one hot potato display

The upper managerial mindset is truly a wondrous phenomenon to behold. More than anything else it’s a mass hysteria that has swept through the business world, another instance where everyone has gotten so wrapped up in what things look like instead of what they are. To the extent everyone kind of forgets that what a manager is actually supposed to be doing is…managing.

Because what is the profile of your most common modern manager? They have taken tremendous shortcuts to leapfrog over ever learning anything about most of the roles within a company. They are usually quite bad at listening to anything anyone is saying — and not only that, but they are just as bad if not worse at listening to themselves, even though jabbering incessantly. Well, okay, make that probably because they are jabbering incessantly. Whatever the case, any point of view that doesn’t mesh with their preconceived notions is automatically brushed right into the nearest trash can.

You begin to recognize that this is the skill set. This is all that the vast majority are really equipped to do: stomp around acting knowledgeable about things. And the reason this has taken root and spread like a massive kudzu patch is that people are enamored by this behavior, most of all those who own the company. This is exactly what they expect the modern upper manager to look like and act like. These devotees will throw words around like bravado or chutzpah or vision or leadership or something, to make it sound like they know what the manager in question is up to. And that they haven’t been swayed the least bit by appearances.

One of these early days, opening Lorena, right before lunch, Todd and then Fred both get up and deliver a speech to everyone, clustered together around the front end of the store. Both touch in part upon this very trendy buzzword of communication. Then everyone breaks for that lunch, with many walking across the parking lot to this Mexican place, mostly because this is going on the company tab. That’s certainly the primary reason that Edgar is joining them, even though he is somehow stuck sitting at a table with Felix, okay, which is fine, but then also Todd, Fred and Vince. After which the five of them are also walking back to the store together, and Fred is “boasting” about his perplexing email strategy.

“If it doesn’t look important, I don’t even open it,” Fred says.

“Oh yeah. Mmm hmm,” Vince mumbles, apparently in agreement.

“I’ve got over seven hundred unread emails!” Fred crows, guffawing mightily at what he must consider a tremendous achievement.

And this is by no means the first time Edgar’s heard him say something similar. Meanwhile, Todd is on the phone, rambling at great length to someone else, though it’s doubtful this revelation would have troubled him the least bit even if he heard it. Bringing up the rear of the pack with Felix, however, Edgar shoots a sidelong glance over at the IT director, who is staring forward with his lips pursed in a quizzical manner. Edgar doesn’t have a mirror handy, but suspects his own expression might closely match this. And yet apparently the two of them are among those who are missing something here. Do emails not count as communication? Is this the real purpose behind the doubling up on Slack? Should he maybe pipe up at this moment and query how many unread Slack messages Fred has, as a means of gauging their importance?

But moving on to more tangible concepts, where are they, specifically, as a team, on the morning of this “soft” Lorena opening? Though they now have a towering, well-lit sign high above the state route, and another lower to the ground, along the side road which feeds into this triangular intersection, as well as a banner draped on the brick wall next to the entrance, traffic hasn’t proven especially strong yet. This is presumably the theory driving a soft opening before the grand one, however, to cull that trickle of whatever customers wander into the place on their own, as you iron out whatever kinks may occur.

And lord knows, they could use the extra time, before the grand gala on Wednesday. Todd’s last minute tagging insanity alone is more than enough to keep everyone hopping. And, for Edgar’s portion of it, this is without getting into the time spent fielding the attendant complaints about such, as well as the actual stuff he expected to be working on today.

From a logistical standpoint, Felix and Teri still can’t seem to get one of the two old tag printers to work, the unit up front in the equipment room. The snazzy silver HSX model, placed over by the customer service desk, they haven’t even looked at, to the extent that it’s already begun to gather dust. This leaves just the one old tag printer functional, back in Leslie’s receiver office, which Edgar’s had no choice but to besiege and commandeer on this highly chaotic day. For her part, Leslie is hotfooting around enough with the non-stop onslaught of deliveries that she wouldn’t spend much time in the office anyway, apart from logging the invoices into RU Data at some point. A whole host of other people, most frequently Ashley and Amanda, are in and out of this Plexiglass walled room throughout the day, though by far the most unexpected twist concerns Edgar’s companion: seated back here beside him, for hours upon hours, is none other than…Rob Drake.

