Information on screen: data guy’s problem. Whether device has power, connects to internet, or for that matter bursts into flames? Not so much.

“This program is like, what’s that one huge house out west? The one that old woman just kept adding and adding to?” Sharon says.

“Oh, uh…you mean the Winchester House?” Edgar replies.

“Yes! That’s what this is! This is the Winchester House of computer programs. It’s like this big ol’ sprawling house they just keep tacking on parts to, all over the place. But it’s never actually completed.”

Sharon’s analogy is an excellent one, and he can’t help laughing heartily at it, right along with her. RU Data is functional enough, and not too complicated once you learn where to find the various parts needed. But there is a whole lot of zaniness, with plenty in non-intuitive places where you’d never dream of looking for it. Or tabs that are completely empty, or at the other extreme, in some instances the same information in three different places. All a product of this loose, open ended structure, of course, from sending coders out to make these modifications on the fly. You gain the flexibility, yes, but there is also no other version of this program out there which is exactly the same as yours, and they will forevermore need to track this Matt Abernathy down if anyone needs to know exactly what was done. Assuming even he ever took notes, which, it’s safe to say they didn’t see a whole lot of, either.

It also freezes a lot, requiring a complete reboot. And there are numerous situations where you need to have two different tabs open at a same time to cross-reference something, because all the necessary information is not found on just the one. Which might prove especially problematic considering that it will only allow you to have a single tab open at a time. Except that Edgar discovered one day that if you go back to your computer desktop and click on the RU Data icon again, it will open a second functional, running application of this program. And a third, and a fourth, and so on. He can’t think of any other program which operates this way, especially not in these modern times, but so be it. Coincidentally, Sharon happens to complain about that single-tab quandary right now, and he’s able to show her the little hack he stumbled upon as well.

So this baby works, and their jobs are not fundamentally different from what they were doing before, once they learn where to find things. Of course, even without getting into the cost of this RU Data/Hupp/HSX chain of connectivity, or the nutty structure, Edgar really doesn’t see where all this alleged computational power and operational wizardry and report running prowess is coming from. So far it looks to do the same things as Slingshot, in fact quite a bit less. Many of the features Todd’s raving about are functions that Slingshot had which he dismissed out of hand at and never looked into, acting as though he were a complete expert on that program and that it had untold legions of limitations.

This is what they are running into when it comes to Todd and RU Data: he doesn’t want to hear it. They are in this no-win quandary where if you say it’s really not that complicated and you already have a handle on most of what is required for your job, he’ll scoff and say this is because you don’t have the necessary advanced knowledge, it’s really complicated and you’re not tapping into its wondrous complexity; if you were for some reason to say the opposite, that it seems really confusing…he’ll say this is because you don’t have the necessary advanced knowledge, it’s really complicated and you’re not tapping into its wondrous complexity. He has definitely drunk the all-natural, non-artificially colored or flavored powdered kids fruit beverage. Anytime anyone has an unkind word to say about RU Data, he does the equivalent of covering his ears and chanting LA LA LA LA LA at a high volume. He does not want to hear it.

These and a couple of other nagging points rear their head during the first Monday morning meeting, following the installation. With all the usual suspects seated around the conference table, Todd at the head and his two closest henchmen flanking him, in the nearest seat on each side, the others are situated at random elsewhere. Store managers Destiny, Russell, and Diane/Candace on speaker, with an additional wrinkle in that Felix is on the horn, too, but also Rick from Hupp and Matt from RU Data.

The central issue remains sale batches. Though everything appears formatted correctly, as far as what Edgar’s uploading, these continue to not fire at the registers. Everyone knowledgeable about such has examined these puppies and agreed on that point. Which meant that, while the two conjoined reps from their new POS/back end programs were initially inclined to “tentatively” blame the other, they have now both instead reached the same conclusion.

“It appears to be a problem with your internet, it’s not configured correctly,” Matt says.

“Yes,” Rick agrees.

At this, for who knows what reason, while Todd starts blabbing his own theories, Don spins in his seat and fires double finger pistols over at Edgar, repeatedly. Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam. Shooting a pointed glance in his direction, as well, to indicate that he believes this is Edgar’s fault and he needs to address this, pronto. Edgar furrows his brows and shrugs once, before shaking his head repeatedly, to wordlessly fire back his own pointed response and hope that it lands: a reaction that should be read as what?! No, dude. I don’t fix the internet around here. That is not my job. I am the pricing coordinator. Did the pricing coordinator typically fix your internet back at the Cost Merchant in St. Louis? I don’t think so.

It strikes Edgar that Don Evans has been on this mysterious crusade from day one, to pin something on him, whatever he can find. Or not just something — everything, rather. Everything that is wrong around this place, Don is coming after him to pin the blame. This leads to the next great thought, itself somewhat amusing, at least up until you maybe consider the consequences.

