Healthy Hippie mural in early stages

Christie Marsh is the next to exit, putting in her two weeks’ notice shortly after this incident. Though insisting the timing is coincidental, she does confess to Edgar that even she had never really liked Ruth, either, and only hired the woman because she was desperate. So now the hunt for her replacement is on, and while this two weeks’ notice business has been industry standard for who knows how long, it’s possible that this entire concept needs a harsh revamping for modern times. After all, everyone generally concedes that things move much faster nowadays, and the moments just seem to fly past them as a result. When you stand back and look at something like this from afar, given how difficult it is to find quality workers who are also not completely insane, it’s almost laughable to think you are going to make an acceptable switch in a scant ten work days, outside of anything but lottery-winning luck.

In the grocery department, Melissa quit at Southside, which leaves Craig in the lurch again for decent bodies of his own. Therefore as yet another possible desperation move, he therefore brings aboard his half-brother Allen, the kind of guy who inspires one to wonder about the nature of our genes, how you can sometimes observe who inherited what from where with razor blade precision, and the total unfairness of it all.

For the record, Allen is a nice enough guy and everything. However, he also comes across as possibly Craig’s alter ego, like the cartoon villain version before (or is it after?) drinking a potion. He somewhat resembles their grocery manager, but is nowhere near as handsome, instead more of a drooping, lethargic, bags under eyes copy of Craig.

Edgar’s cracking up one day because every time he flies back to the break room to quickly reheat his coffee, Allen is sitting there. Yet then proceeds to tell Edgar, with complete apparent seriousness, “I could never have a desk job like yours. Too boring.”

As such, one can safely declare that Craig is open to creative solutions for keeping his department afloat, hopefully even improving it. And in extremely roundabout fashion, this episode with the gluten free panic eventually leads to one such key development. Getting there takes some time, but after printing off that list of brands so that Harry can rush it down to the famous actor John Amos, this experience unlocks a whole chain reaction of ideas, one feeding into the next.

There are eight blank user defined fields in the Orchestra program, which can be used for whatever. In the current configuration, their mostly useless remark field on the new items spreadsheet feeds into just one of these boxes. The other seven are left empty and aren’t used for anything whatsoever. Yet Edgar’s already aware that you can search for anything you want in Orchestra, filter the results, and then choose to mass edit everything that comes up if you like. So this first major project is simple enough. For everything he discovers that’s gluten free, he’s marking these as such in the remark field and uploading an update to the system. That’s basic enough. But then it occurs to him that he can bounce this gluten free remark over to one of the seven blank boxes, so to speak, and then remark field is free again to use for something else.

This is kind of a mind-blowing development in that he realizes they can do this for all sorts of things, whatever they like. Though the next major breakthrough only occurs thanks to Craig sitting in his office, as they shoot the breeze for a few minutes. As Edgar recently fed a major update into the system, it generated another large batch of tags, which Craig drifted up here to retrieve. For quite some time, Edgar’s at least filtered these by store, based upon sales history, which is about as accurate as it gets with the current system. Yet this is still a major hassle, even when also uploading only one department at a time, because it prints these in UPC order, which are scattered all over the store.

“It would be cool if we could, like, put actual locations into the system somehow,” Craig observes.

And this is the proverbial light bulb moment. Because as Craig says this, Edgar realizes that whatever items are in the print batch right this second, these are obviously on hand in Southside somewhere. He could search for everything with the print flag checked, and it would filter by these items. Just to experiment with this concept, before Craig has even left the office, Edgar pulls up the current list. He types a simple S into the mass modify box, selects user defined box #5, which is still totally blank everywhere, and it populates this field.

“Whoa,” Edgar says, his mind racing at the possibilities opened up here. Because this is just one foot, or not even a foot, more like a pinkie toe, wedged into the doorway.

As it so happens, those eight user defined boxes are arranged in two columns of four. He can use the left column for defining up to four different product attributes, like gluten free or 60% juice or has flour. The right column can specify whether each of the four stores carries this item — or better yet, the precise location of each, if possible.

After discussing this some more, they immediately realize that Craig or whomever can go down there right now, and scan one four foot section to put it in the print batch. Whether they even print the tag or not at this juncture is beside the point. What’s important is that they’ve identified the precise spot in the store where these items are located. The aisles are even handily numbered, from 1A across to 13B or whatever, really everything except the perimeter and checkout lines, meaning they don’t even need to get creative. Edgar can filter by print batch, and begin marking these items 1A1, then 1A2, 1A3, as the person scanning moves on down the line.

Maybe it’s not a coincidence that he and Craig both have Target on their resumes, having worked there at some point prior to arriving here. This does feel like a very Target-esque move, even if they have much more advanced systems over there. Whereas this establishment requires a great reliance on clever workarounds. But whatever the case, though again possibly inspired by that former employer, Craig has another brilliant idea, which is to go out and purchase some walkie-talkies, to really ramp up this operation.

Well, if you were going to get one person behind this concept, Craig would possibly be the best, as he is running the department with the highest sales volume, at their busiest store. All told it takes them about a month, pecking away at this project in their free time, to knock out shelf stable grocery as well as the dairy and frozen departments which also fall under his umbrella.

Nobody else is even remotely interested in this undertaking, however. It isn’t just that they are too lazy to get involved with this personally, but rather that they don’t see the value in it, period. Which is highly instructive as to the kind of obstacles they’re running into at this place overall. Dale gets it, but his attitude is summarized as, that’s great if you feel like tackling this, but I’m not donating any hours to this cause. As far as everyone else, none of the key, sharp enough people, whom he expects would understand why this is huge — ranging from Trudy to Corey to Harry — think this is even remotely useful or worthy of their attention.

