One of the many friendly reminders posted throughout these premises

-the old scales at Lorena need either replaced or to have someone manually input all of our current PLUs. Ken & I couldn’t figure out any way to connect & mass upload (nothing online) and Todd won’t pay for anyone to come in and do it

-have to upload all new items & updates to Slingshot still. HQ key stopped working (service contract canceled) so I’m dropping files on shared, connecting to Palmyra, entering there, syncing, connecting back into HQ, deploying to Central & Arcadia

-3 different weekly flyers between 4 stores

-nobody knows how to look up anything (despite presence of The Cloud) (constantly sending PLU lists all over the place). Somehow it’s my fault nobody does, but then again I’m also somehow a dickhead if I ever suggest anyone learn.

-ditto running reports (despite presence of The Cloud). Maybe half merchandisers & managers know how; other half act like I’m an escaped axe murderer for suggesting they learn this. Walter at Arcadia has time though still for weird system with pink letters written on tags. Which he redoes every time they are updated.

-check digit madness (Slingshot requires, RU Data doesn’t want it; half the vendor files have it and half don’t)

-certain functions (log-ins, the weird 6pk/single quandary) require manual entry at all 4 locations, separately, on Hupp system

-scanners at Lorena won’t read compressed UPCs

-Hupp can’t read type 128 UPCs

-Marla’s idiotic bullshit might be the icing on the cake. She’s only just been hired as a Universal rep but, as our boss’s wife, gets away w/ acting like she owns the place. Has these way misguided ideas about how things work, then bellyaches to Todd/Don/Fred if you attempt to disagree or suggest anything else. So you’d have to do it her way, only to have her be a completely unappreciative cunt anyway, and complaining about the results!

-I’ve been working here so long that people have no idea how much I’m doing. These PLU lists & major vendor files don’t exactly fall from the sky, for example, but are a huge undertaking that I’ve put together myself over the years.

-Sharon flipping out about account numbers for RU Data, didn’t like my idea of going through invoices. I’d already sent Ken and then her all the ones I had. RU Data claiming they need account numbers for emailed vendors now, which makes no sense.

-brand names curiously just about the most difficult thing to standardize across a bunch of different files. If you think about it, while maybe 90% of a product line might match up between two major vendors — and so I could use a v-lookup to match UPCs — they would almost never carry the exact same mixes of products. And every vendor abbreviates the brand name differently, or doesn’t have it at all (Harmony Hill), or doesn’t have a true brand name field but instead puts it at the beginning of the item name (MRI). The best approach seems to be just copying an existing item, when adding a new one, of course, but then also to chip away slowly in my Excel database — double click & drag to replace empties/mismatches if I stumble upon them; use lookup plugin to drop in existing brand names into vendor files before sending out to everyone, month to month, etc

-Don tells Universal reps to email me photocopies of invoices & I will go thru them to look for any new items! I protest, am called into Fred’s office for a lecture. They get their way on this once, though, but that’s it.

-Don has actually just seemed to be on a mission to pin something on me from day one. I’m not sure what his deal is. I haven’t said a negative word about him to anybody the entire time I’ve been here. You might think he sensed I thought he was a joke or something, but I only began thinking this way after he’d already been here for many, many months. For the longest time I thought he would make a positive impact because he seemed very knowledgeable at first. Only after a while did I realize he didn’t know much & wasn’t doing anything. Except like I said pursuing some weird mission to make me look bad. Like that huge conference call with all of our bosses, our IT team, MRI, RU Data, me and Ken, where RU Data is trying to figure out why our sale prices aren’t sending down to the store. They say right on the goddamn call that it looks like our IT people set up the blah blah blah something or other incorrectly (I’m not an IT person & don’t understand the particulars) & this is why it’s not sending down. There was something wrong w/ our internet settings or server settings or something. So what does Don take away from this? He’s pointing fingers at me! Literally spins in his chair and starts shooting finger pistols at me when they say this. I shrug and shake my head.

