latest configuration of a Wholesome Shopper office

This arrangement will not hold for long, however — not for Edgar’s office, and certainly not much else at Wholesome Shopper Market, either. When Dale gets the idea that he wants to put together some metal shelving to hold his boxes upon boxes of literature and free samples for events, then what remains of Barbara’s half of the room seems the most reasonable location. The printer sits in front of the Spaghetti Junction cord monstrosity, while Barbara’s former desk is slid over to Edgar’s half of the room to make space for Dale’s shelving. Someone tosses everything she left behind — a not insubstantial amount, hinting that she may have stormed out of here without bothering to retrieve any of her things — into a gigantic cardboard box, and scoots this around the corner, to a wall just outside the office. But yes, the coffee maker will remain atop her former desk, in its new, purely random spot against the wooden shelving that already lines these walls.

Actually, why Dale didn’t just fill those shelves with his stuff is a pretty good question, either on Barbara’s side or over here, where most of Edgar’s remain empty as well. But those wooden slats are kind of narrow, and might have created a mini-disaster of boxes constantly tumbling off of them. Whatever the case, Dale has hung a snazzy curtain to block off the contents of his metal shelves, anyway, and it doesn’t look half bad.

As evidenced by Barbara’s shoved and forgotten desk, Edgar’s got more important things to worry about than mere cosmetics, anyway. If they want a spiffier looking office, perhaps they should bring back Pierre O’Brien as an interior decorator or something. The way things stand, the actual work he does have crams the calendar of every day. All the more so in that he feels as though, if not still pushing that rock uphill in attempting to explain to various people that he has nothing to do whatsoever with concepts like internet connections and printer malfunctions, then a substantial portion of his hours are also spent having to explain and/or attempt defending someone else’s decisions, well after the fact, in subjects where he is involved.

“What is the deal with this Bakery department?” Vicky wants to know, a reasonable question considering that she is after all the merchandiser in charge of it. She’s just popped into his office, moving as if in a tremendous hurry like always and probably with good reason.

Seated behind his desk, Edgar shakes his head and sighs, chuckles, says, “that was Todd’s idea. Sorry. I couldn’t talk him out of it. Just be glad I was able to convince him it should be a sub-department of deli. He was originally wanting to spin it off into its own separate thing.”

“Are you shittin me? But we don’t even have a bakery. Anywhere. I mean they’re still using that ancient ass oven up in Palmyra, which sucks.”

“Well, according to him, it’s in the works. I don’t know. I already switched some of the more obvious stuff in our system to where it’s ringing up as bakery, but we should probably go over your entire product list…really, though, I’m a lot more worried about the supplies. How do you think we should handle it?”

“I don’t know…,” she admits, grimacing to ponder this angle, “because they will be using a lot of the same shit…”

“Yeah, I know, that’s what I’m thinking about.”

“What are our options, though?”

“Well, we would either have to transfer everything that the bakery uses…”

“Ugh.”

“…yeah, or else we set up a new vendor called, like, Universal-Bakery or whatever, for ordering and receiving. Or else we just say forget about it, and Grab & Go eats the supply cost. Actually I’m thinking that’s the backup plan. That’s what’s gonna happen anyway when people forget. But we can at least set up the Universal-Bakery and Harmony-Bakery et cetera, try to get people to remember to use those. If not, eh, it’s not the end of the world. Better than transferring everything constantly, anyway.”

“Are we sure this is better than just breaking off a new department?” Vicky jokes, accompanied by a hearty laugh.

“Well, yeah, I mean…we discussed this in detail with Wanda, actually, she’s the one who brought this to my attention. Like I was telling her, I think if you created a new department, the problem is that all of this stuff would still be true, but then you’d also have to have completely separate schedules, to keep track of the labor costs, and the supply issue would be an even bigger deal. At least this way, we just have to get them in the habit of coding their invoices to bakery, remembering what those items are…”

Vicky places a hand upon her forehead, as she shakes these conjoined parts back and forth a few times. Groans, “oh my god…” and breezes back out of the room.

