Brand #1 of 4 in the patchwork puzzle of scale databases
In the wake of this Pierre fiasco, Corey is attempting to redirect his story. Now he’s stating it wasn’t that he ever thought Edgar was a slacker or a joke or anything like that, but rather the point of this whole exercise was to spread the knowledge around. That’s why he thought it would be a good idea to promote Pierre to this role, that was the entire reason.
“What if someone ran you over with their car tomorrow? I mean, think about that,” Corey says to Edgar, with curiously implied menace, “we need a backup in place.”
Of course, there’s also a defensiveness here, an inability to admit he was ever wrong. A guy like Corey is apt to play the know-it-all card, too, and he does, as in hinting around that Edgar’s a smug know-it-all for believing that he was doing a great job and that Pierre would be a disaster. This is all very predictable, from a management figure in this spot. Maybe attempting to pass it off with a joke, chortling, “hoo hoo hoo, boy, it must be nice to have all the answers! The rest of us are just trying to muddle along the best we can!”
To which, Edgar usually bites his tongue, though he wants to reply, “well, no, one of us was acting like a know-it-all in this situation, and it wasn’t me.”
He feels just the same as everyone else, basically. That he knows a lot about just a few specific areas, but that he does very well in those few specific areas. He believes management recognizes that he’s the go-to person in these very few specific areas. That the last time a similar situation occurred, and they pressed forward without even consulting him, that they realized it was a mistake, and he should have been involved at the outset of that process. And yet the next time this occurs, here you have a guy like Corey, barging ahead on his own again as though he has all the answers. Because the sequence of events typically runs like this, which it had with the Pierre hiring:
1. Management figure making grand pronouncement on something he knows nothing about, failing to consult their in-house specialist in this matter
2. If specialist disagrees, upon learning of this, usually at the last minute or even after the fact, specialist is accused of being negative or standing in the way of progress or something.
3. When plan blows up in everyone’s face, management refuses to admit wrongdoing, hides behind a how was I supposed to know? defense. Accuse specialist of being a “know-it-all,” along with anyone else taking that side.
One just sees this pattern repeat endlessly, out in this treacherous retail wasteland. It applies to the Pierre situation as well as it does to something as comparatively benign as barging ahead and adding weird deli scales to each of the new stores. Which aren’t online, are completely different brands from one another, you name it. Just when he feels like he maybe made an impression about the rollout for such at Walnut, the next instant they’re doing the same thing all over again at Arcadia, without consulting him ahead of time.
They therefore have four different brands of scales between five stores. This was maybe not as big of a deal when you had one employee on top of things dealing with them. Even then, Edgar could only program things into the Southside and Palmyra scales remotely — for the other three stores, this involved making lists of what needed updated where, and doing so during his next visit. The processes for each are completely different, and the databases certainly don’t speak to one another.
Now they’ve got Valerie handling most, although even then she has no access to the Orchestra database and is relying for accurate information from anyone giving it to her, as far as what is or isn’t in the system, what kind of pricing is needed. Up in Walnut, harsh reality eventually prevailed and they’ve got Karen Hatley adding things into the scale there, or making any changes — another Edgar project, coaching her on this, as the only person they have who knows anything about that one. It was certainly preferable to her watching a bunch of YouTube videos in Spanish.
If nothing else, though, the day that they have to battle their way through that botched Harmony Hill upload, Edgar is able to make Jack’s acquaintance. It already seems as though they might be kindred spirits, which is a relief — some combination of fairly chaotic in their personal lives, yet with extreme attention to detail on the job. In other words the basic geek mindset. They solved that Liberty Avenue problem with a double tiered approach, as, after Edgar reformatted the file correctly, he deployed it in both places separately, at the main terminal and at the store, for Liberty was still not communicating with the main server. Meanwhile, Jack investigated how to repair the connection, which didn’t automatically fix itself even after cleaning up the database. Eventually he is forced delete any reference to this 02 from the upload history, as though the event never happened.
In the wake of this development, Edgar is also getting to really know Felix Ortega at last. One key outing is the day Felix takes all three of them to a popular nearby Mexican place for lunch. Edgar hasn’t gotten over to this side of Chesboro at all, a major thoroughfare to the west of Bellwether’s offices, near the state line. At a central table here, this wall to wall lunch crowd, with its clanking plates and swells of conversation, is nearly so loud as to preclude speech.
Shouting over the din, Edgar explains his backstory, and learns a little bit about theirs. Jack he already knows came from some telecommunications company, recently moved back to this region after a stint out west. Is only in his mid twenties, so about ten years younger than Edgar, though they have much the same interests in music, and seem to possess a similar dry sense of humor, a laidback demeanor.
Felix is much more difficult to get a read on, although Edgar was already expecting as much. A middle-aged guy in thick gold rimmed glasses and an ever present vinyl windbreaker, he is perpetually in a hurry, though Edgar can’t determine whether this is due to actual pressing demands or because he doesn’t want to be pinned down in one place, a definitive answer or situation, for any longer than he has to. He’s Latino but doesn’t look it, and in fact you wouldn’t be able to discern any accent, either, if not already clued in to listen for it.
As far as a professional pedigree, he assumes Felix knows what he’s doing. After all Felix was brought aboard to a position above Teri, which didn’t even exist before, heading up an entire IT department — or a theoretical one, at least. For now he still has the lone assistant, a role currently filled by Jack. Clear back at the time of his hiring, though, there was talk that Healthy Shopper Market was going to get its own dedicated tech person, a third individual for the department, but so far this has not transpired.