-I think the actual issue with him (as it was Corey — that personality type) is that deep down somewhere, if never openly admitting it to themselves, is that your Don/Corey/etc of the world knows he isn’t really bringing much to the table. Yet they think of themselves as all-stars anyway, and are determined to go around making sure everybody in the building agrees, they demand to be treated as such. And it really bugs them to no end when people are praising meaningless peons like me or some of the others. They should be thought of as the experts, on everything, not us lowly specialists, is the mindset there.

-it just goes on and on. Todd flying in some buddy of his out to set up those tablets in Central’s bulk section which were supposed to clear up errors w/ customers writing the wrong PLU # (or no PLU #) on their bags. It sounded good in theory, anyway. But it never even got off the ground for a # of different reasons. The most glaring was that his database would take the PLU & convert it to a 12 digit UPC w/ a check digit at the end. Which Hupp can’t read anyway. So a customer picking #31 might see ten different options on the screen, none of which actually say 31. The correct one would read something like 310000000006 or something. So assuming the customer even picked this, the bar codes themselves printed in type 128, which Hupp couldn’t read. Not only that, but the guy asked me to submit our entire bulk database, and not every store carries every item. A far cry from it, in fact, their product mixes are wildly different. So the customer could in fact pick a number that wasn’t even carried at this location.

After a few days, the dude flew back to St. Louis, and we basically never heard from him again, though I would email asking for updates every so often. Nonetheless, every few months Don would start up this email blast — sent to me, CC’ing all the other key people — saying he thought I was fixing this machine & asking what the holdup is. To which I’d reply, no, we figured out the problems a long time ago, and this guy is allegedly working on them. His gist was always that it was my screwup somehow.

-also the shelf tags. We requested all kinds of samples, tried them out, narrowed this down, took them around countless times asking for opinions, eventually settling on one size for vitamins/HBC & a slightly bigger one for every other department. This larger one was actually a custom size HSX had to make for us specifically. We ordered them countless times, & each time, they would email me invoices for payment, which Todd would have to sign off on. Yet here Don recently accosted me saying these tags are too small, that he & Todd talked about this & they know they originally approved a bigger size, but they looked all over the office & can’t find them, & want to know what I did with these & why I’m ordering a different size. I tell him as calmly as possible that:

1. I wouldn’t take this upon myself to make this call on my own
2. everyone agreed to this size, including him
3. Todd has actually approved every single order
4. you can’t find this “other size” because it doesn’t exist!

-people wonder why I want email documentation of every fucking conversation — and of course even this isn’t good enough!

-same deal w/ the loyalty cards. These were actually rolled out before Fred or Don were brought in. Todd, myself, every store manager, assistant managers, a couple front end heads and even Tosha were present for this discussion. I was asked to outline the options. The way I saw it, we had 3 choices:

1. you have a dedicated person at the store, signing people up, at whatever passes for a customer service desk
2. we set out a stack of applications somewhere, with the card attached to a numbered sheet. Customers can fill them out on the spot, then turn these in and someone at the store batch enters the info later.
3. they fill out something at the cash register, which the cashiers send to me.

Everyone else voted for #3. It was unanimous. (In fairness to Todd, he actually refrained from saying anything). The only person who thought this the poorest option was me. You had the distinct impression that some people (Destiny, Shelly, etc) knew that the other two would create them personally more work, and therefore they sure as hell didn’t want that. Some others seem confused and didn’t know what they were even voting for but went along with the flow anyway. Plus the general grumbling because some of these characters were hooking up their friends with “vendor” discounts on a regular basis, and didn’t want that going away.

