equipment & supply wasteland during its dying days

They don’t have to wait too terribly long for their answers, however, as the weights and measures fellow shows up a week later, pretty much right in line with what they’ve expected. And it’s high fives all around to learn that they’ve passed, though this isn’t exactly a huge shocker to Edgar and the tagging girls, nor anybody else who is analyzing the situation even semi-rationally. None of the three major bosses are there that day, when on this return visit, the auditor is checking 100 items, and they are only allowed to errors on two of them. But as he hands in his report to Shane, Edgar, Ashley and Amanda, they can readily see that he found exactly this many incorrect items, two, meaning they won’t see him again for another year, and will face no fines.

This occurrence is a cloud pattern that everyone can look at, though, and see something different, pretty much whatever they want. To Edgar’s point he feels like this annihilates any notion that this store was ever that bad to begin with, that they were instead hitting it out of the park when you consider the square footage and Todd’s last minute insanity with the MRI switcheroo, that Don’s grave assertions that it was much, much worse were always total nonsense; Don meanwhile can use their passing to claim that it was only the eleventh hour intervention of his brilliant price changing fleet that saved the day; still others standing on the sidelines might observe that these results were all total randomness, if you’re talking about checking a mere fifty or a hundred items in a building of this size, that none of this proves the auditor did/didn’t have it out for them, visiting on the day they opened, nor that Edgar and the tagging girls do/don’t have their act together, nor that sending out a squadron of random employees to change prices to whatever they felt like was/wasn’t a terrible idea.

Only one opinion matters, however, and that’s of the highest ranking person involved. Therefore Don’s take on this situation would apparently be the one that prevails. Once the others catch wind of it, Ken is quick to send out an email to all Lorena managers, notifying them that they had passed — it did occur to Edgar to do so, but he then recognized that all of them who were here on this day already knew about it, and that Shane already called Todd. As the bosses and Edgar are copied on this email, however, Don immediately replies to all with

Way to go Ken and everyone else involved with the rescan project! This never would have happened without your help on the floor that day!

Well, whatever. Crisis averted for now, Edgar supposes. Control of anything whatsoever has been steadily slipping out of his fingers, though, and all he can think is that if they plan on taking this approach at every store, every time the auditor begins sniffing around, then he is going to lose his mind. And it isn’t as though he and Don are quite finished sparring on this topic, anyway, or on a whole host of others. On the day that Edgar drifts down to Central HQ, to grab his computer and anything else of importance, on what will sadly become his second to last visit ever inside this charming old building, Don can’t resist the opportunity to stick his head into the doorway. To fire a few surreptitious arrows Edgar’s way, while simultaneously gloating and all but taking personal credit for Lorena’s recent victory.

“Well, we passed the scan audit up there,” Don sniffs.

“Yeah. I know.” Edgar fires back, from behind his desk. He’s already wondering where this is headed, considering that he had that information before anyone else did, and in case Don forgot, was also on the same email chain as everyone else when he and Ken performed their little grandstanding ritual.

Don nods and offers, “well, it’s a good thing we sent that team around. Who knows what would have happened otherwise.”

“Well, I mean, that’s great that we passed and all,” Edgar shrugs, “and I’m glad that we did. But that still wasn’t the way to go about things. That actually created more problems than it solved.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Okay, well, we still don’t actually know how much they changed that day. We’re waiting to re-sync the store with HQ,” Edgar starts.

He doesn’t get into a ton of specifics now, but this is what he and Ken ultimately decided. They would wait until the next MRI tag bearing truck arrived on Tuesday, reconnect then, deploy the Filezilla batch and wait to see what happened. The question that he doesn’t know, and Ken did not, either, was how this would all play out as far as tripping print flags. Because — and with good reason — they have never done anything like this before: disconnecting one store, changing the base retails only there, and then reconnecting the store at a later date. When the prices revert to what they had been previously, does it automatically populate the tag batch at Lorena alone?

Even RU Data is only saying that they believe this should happen, which isn’t terribly convincing. And if it doesn’t, what then? In many respects, the MRI tag batch is appreciated on at least that occasion, because this is if nothing else something that has definitively changed, right then, and they don’t have to worry about it. Otherwise, it will come down to pulling some kind of history report for Lorena and HQ alone, and then Edgar using either that Excel lookup plug-in or a formula to figure out what changed and when, then deploy and crank out tags to match.

No, he doesn’t get into all of this right now. He does dispense a condensed version of it, though, before concluding, “like, you know, I’ve got people on my case because I didn’t magically have the entire Lorena store line priced instantly somehow, after that major last minute file dump. Or getting marked off for a couple of items for a scan audit on the morning of the grand opening. But it’s okay to send out a bunch of people to change the prices to whatever they felt like…which doesn’t match what we’re charging at the other three stores? It doesn’t make any sense. Like I said, that’s not the way to do things.”