Given the steadily escalating insanity, it’s not all that surprising that some wish to tap out. The latest casualty is Brian Prentiss, who turns in his two weeks’ notice, announcing a move to Florida. He doesn’t even have another job lined up yet, but figures he should have no trouble acquiring a suitable one after landing there. Though cagey when pressed for a specific reason, there are a couple of popular theories. Many have expressed a mounting dismay that, despite that charming summit months upon months ago, and the promises to begin bringing their pay closer to prevailing industry standards, absolutely nothing has been done on this front. And it’s unlikely that anything ever will, especially with this new regime in place. Another is that, though Todd and Edgar and in one instance Fred met with three different companies in person, as potential replacements for Slingshot, after which Todd talked each of them up for weeks, only to never mention them again, he has settled upon a dark horse candidate instead: RU Data.

So it could be that Brian doesn’t feel like going through this all over again, with a completely different software package. Who knows. But as he heads south and Vince Brancatto is given the bulk/produce/alcohol merchandiser job on top of the grocery one he is apparently considered to be crushing, the rest of them attempt coming to grips with this RU Data. Based out of Long Island, NY, they were not one of the companies met with, at any point, or so much as mentioned in passing, yet Todd is now effusive in his praise for them, as if old chums whom he always intended to join forces with.

This is a done deal, the contract signed, before any of them even hear of RU Data. Aside from other key insiders, of course, such as Fred and Rob and possibly Vince. The next thing Edgar knows, it’s a Tuesday afternoon and Todd’s telling him about a conference call the following morning, at 9 a.m., with a couple of guys from RU Data, to discuss implementing this change. Because it really doesn’t matter where he takes this call, and having already planned on being in Palmyra all day Wednesday, Edgar just shows up a few minutes before nine and joins the call out on the picnic table in front of the store.

Ah, this modern technology! Although this conference call feature has probably existed in some form since, what, the 1960s? And yet it still seems kind of cool that two guys from one Long Island office — Matt Abernathy and Greg Talbott of RU Data — can chat with not only Todd Cashner and Fred Baldwin from an office in Chesboro but little ol’ Edgar Lodge, alone out here with just his phone and his laptop.

They don’t have a ton of specifics to discuss just yet, and even so, the call lasts about 45 minutes. Mostly those two in New York explaining what they need and how this is going to work, though the planned launch of this conversion is still months and months away. They tell Edgar to send them the complete database file in Excel, which he’s able to dash off in an instant. Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that Todd has the most to say on their end, while the one pressing question Edgar has, concerning how ordering will work, is brushed off as a triviality. Todd seems to believe they don’t need to get into this just yet, while Fred says nothing on the subject. As for RU Data, the impression these two are lending is that this should be a breeze and barely even worth mentioning or sweating over.

“I mean, what are you guys even doin’ now?” this Matt fellow asks, “are you talkin’ about EDI?”

“Eh, well, we’ve only got…13 vendors that are truly EDI,” Edgar explains, “the rest are just set up to where when we hit send, it fires off the purchase order as a PDF to whatever email address they specify, on the other end. Of course it looks the same either way, as far as the person ordering here is concerned.”

“Oh, well, yeah, that’s…,” Matt begins, dismissively.

“Just send us a list of the email addresses,” Greg tells him.

“Yeah, just send us their email, along with the vendor name.”

So they say their goodbyes and hop off of here, as Edgar heads inside to get cracking on Palmyra’s monthly scan audit, along with his own few scattered projects and whatever other nonsense the employees bring him. Aside from the loyalty card situation — a feature which RU Data has already come right out and admitted they have no capability of handling — it sounds like the transition shouldn’t be any big deal. Some different specifics to learn, as far as how their programs flow, but the basic principles behind everything wouldn’t really change. Of course, as soon as Sharon learns of his presence here today, she can’t resist peppering him with her own litany of questions, many of which concern this upcoming change. She already comes across as extremely agitated, that she hasn’t been included in every single discussion about this project, even though none yet have required an ounce of her input. Not that he’s really surprised by this.

“What do you think about this RU Data?” she asks, as though knowing more than she possibly could and unsure about them herself.

“Eh, I’m sure it’ll be fine, whatever,” he says, shrugging with one shoulder, before he laughs and adds, “although, I have to admit, I think it’s kind of awesome…”

“Yeah?”

“…and kind of hilarious…”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I know all the complainers thought that if they just whined enough, that we’d go back to doing things the old way. I know this is what they thought. But these concepts aren’t going away. You wanna complain to Todd all day about Slingshot? Congratulations. Now you’ve got a whole new system to learn.”

