taking down their phone number when you sign people up?”

“No,” she says.

“Well, there you go. How could that could possibly work, then?” he tells her, and walks away.

By the end of this conversation, that shopper had understandably looked far more horrified than flummoxed, and rightly so. One wouldn’t necessarily expect this highly unprofessional exchange, in front of customers, at a Cost Merchant or Harry Teet or what have you. But for Edgar, it has him mostly shaking his head, chuckling under this breath as he does so. Things are starting to get quite ugly around this place, and he has a feeling they will only continue moving in that direction.

However, he also has occasion to reflect on how there are distinct advantages for someone working in the store, as opposed to an office person such as himself. At the store level, you enjoy greater proximity to the workforce, whereas he is one or two barriers removed from them. Therefore, someone like Destiny can get in front of complaints, she can head the “official” narrative off at the pass before it even reaches the office.

Like with these loyalty cards, for example. Working in the store, she is able to play both sides. Included in the vote for the loyalty cards, but then omitting this part when she turns around and bitches to everyone about the result. Edgar’s well aware that she is one of many whom this applies to, and not just that, but contributing to this pervasive mindset whereby everyone seems to think this whole ball of wax was Edgar’s idea, now, and that therefore the fact that it sucks is his fault, too. A mighty convenient angle to promote, to be sure, for the Destinys and Shelleys of the world.

Days earlier he had received an email on this topic from Jessie, the head cashier at Central. Now, for the record, he likes Jessie, thinks she does a great job and is a really nice person, and her email was thoughtfully composed. She also apologized profusely after he replied with a rebuttal, agreeing that he was right, when he bumped into her at the store the next day. Yet it’s just another example of how this narrative has taken hold now, willfully promoted by some of the very same ones who’d adamantly opposed him during the vote.

Yes, it is a stupid set up. He had told them it would be a stupid set up, and everyone disagreed, half of them acting like he was being weird or difficult on top of it, for arguing that they should enter these themselves at the store. The loyalty cards were not his brainchild. Todd remains adamant that they are changing nothing about this — and yet for all Edgar knows, is probably also among those saying, “I don’t know, ask Edgar, this is his big idea,” should anyone complain to him. He can’t quite seem to get through to people that this was not his baby. He is only. The guy. Entering. The information. Into. Their computer system. That’s it.