“Okay, well, I don’t know anything about that,” Don shoots back.

“I do, though. That’s why I’m saying…”

“Look, you don’t need to get an attitude with me all the time, okay!?” Don declares, crossing and uncrossing his arms like a football ref signaling an incomplete pass. “And here’s something else: where are the other shelf tags?”

“The other shelf tags?”

“Yes. Todd and I were talking, and you know what, this isn’t the size we agreed upon, these tags you’re going around hanging everywhere.”

By this, Don means the HSX tags, the snazzy new ones that Park developed, with his input. Which he is still the only person able to print, from this lone printer in this very room, because Felix and Rusty still haven’t gotten the ones at the store up and running yet. And is a custom size on top of it, that HSX developed especially for them, at Todd’s behest.

“Yes they are. We took four prototypes around, and everyone voted on the sizes they liked best. We went with this size for all of the departments, except for a slightly smaller one in vitamins.”

“These are all too small. Nobody agreed to this. Todd and I turned your room here upside down the other day looking for the right ones, but we couldn’t find them. So where are they?”

“You couldn’t find them because they don’t exist!” Edgar shouts, throwing his arms up in the air. “This is the size! I wouldn’t take it upon myself just to…order some other size that nobody even wanted! Which we had to pay extra to custom create on top of it! And the other thing is, Todd has approved every order! He has to because they get charged to his credit card, so I forward the invoices to him!”

“Yeah, well, we’re gonna get to the bottom of this…,” Don grumbles, walking away.

Arguing with one’s superiors in this fashion typically does not go well. In the short term, anyway — this will probably blow over, as such altercations almost always do. Yet the bad blood continues to linger, regardless, and these relationships rarely mend themselves. But he’s not sure what else he’s supposed to do about this guy. Just agree with everything he’s throwing out there, as preposterous as it is? Yes Mister Evans, whatever you say Mister Evans. Please continue treating me like a complete asshole for no reason whatsoever, Mister Evans.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but Edgar has a feeling that there’s a connection here when Fred contacts him out of the blue, to request regular updates on every project he’s working on. For the most part, though, Edgar actually likes this. He feels like the issues he’s mentioning to these jokers up top are routinely ignored, as they look at him with complete befuddlement. Yet they then attack him over a bunch of stuff he’s not actually involved with, such as the poor internet connections, the HSX printers still not working, or Todd’s moronic decisions on what equipment and programs to install at which store.

Having this in place should theoretically help iron out such confusion once and for all. Fred is initially clamoring for Edgar to call him on the phone, at the end of every day, and give a complete verbal recap of where he’s at with every project. Edgar pushes back on this suggestion, however, tweaking it for a couple different reasons. For one, a daily phone call with a complete verbal rundown of where he’s at with every project would significantly cut into the time he has available to actually work on said projects. That’s just way too time consuming. But it also, in his mind, wouldn’t solve much, and provide no bread crumb trail to cover his tracks, because a huge part of this problem is that Fred and Todd and Don often have no idea what he is even talking about. Spending a half hour every day spelling all of this out over and over again, as Fred mutters, “uh huh…uh huh…uh huh,” repeatedly, that really doesn’t clarify anything. As a result, they eventually come to an agreement that Edgar will email Fred a complete typed up list, of all the outstanding issues and projects, along with what progress he’s made this week, every Friday afternoon. Which he also sends as a Slack message too, of course.

His initial transmission on this front spells out the latest developments on his current projects, in fine detail. But also some that are “solved” in a sense, or cases which a homicide detective might term closed, even though the outcome was problematic and Edgar didn’t agree with it at all. On the latter category, because Fred commonly would not know the difference anyhow, Edgar attempts framing these points as an active case, as though they were still up for discussion. In many instances, it’s tricky to pull off even mentioning this stuff without busting somebody else out, but he does what he can:

1. Lorena is not synced with HQ at present, as they made the decision to change all pricing to match what the shelf tags said. So there is a potential tagging predicament this is likely to create: when reconnecting (hopefully next week), it remains to be seen if this is going to generate new shelf tags. If not, then it will require some report running and backtracking to determine what was changed and when.
2. Steadily deleting and switching over the old deli PLU numbers at Lorena. Some I have been able to leave exactly as they were before. In other instances, however, there’s a conflict with one of our existing PLU numbers, at the other three stores. Though the items would still ring at the register, they would show up (there and on sales reports) as something else. Far less common are instances where we now have two numbers for the exact same thing, which also means deleting the old PLU from their scales, and entering the new one instead.
3. Doing the same in meat, but with the added wrinkle that there doesn’t seem to be any solution to that gigantic wrapper scale, aside from going in and wiping out all the old numbers, though the meat guys have resisted this idea.
4. Palmyra managers have been complaining that a bunch of items that were marked on clearance for deletion, due to lack of sales activity (like 62 in housewares that had not sold in the past year), were moved into the new reset, while others that sold well were not included. They were not consulted about what to include with the reset, and most don’t know how to run movement reports, either in RU Data or on The Cloud. There is no inventory in the system, either. They want my help going through and determining all of this all over again, so they can get rid of the zero movers and bring back some things that sold better.
5. RU Data still has made no progress on setting up ordering. This means I must continue uploading all vendor changes into Slingshot, so the 3 older stores can continue ordering in this manner. For the most part there is no solution yet at Lorena, which means emailing/calling most vendors. Ken is actively working with RU Data on attempting to get ordering up and running.
6. The IT team does not quite have the HSX printers set up yet at the stores. This means I must continue uploading all pricing changes into Slingshot, so the 3 older stores can print out shelf tags in the old method. It’s also unclear if moving the HSX printer in my old Central office will disrupt that connection, so Felix and Rusty have left it there for the time being.
7. Todd now wants pictures of all DSD vendor reps (Pepsi, Little Debbie, beer, Bread Artisan, et cetera) on file at the stores. Along with the former receivers, I am working on this, but haven’t made a ton of progress.
8. Line pricing was about halfway completed after adding that 36,000 item file, but has halted for the time being in light of point #1
9. There’s an issue with the tare changing every week on the same produce items in the MRI file. To be blunt, they have basically said this is not really their problem. But the cashiers are understandably not too happy at fielding customer complaints, and the same can be said of the produce managers. I’m attempting to work out something with RU Data where that field can be ignored along with this MRI file that I convert every week — currently, nobody can figure out how to block that aspect of the file. I must either manually change all of them, or else the cashiers can do so on the fly at the register. Ideally, I would like to get away from this process of converting the MRI file (via Filezilla) because it doesn’t really suit our needs.
10. To elaborate upon point #2, from a different angle, there have been some complaints about departments not hitting their margins now that we are going with MRI’s suggested retail price on everything that they carry (except where line pricing concerns and/or merchandisers and upper management requests have specifically overridden them). For example, Vince does not agree with a great deal of the wine pricing. It would seem that we should ideally get away from going with the SRP from MRI, especially as two of the four stores are currently unable to order from them.
11. A solution is still needed for the tag scanners in Lorena. These won’t read the shortened barcodes, period. And overall, the internet remains problematic, although I know the IT crew is working hard on solving that. Currently, however, the employees are mostly emailing me spreadsheet files from Open Office, which I am then printing. If at HQ I am able to crank out the new HSX tags, but otherwise still printing them on the old printers at Lorena. At this point it seems fairly likely that those tag scanning devices will need to be replaced, although obviously not the person who would make the call on that.
12. Ingredients are still needed for some of the pre-existing recipes at the Lorena deli. This is about 80% completed.
13. A new law requires country of origin to be stated on the labels for any packaged seafood. Vicky has been working with me to obtain this information. However, it would seem we need to get the department managers more on board with this, as they are frequently ordering never-before-carried items, which we don’t discover until later. Also, though this is probably a remote possibility (and I’m not sure how a visiting inspector would know this), they would also need to be the ones notifying me or Vicky if a country of origin has changed.
14. Todd has recently informed the department managers via email, at all locations, that they need to get “up to date” with their inventories, but it’s not clear what this means. They’ve been asking me for clarification, particularly as they did away with checking in deliveries. Does this mean they are to start taking physical counts, or was he just saying they need to get their quantities under control? I did ask Todd if they should start counting and entering their departments by four foot section, but he has not yet responded.
15. Wanda Robinson recently asked what we are doing with this bakery department concept. If you recall, awhile back a number of our items were moved into this department, in anticipation of a bakery sub-department being created. So from that day forward those items have generated a sales history. However, this sub-department has basically not existed beyond that stage. I think her main concerns are that it has shown no expenses beyond the cost of goods — and even then, in more recent times, at Lorena (which never had Slingshot, period) or the other stores (where we’ve gotten away from checking these items in) they have somewhat forgotten that the “bakery” exists, and are charging these items to the regular old deli department anyway. She was wondering if we might possibly do away with this sub-department. I told her I would ask you and Todd about that and get back with her. Are there still plans to set up an in-house bakery at all of the stores?

In response to this, Fred only replies via email, with a simple, oh okay…thanks for letting us know. Edgar is mighty surprised, however, to observe that Fred forwarded the email to Todd, who then copied both of them with a response, alright this is exactly what I’m talking about Edgar!! keep the information coming! Thanks

Otherwise, though, nothing more is said about any of this. But he figures he’ll just keep sending the updates every Friday, just the same, until they tell him otherwise.