This example neatly summarizes why Southside is pulling away from Palmyra, establishing itself as their clear cut flagship store. Sure, it’s to their tremendous credit that, according to the inside source Harry says he’s spoken to, that brand new Cost Merchant in Palmyra thought they were going to swoop in and steal half of Healthy Shopper Market’s business up there, and that hasn’t happened. Nothing even close to it, in fact, as that Cost Merchant is already shaping up as a major dud. But, owing perhaps to the personalities involved, the Palmyra HSM nonetheless remains an outpost of tremendously bizarre behavior. Roped into helping Dale during the latest Customer Appreciation Saturday, Valerie returns from her first ever trip to that store, and drifts into Edgar’s office on Monday to relate her findings.

“Your mom is so cute! She said to tell you hi,” Valerie says.

“Cool, thanks. I keep telling her she needs to come down to this store. Get away from that…Twilight Zone up there…”

“Pssh. If you can even call it that!”

Still later in the day, he bumps into Valerie yet again, in the ramp of a hallway leading from the first floor to the second. He’s on his way down, she on her way up. Yet as it turns out, she was heading in his direction anyway. Clutching a candy bar she’s just picked up during her fifteen minute break.

“Hey look, it’s your mom!” she jokes, shoving the wrapper’s underside into Edgar’s face. There’s a tiny photo of some Central American crew on here, five figures who are theoretically responsible for this product line. Four of them are roughly the same height, but there’s an incredibly short woman at the end, whom Valerie taps now with the other index finger, as they both scrutinize the picture. “How tall is she?”

“Four foot…ten, maybe? Something like that.”

“Damn, I thought I was short,” she says, nodding, as she slides her finger to the dude standing next to that woman and theorizes, “and okay, so then…maybe this is your brother?”

However improbable, Palmyra’s brief heyday of catching this store and running neck and neck is already in the rearview, unlikely to return. Which means there are no serious contenders. Liberty Avenue remains a steady profit generator, despite its volume trending continually lower, further even less likely to recover considering two of its sharpest employees are now wholly or nearly absent — Chloe has been part time for months, whereas Tonya surprised everyone, including herself, by recently deciding on a whim that she was moving to Australia.

As for Walnut, just six months in, they have already pulled the plug on the initial concept, shifting nimbly into phase 1A. The owner of that indoor market proved a problematic blowhard, and the lack of computer system a greater obstacle than Duane initially envisioned. Furthermore, as it only required a single employee to close at night, which itself was just one corner of a larger operation, they were repeatedly running into issues with the teenage help shutting down early and leaving. When an actual shop became open around the corner, they jumped at the opportunity to slide this most distant Healthy Shopper Market operation over there — quite literally, considering much of the equipment was shimmied or carried up the sidewalk, the product tossed into shopping carts and wheeled down there. Yet, though Felix and Teri are tasked with installing Orchestra here, to get this store online with the other ones, and though Mr. Locke has apparently agreed to let Duane open a fifth store near the end of this year, no one is expecting this revamped Walnut operation to set any kind of sales records.

Thus, this renewed attention dedicated to Southside. There are ads in the Chesboro paper, coinciding with a scant token mention in the trendy, weekly, free events publication, even though they never win or for that matter are never even nominated for any of the yearly “Best Local” awards in their category. Even as they are certainly supporting this community, for example in commissioning a pair of local artists to paint an expansive mural against the store’s largest external side wall, facing the traffic as it drives this way from downtown.

These artists first present the store with a rough mock-up on canvas. Depicting a rickety old pickup truck, motoring away from some fictional farm at the edge of the city, with familiar Chesboro landmarks visible in the distance, in soothing but bright primary tones. They then spend a handful of weeks committing this vision in permanent form, or so everyone believes, to that large concrete wall, after which a dedication is announced, Duane instructing everyone on hand at Southside to step out for a company photo in front of the piece.

It’s funny how much you can glean about someone’s true nature, at times, from the most random, seemingly none too important episodes. So the entire Southside crew is present for this historic photo opportunity, and the merchandisers and whoever else might have an office here…but then also…Karen Hatley…and Corey Brown? Yes. Walnut’s store manager and Palmyra’s store manager, because of course, why wouldn’t they. It seems these two could not resist the opportunity to insert themselves in the middle.

Or make that the front and center. There’s a professional photographer here, calling the shots on arrangement and lighting, joined by a couple assistants. And as these figures busy themselves making everything just so, the HSM employees gather before the mural. Corey, who is easily the tallest figure here, and Karen, holding that same honor among the females and looming above most, period, wedge themselves into the middle of the front row, clearly bent upon representing themselves as major figureheads of this entire organization or something.

Except the photographer is having none of it. “Huh uh. You two there in the front, I need you in the back,” he says, flapping his arms and shaking his head. Corey makes an audible, agitated nose grunt, though he and Karen both comply. The photographer then sizes up the arrangement, points to the far left fringe, where Edgar, Valerie, and some new cashier girl are casually loitering, and commands them to move over to the vacated front center post instead.

If anyone by all rights should have stood here, that honor belonged to Duane, yet even he voluntarily slotted himself into the back row at the outset. And so now this expansive, bright, full color photo, which will begin gracing their flyers, ads, and monthly newsletters, goes to press as it now stands. Edgar finds his and Valerie’s placement hilarious, even if — or let’s get real, particularly — Corey and Karen’s monumental shot at glory is now forever ruined. Rats!

Real actual work beckons again soon enough, anyhow. Whether anyone feels like cooperating or not, this section labeling concept is gold, and Edgar begins tackling the remainder of Southside on his own. He knocks out vitamins/health & beauty next, before moving on to the checkout lines, beer and wine, and the perimeter.