And yet I am somehow blamed for this debacle on all sides. Cashiers of course hate it. Todd didn’t want them to be able to look up a customer’s #, because then they could just pick one at random, & this wouldn’t cut down on our discount abuse, which was the whole point. So if people lose their cards or forget them at home, they’re issued a new one. But only maybe one of the three issued to the same family (husband, wife, husband & wife, or whatever, sometimes three cards to one person) would have a military discount, say — cashiers would forget to send for the new one. But then argue they “knew for a fact” they’d sent this, which would send me down wild goose chase going through all their old PDFs. We only documented 3 instances, ever, where someone sent me something and I missed it. I think this is a pretty strong track record. To top it off, Palmyra claimed they had stacks of cards sitting out in the open, and customers were grabbing these because they thought it would get them better prices or freebies or something. Plus, though I could never prove it, it sure seemed like certain people were screwing this up on purpose because they thought it was dumb. And I agree about that much, at least. Nothing was ever done w/ points or marketing tie-ins or anything.

So then I’ve got Sharon (who wasn’t even at the meeting) emailing me & CC’ing all the bosses saying it “appears to have been a poor rollout” on my part. Then when we switch to RU Data/Hupp, the cards are jettisoned anyway! Hupp can read loyalty cards, but RU Data has nothing in place to make them work! Yet I’ve got the inevitable accusations from Don claiming that I told him loyalty cards would be ready soon in RU Data & asking when I’m going to make this happen. Every so often, he starts in on this.

-some major vendors, like our biggest produce (Alfredson’s), pets (Blue Ribbon Pets), and tea (Tea Dynasty) insist upon sending out paper price lists/catalogs every month. They are still not digitalized in any way. Many of the DSD guys (Pepsi, Little Debbie) are also still on paper, though these are usually huge fold out, 3 panel sheets with colorful boxes and tiny print. That take a lot longer to decipher, go through, and then input than you would think.

-ordering debacle with RU Data: a timeline

late March/early Apr last year: Todd, Fred & I on conference call with Matt & Greg from RU Data, 1st time I’ve spoken to them. I bring up ordering, they tell me let’s focus on getting our items into their system 1st, we’ll worry about ordering later

early summer: 2nd conference call. I bring up ordering again, Matt & Greg say to send them email addresses of all our vendors, & I do so immediately

about a month later: I’m talking to Matt, ask him about ordering. He says he’s pretty sure Greg didn’t do anything w/ this yet. Asks me to send email addresses again, which I do.

Early September: a bunch of us on a conference call with Matt. He is shocked when Sharon & I are adamant that we need to get ordering set up ASAP — he says Todd (not on call) told him we were at least a year away from needing this

Late September: it’s the farewell party, last night at this RU Data World event. People are on the back patio of this restaurant in various cliques. Todd’s over in this group with Matt Abernathy & shouts over to me, a short distance away, “Edgar! Send Matt the email addresses!” So I walk over there to see what they’re talking about. Apparently Todd has just asked what kind of progress we were making on ordering, & Matt made up some shit about waiting on me to send him email addresses for the vendors. He has a definite deer in headlights look when I say, “I already sent those to you. Twice.” But nonetheless email them to him a 3rd time when we get back to town.

December: Matt’s in town as we finally go live with RU Data at Arcadia. Absolutely nothing has been done to set up ordering yet. We spend two days crammed on the tiny back dock here. By now Sharon’s fairly well involved with this project. She & I are both insisting that Matt should focus on our email vendors (which are probably 95% of them), but he insists on starting w/ the EDI ones instead (the other 5%). He finally gets the ball rolling on the EDI vendors, but for example Universal tells us (we’re on speaker) this is going to take at least 6 weeks, best case scenario. I ask Matt what Jungle Jim’s is doing. They are the biggest grocery store in the world & use RU Data. Surely whatever they’re doing for ordering must work, & why can’t we just do that, whatever it is? But he hems & haws, doesn’t have an answer. We even try a simple export of an order as a PDF from RU Data — it sends up error message, doesn’t work.

January: Stephen from RU Data is in town all week for Lorena opening. When Sharon & I bring up ordering, he says saving a PDF of the p.o. “should work.” Then the same thing happens — sends up error message, doesn’t save. “That’s weird,” he says. Both comments might actually be verbatim of what Matt said, too. Still, he isn’t able to help us w/ ordering despite being in town a week.