What they have here now, between Todd Cashner and Don Evans, is each assuming roughly one half of Corey Brown’s personality. Though both are tall white males, plenty cocky enough and given to popping off with the grand pronouncements, otherwise they have divvied Corey’s traits up nearly equally. Todd has taken the wackiness, the theories so bizarre you can’t help but wondering if someone slipped him psychedelic mushrooms a short while ago, or something; Don, meanwhile, the hostility, coming straight at people with his antagonistic nonsense. So in other words, it’s as though they are now running a Buy One Get One Free special on Corey Brown. Great. It’s yet another reminder of the longstanding retail maxim, that you never want to cheer anybody’s departure, because chances are, you’ll wind up with someone even worse.

These phenomena continue to rear their heads in unmistakable fashion. Per Matt and Rick’s recommendations, Felix migrates the main RU Data interface from a back room at the Central store, to Bellwether’s server instead, which is password protected and stems from the Chesboro HQ. Everyone at the stores still has their same setup as before, the only difference is that there’s one additional folder on that Bellwether server that Edgar now has access to — in other words, the same thing they had to do with the HSX tag printing program.

And yet, though this is swell and all, these suggestions have a negligible impact on any of the problems. The sale batches are one thing, but the RU Data program keeps freezing on them. This is also maybe just manageable, too, except that unless they have clicked Save after every single action, the equivalent of doing the same after every word typed in an office document, then these actions are lost. A ridiculous notion, to say the least, although this doesn’t stop Matt Abernathy from suggesting precisely this, when a bunch of them have him on a mid-afternoon conference call, days later. A solid dozen of them are on this phone call, Todd included.

“All I can say is, maybe Tab-Save, Tab-Save, Tab-Save, ya know, as you go along, entering things into the system,” Matt recommends.

“What!? No. We can’t do that. Sorry,” Sharon blurts out.

Meanwhile Edgar, slightly more tactfully, chuckles and says, “yeah, I really don’t think that’s gonna work…”

Considering that Felix has already migrated the server, which Matt insisted was the problem before, there’s not much wiggle room left for him now. Eventually, he has no choice but to conclude, “okay, this must be a problem on our end. I’ll take a look at it and let ya know.”

This does count as progress of a sort, then. Even as this standoff is technically not yet resolved. And it leads to what is perhaps the most outlandish dispatch of this entire saga, a message which makes for impeccable shorthand, indicating just how messed up this place has become. It’s an email from Todd, sent to every employee who’d been on the call and then some, not even five minutes after they get off the phone with Matt:

okay so did you hear that people it sounds like this was just a training issue. Let’s make sure everyone knows what their supposed to be doing and the proper procedures for RU Data moving forward.

It’s telling that nobody even bothers to respond to this work of fiction. So far removed from reality that almost nothing could be said to even unscramble the noise. On one hand you’ve got Matt insisting that Felix needs to do something about the network configuration, and Felix insisting Matt needs to do something about their program. The rest of them are stuck in this wasteland in the middle where the guy running the company thinks it’s all their faults.

But then, picture the scene across the building there, in Todd’s office, Edgar feels. Their industry juggernaut of a leader might have been “on” the conference call, but if he paid attention to it for a cumulative total of more than sixty seconds, that would have been a miracle. Doing so is just not realistic, not when there are so many colorful pie charts in the world to ooh and ahh over, and articles about machine guns to glance at on your phone.

This inability to focus is also of no help in that — and partially explains why — Todd continues to remain completely clueless as to who does what around this place, or how things are connected. At long last, in mid-December, he has finally arranged a sit down with the representatives from MRI. This is kind of essential in that the new store up in Lorena, it turns out that this was one of a handful of brick-and-mortar MRI operations, which they just closed weeks earlier. Todd worked out some “sweet” deal to take over that store, inventory and employees included. Aside from those handful of emails back when that Palmyra product/pricing debacle blew up in everyone’s face, though, Edgar has had no interaction with MRI, and has not met any of them in person until this very afternoon, as he and Todd pop into the conference room with George and Bobby from that company.

“This here is my techie guy,” Todd says, introducing Edgar to them, as they are just about to sit down.

“Techie guy?” George and Bobby say, turning to one another with a shared perplexed frown.

Edgar laughs and, shaking their hand, explains, “I’m the pricing coordinator.”

“Oh, okay,” they say, somewhat relieved, as this makes more sense — it was who they expected to meet today, the whole purpose of this face to face. To get a handle on what kind of information the pricing coordinator would need from them, in order to iron out the database for that new store.

So if Todd still doesn’t seem to know Edgar’s exact role, a year into this, it’s only natural that this confusion might trickle down to his henchmen. This would surely represent a sizable portion of their excuse, anyway. Yet to cite only the most prominent example, Don Evans for one was plenty belligerent right out of the gate, like attacking Edgar the very first week, wanting to know who was “authorizing” all the product that everyone was ordering, as though it were his fault that these people in the stores are so chaotic in this regard. But then also displaying a baffling yet common attitude found in aggro management types, i.e. appearing not the least bit interested in Edgar’s actual answer, that in fact he did have a safeguard in place — they couldn’t order anything which wasn’t already in their system, if they were using those Slingshot ordering guns. That it was out of his control beyond that point, and Don would have to speak to the merchandisers or managers if they were trying to wipe out the phone calls and the emailed orders.