Perhaps anticipating trouble on the horizon, it’s right around this time that Todd announces he is bringing aboard yet another old crony from out west, Don Evans. He explains this move in much the same manner that Fred Baldwin’s hiring was announced, i.e. that Don is climbing onto this wobbly ship to act as some sort of “enforcer” type, the company heavy. This seems most curious, indeed, that they would need two such figures for a three store chain, until examining the facts. Because although this is what Todd had said Fred would be doing, upon closer inspection, he performs no function of the sort. What Fred actually does all day is sit in his office and deal with numbers, blueprints, plan-o-grams, and the like. Which inevitably only makes some of them wonder at what point it was decided that his role would change, or if this was always an intended bait-and-switch. Also, whatever it is that Todd might be doing himself, because it seems like Fred’s tasks were theoretically supposed to be his.

Aside from talking at great length about all the wheels he has in motion, of course. That and occasionally engaging said wheels, although just as often, the wheels disappear, the wheels are never referenced again. Or wheels materialize out of thin air that were never mentioned whatsoever. Like the day that somewhere around fifty handheld units show up at the Central HQ, without warning. These boxes are eventually moved into Edgar’s office, just as Todd in turn asks him to unpack those and see about “getting these on the internet.”

Though Edgar does fiddle around a little with attempting to figure out these strange devices, he also tells Todd, “I don’t actually know…anything about this. Should we get the IT department involved? I can ask Jack, or Felix.”

Todd offers a short nod in response, saying nothing and looking less than amused. When Edgar contacts Jack and he’s able to work these into his schedule, however, as well as asking a few more questions, it turns out that these are some used PDA devices Todd picked up from Ebay on the cheap. He’s got it into his head that the stores are going to be using these whenever they switch over to RU Data, although the opinions on this matter are mixed to say the least.

“These things are from, like, 2005, so the security certificates are majorly outdated” Jack hisses to Edgar, while inspecting these gadgets, “I seriously doubt these are gonna work.”

Edgar chuckles and says, “you wanna break the news to him?”

Jack shakes his head, though appearing resigned to doing so, as he adds, “what the fuck? Shouldn’t you maybe ask someone first, dude, so we can get something a little more modern, that might actually work? I guarantee he spent more money on that Keurig machine in there than on all of these puppies combined.”

Which is funny, although even if phrased to Todd as such, this is surely exactly what he would use as his defense: well, it didn’t cost me much, so I figured it was worth a shot. Although this response is largely undermined by the fact that he will continually mention them, off and on for months, and refuses to part with the devices. Therefore, they are dumped into a shopping cart, which gets pushed around HQ, forever moved somewhere else whenever it gets in someone’s way. And also, it’s probably a safe bet, considering the way this guy’s mind works, tucking this away in his head as a pertinent “fact,” proof that not just Jack but Edgar don’t really know what they’re doing, and that therefore he should bring in still more people from his days in St. Louis.

Best of all might be Todd’s first ever major meeting with Universal Foods. For months now he’s been railing that “Universal’s ripping us off, I know they are,” meaning not that there’s any shadiness going on per se, rather that he believes they are undercutting the volume discount that Wholesome Shopper Market should theoretically receive, based upon how much they order. At the peak of this relationship’s dealings, with the Healthy Shopper having five stores and with Universal as their primary supplier, they were getting a 21% volume discount across the board. Over the course of subsequent marketplace gyrations — switching to Harmony Hill, losing a couple of stores, Vince’s possibly cronyism-related move to reinstate Universal despite their refusal to raise the volume discount — they are now at just a 19% with the company. Even Harmony has just dropped them down a single percentage point, from 23 to 22%, despite having lost a ton of WSM’s business.

So Todd heads into this meeting with considerable motivation, held in one of Universal’s regional offices. He rants and raves about getting to the bottom of this and holding that company’s feet to the fire for as long as it takes. Then returns and informs them that the new deal is a 16% volume discount, but with a 2% rebate at the end of the year, for everything ordered! All hail the master negotiator! At any rate, he seems mighty proud of his work on that front. Though unlikely to admit to anyone, true, least of all himself, if ever suffering the tiniest glimmer of fear that he might have bombed out, Todd’s bluster and confidence appear genuine, that this was all part of some grand, intentional, overarching plan.

“Universal’s ripping us off, they’re ripping us off, I know they are!” Dale chortles, ruefully shaking his head as soon as Todd leaves the building, “but then he comes back with a lower discount.”