It’s only after Lorena opens that our bosses even seem to begin paying attention to the ordering dilemma. Even though Dale and Vicky have been asking them about it, too, it’s not just me. The problem w/ Lorena is they don’t have Slingshot. We’d terminated our service contract there months earlier (Todd did), but the other 3 stores are still using it for ordering. At Lorena we’ve got proprietary guns for MRI, the old Scan Tree ones for Universal & a couple others, everything else is called in or sent as a manual email.

Todd brings in his old buddy Ken as some sort of liaison to RU Data. He’s in Lorena one day, asking me & Sharon what kind of progress Matt was making on setting up ordering. I mention the Jungle Jim’s question I’d posed to Matt. “What did he say?” Ken asks. I shrug and tell him that Matt really couldn’t answer that question. Ken says something about how there should be an easy way to export a p.o. from RU Data. I tell him Matt & Stephen both tried & couldn’t figure it out.

“What do you mean, they couldn’t figure it out?”

“I mean they tried that already, but it didn’t work.”

February: Matt tells me to pick a vendor and enter the email into RU Data, because he thinks he might have figured out the email ordering piece. I pick Bellwether because they are one of our biggest “email” vendors, and also because it’s easy to verify with Tracy if she received it. I let him know this has been set up, and we send out test orders, but this is the last I hear about it. Ken asks a little bit later, down the road, but I tell him Matt never said whether this worked or not. So we’re taking this to mean no.

Harmony Hill finally comes through as the 1st EDI vendor set up for ordering in RU Data. The irony I’d guess you’d call it is a week or so later, Todd tells everyone we are cutting out Harmony Hill as a supplier. So after just a few orders, they are booted from our system anyway.

March: Ken & Sharon have basically taken over trying to get ordering set up via RU Data. I know Ken is angling for my job and Sharon would like to take over the “cool” parts of it, but whatever. If they can make this ordering happen then I don’t really care about their political angling. Green Garden is now working at a couple of stores via EDI.

Note: in between all this, there were definitely emails to Matt Abernathy, w/ our bosses copied on them, multiple occasions throughout these months. The problem is that Fred and Don have no idea what is even going on, while Todd has definitely drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak, & he spins everything into being our problem, not RU Data’s. Ken knows his stuff, but like I said he’s definitely after my job & is all too willing to throw me under the bus, any chance he has. Talking to Todd in person about anything RU Data related whatsoever, actually, is highly reminiscent of that one scene from Being John Malkovich: “RU Data RU Data? RU Data! RU Data RU Data!” is basically the extent of his response. To the extent you’re eventually, like, “whatever, dude. Guess we’re on our own figuring this out again.”

-not claiming mileage

-checking email, adding new items, setting sale prices (if sent panicky, impromptu ones) while on vacation, every day of it in the past. Sharon and/or Ken would be okay for doing some of this now, but I haven’t been on vacation since they were brought on board (out of the question since about Sept or so)

-missed one day in past ten years

-Fred always preaching about communication…but then always boasts about having “over 700” unread emails?

-moronic incident with Marla about sorting out tag sheets into piles. Extremely nasty anyway, of course

-I download Open Office onto every tablet at Lorena. Internet a joke. Usually more productive for employees to scan UPCs into blank spreadsheet there, email to me, I print.

-Ashley and I figure out formula for compressed UPCs one day out on floor. Only works about half the time but is better than nothing in a pinch

-girls obviously have better chance of keeping job because Todd is a perv

-dept managers constantly have sale UPCs well in advance, not order the stuff anyway, slap sale signs on whatever similar product they do happen to have on hand…but instead of checking 1st, they have plenty of time to email me that the sale is “wrong,” etc, then mgmt would cave anyway & tell me to put that crap on sale, too. Which of course encouraged them to keep doing that.