Then again, none of the things Edgar asks for ever seem to happen. His laptop still won’t work in Walnut and half the time doesn’t want to in Palmyra, either. Felix always manages to blow everything off in a breezy manner, replete with jokes, as he mumbles something about working on it, right before he flies out of the room. There’s also the matter of the new scale at Arcadia, which could theoretically be online, it would only require running a long cable either down the hall or over the wall into the manager’s office, or perhaps some kind of wireless implementation. This wouldn’t solve the mystery of why a completely different brand was purchased, with its own separate database, but it would at least make life significantly easier for updates. With projects like these, though, every month or so, Felix will ask a couple random questions, even if he already has, say something like, “ah ha, I see, I see…,” as he nods and lends the impression of making progress. But maybe he’s just swamped — who can really say.
Everything is perpetually up in the air around this place. Corey never does fully explain where that genius flash of insight came from, to have the IT dude upload a file for the price change guy, but it’s presumed that this can only really mean one thing. That the writing is on the wall for Pierre and that was a desperation move. Even so, nothing really changes, in this or any other fashion, until well past the holidays, when Duane returns from his extensive heart attack recuperation period.
And yet this is a repeat of so many particulars about the Pierre promotion, that it makes many question whether the bosses really ever learn anything. Edgar, like the others, was under the impression that they recognized they should have at least posted the thing, if not conducted an outside search as well, and yet this pattern plays out in nearly identical fashion once more. The only real twist is when everyone receives this mass email and learns that former two time employee Melissa, i.e. the once driver, one grocery clerk, daughter of the ex-president whom Duane must owe one hell of a favor to, has been brought back for a third time, to take over Pierre’s data coordinator role, as he is in turn reassigned.
As soon as Pierre is finished training Melissa (another real stumper of a development, if anyone wants Edgar’s opinion, although apparently nobody ever does), he will be sent over to replace Shad as Liberty’s assistant manager. Shad, who is transferring over to Arcadia in this same role, for store sales there are slightly better than Liberty’s. Sometimes an email is sent out to everyone explaining changes such as these, sometimes not. Sometimes Edgar hears about it word of mouth, though just as often, the only clue that there’s a new person at one of the stores is because he spots a different signature on an invoice.
And there’s plenty to keep track of, considering these are but a few light flurries in an eventual blizzard of changes. It all starts, really, when Rob is over at Edgar’s desk one day, talking to him about something else entirely — he can’t quite recall what — and Edgar happens to mention the Walnut store, how they are handling a certain situation. A positive example, actually, for once. Rob just rolls his eyes, however, which is Edgar’s first clue that perhaps all is not well up in that kingdom. Sure enough, within a couple weeks, the announcement is made that they are closing that store and reassigning what few interested employees that failed experiment possesses.
“Ahm glad to hear it,” Reece confesses to Edgar, shortly thereafter, during a somewhat rare phone chat. She coughs out her merry but raspy, tar drenched laugh and adds, “I believe that was a huge waste of everyone’s taaaahm.”
They allow themselves two months to wind things down, and to steadily transfer the product elsewhere as needed. Although Reece is not nearly as happy about the handling of this particular angle, considering that, in typical HSM fashion, one might say, Duane decides that they’re not going to log any of the transfers. His theory here is that whatever the difference is between the next inventory and the last one, they’ll assume this was the dollar amount each store received from Walnut. Though far from convinced, she eventually throws her hands up and figuratively says fine, whatever — probably because that ship had begun leaving the harbor before she ever even heard of its presence. Nobody has the first clue how to treat this scenario if one of the stores comes up with a lower inventory than the previous month, though fortunately this does not come to pass.
Karen is sent down to run Palmyra, while Brian is demoted to her assistant. By most accounts he’d done a fine job and everything, but there’s typically not much obstructing the career of your boss’s wife. And so it is here. Johnny ends up right back where he began, in charge of the bulk department at that store. Liberty Avenue is the proud recipient of that weird newish deli scale from Walnut, although Sam, in another perplexing move that Edgar only learns of months later, decides to unplug their existing one and stow it on their highest shelf of the backstock room. While this will theoretically, maybe years down the road, simplify things by having one less oddball brand in commission, until then it means starting over from almost scratch with a skeletal database. Melissa attempting to figure out that monstrosity on her own, whenever she’s over there, which far more often than not will turn into everyone just using the Miscellaneous Bulk PLU and changing the price as needed — or not — as they hand write on the label what this is supposed to be. Or not. Sometimes, one wonders if certain people aren’t being intentionally difficult for comedy’s sake, and Sam’s decision is a reasonable candidate for this scenario.
Otherwise, all that remains to be seen now, once the smoke clears, is how well Melissa is going to fare overall as their database coordinator. Not that there’s any doubt that she is a marked improvement over the person she is replacing. Still, it seems like there might be a ceiling in place to some extent, considering that, unless really getting fired up about this role and running away with it, her knowledge is limited to what Pierre is showing her. A few weeks into this change, Edgar receives an update in the form of Dale, who happens to drift through the Bellwether HQ and stops by to say hi.
“How’s Melissa doing?” Edgar asks him, during this conversation.
“Well, let me tell you — it’s a definite improvement over Pierre…”
“Oh I’m sure, I’m sure…”
“Yeah,” Dale grins, “although I have to say, what’s that thing where, like, a person who’s kidnapped starts to identify with their kidnapper?”
“What, uh, Stockholm Syndrome?”
“Yes! I think there’s quite a bit of that going on. It seems like her attitude was better before. Now after a few weeks with Pierre, it’s I hate my life, everything sucks, this place blows, wah…”