And this antagonism continues when, for the fourth time in as many months, Don sends him yet another email about that infernal PLU machine over in bulk. The only difference is, this one is far more combative than any of the previous ones. If in the first three he had issued ever so slightly veiled hints that he once again blamed Edgar for this ridiculous project, then the gloves have come off with this round. Now Don is coming right out and saying it:

Can you tell me when you will have this PLU machine ready in bulk? What is the problem? You keep telling me you are fixing it, but no progress has been made. I want to know what the hold up is. It has been sitting there for MONTHS but as far as I can tell you have done no work on it. Are you planning on ever fixing it?

Once again, every significant figure has been copied on this — well, except for the actual person who is presumably working on it, that Josh guy out in St. Louis — and so, after calming down about as much as he can, Edgar takes his time to type a reasonable enough response, copying all of them as well.

Don: No, I am not working on that machine. I have at no point ever been working on that machine. I keep telling you that we identified the problems the same day that Josh, the person who built that device, was out here to install it. But you continually ask me when I am “fixing” it. Josh took his notes on the problems back with him to St. Louis to work on them himself. Since then I have requested a few updates, but as far as I know he hasn’t come up with any solutions. I can ask for another update, though, if you like, or I can even forward you his contact information if you want to speak to him about this matter. Just let me know. Thanks.

A couple of hours pass before Don fires off another response, though this time just to Edgar alone — a fact that he considers telling, all by itself. He understands that Don is pissed now, because Edgar dared defend himself from another totally off-base accusation. Furthermore that this self appointed expert on everything knows he’s wrong, but won’t admit it. As far as Edgar’s concerned, it’s more of the same old stuff, with some of these people, around this place: they can come flying at you with whatever crazy nonsense they have just cooked up, often in highly antagonistic fashion, and this is okay. But don’t you dare rebut the nonsense! Because that just makes you a dick.

Well, if that’s the case, then come get the damn thing. I don’t want it in my store.

You got it, sport! Especially since you so eloquently asked, and didn’t bust me out at all, for no good reason, to Rob and Todd and everybody else! Right away, sir! Once he composes himself all over again, then, Edgar rustles up a few tools he believes he might need, then strolls over to Central. Locates that ladder in the janitor’s closet and brings it out to the bulk spice aisle, where he unscrews the device, lifts the drop tile to throw this end of the extension up there, then returns the ladder to its proper hiding place. Drifts back over to the office and throws these useless pieces onto that pile of PDAs still parked in the shopping cart, where they will sit for the remainder of his days working here.

In some respects, though, it’s nice to discover this phenomenon and its offshoots aren’t just limited to him. That not only are people often confused about some of their roles are around here, but that even when it is known, you are frequently drawn into some unexpected spiderweb anyway. The next time he’s up in Palmyra, Sharon’s giving him an earful about what went down the day before, with the internet out for hours at a stretch.

“Teri had me on the phone for forty five minutes, asking me to try this, try that. Well what about this? Can you see if such and such works? I finally had to tell her, look, I’m not trying to be rude, but I have my actual job to do here, you know? I’m sorry, but this really isn’t my problem.”

Well, and nothing against Teri, who is 100% awesome, but Edgar agrees. He does know what Sharon’s talking about, because the same thing has happened to him countless times. Yet he sees both sides of this, actually, and can totally understand why Teri wouldn’t want to drive an hour up this way in the middle of the afternoon. Whose fault is this, however? Apart from that one extremely short-lived period where they had Felix, Jack, and Melissa all working here at the same time, it’s now been about a decade, and Wholesome Shopper Market still doesn’t possess a dedicated IT person. Instead they keep trying to just muddle through every situation with whomever happens to be around. This is the argument often employed: well, if you are not the person to ask, then I don’t know who is, because we don’t have anybody else. That’s great and all, except when it is held against you. Things are already somewhat of an understaffed logistical nightmare around here — and they’ve not even opened that Lorena store, an hour north of Palmyra.

It’s unclear what they can even do to smash some comprehension into these bosses’ heads at this point. Things continue getting nuttier and nuttier. Control is ebbing away from the competent into the hands of those who range somewhere between clueless and clinically deranged. The natural laws of the universe no longer even seem to apply anymore, to the extent that if gravity stopped working within these stores, this would really take no one by surprise.

If they can just make this Lorena opening a winner, though, all may yet turn out alright. This is what they are pinning their hopes upon. That somehow, despite the chaos, those who actually know what they’re doing can get that store wobbling to its feet. As the saying goes, sales cure everything, and turning a profit in that location — or hell, maybe even breaking even, if it’s generating enough volume — might prove just the miracle they need.