Rob’s pleasant enough and all, but it’s a little unnerving when you’ve got the guy in charge of the entire operation spending this much time in close proximity, watching you as you work. Not that there’s a ton to see on a technical level, with what is just one aspect of how Edgar typically spends his days. He’s already performed most of the hard work, now it’s just a matter of uploading a file at a time, printing off the corresponding tags, and then moving onto the next. The trail leading up to this juncture was a highly involved one, sprinted through in just a handful of hours, the biggest challenge of which — apart from learning how to do this stuff in the first place, that is — would be simply staying focused and paying attention to detail:

1. Add all of the new items to the system. As it turned out, of the 36,000 in the MRI file, about 22K of these were brand new. The more the better, as far as this portion of the project is concerned. Because he doesn’t even have to worry about printing tags for them at the three existing stores — the thinking here is that if they had any of these products, they would have already added them. Or if they happened to have any of these on the shelves without adding them yet, they couldn’t possibly have the wrong price, because the items had no price until just now.
2. Beyond here is where you start getting into “judgment call” territory. Are any of these answers absolutely correct? No. You’re taking it on a case by case basis, as by pure reflex you’re returning Todd’s insanely blistering, last minute serve. Thanks to the absence of a sales history and an inventory, there’s just no other way. Again, at the three existing stores, if it’s generating a new tag — based on either a vendor change and/or a price change — and they either have the item on hand or show a sales history, then he has no choice but to print it at those locations. Sorry about your luck, folks. This one he is not putting up to a vote. The only exception, as always, is Ralph Hedges, who insists upon being bombarded by every vitamins/HBC tag, whether he carries the item or not.
3. Regarding Lorena, it’s a lot more involved. Of the 14,000 items which were not brand new, about 10K have different prices now, another 2K magically at least have the same retail as before, though the shelf tag needs switched to list MRI as the primary vendor. The remaining 2K were already in the system as MRI items, at the same price, and are the only ones in the entire file which blessedly require nothing at all.

a. So for the 12,000 that are changing in some fashion, virtually every department offers its own unique wrinkle. For the most part, his stance is to ask Ashley and Amanda what they think should be done for each, as well as whomever the most “with it” seeming individual(s) might be in those departments. Among the many other challenges, MRI is hilariously enough, like Harmony Hill, a huge supplier which does not have a brand name field in its file. They have this included with the item description instead, at least most of the time, although often with a litany of different abbreviations for each. Edgar’s not about to even mess with this brand name abyss right now, however, will instead chip away at it as time permits over the coming weeks.

b. But, yes as far as the individual departments are concerned…Dale and Katy say go ahead and print every changing shelf tag for vitamins/HBC. The store is already open, and it would take untold days to scan and hang everything if walking the department themselves. If anyone complains about a price before someone has gotten a chance to hang the new tag, then they can always scan one right that second on the fly and hang it.

c. Vicky has the opposite response, concerning deli and meat. So much of their product is priced in-house on those scales, that as a percentage, they don’t have a ton of prepackaged stuff. She prefers to not have the new tags printed, will have her people walk the cases, shooting stuff themselves.

d. They don’t even waste their time asking Vince anything. Instead, concerning grocery, department manager Megan and Universal rep Roberta are their go-to people. Here they adopt a basic three tiered strategy. As it so happens, those organized location codes that Roberta and Edgar have been working on, these already come in mighty handy. They are able to split these off and print them out in order, as known items that are already in the store. Problem solved on that front (well, sort of — assuming the tags actually make their way onto the shelves). Roberta will sic her Universal crew on that task. As far as the rest, it’s agreed that Ashley, Amanda and the grocery team will begin hanging the tags, as Megan follows behind them herself and scans every section, after it’s worked, to see if anything has been missed.

e. The beer and wine tags — of which there are a lot more than expected — Edgar personally hands off to a befuddled acting Vince. Knock yourself out, sport.

f. Produce is also much more intricate than they might have guessed at first glance. There are not nearly as many items, but the process itself is more involved. Here you have no choice but to line price everything. You can’t have different retails on twenty different strawberry pint UPCs that are otherwise identical. However, it’s not always clear what’s what in the MRI price file itself, either from a size or organic/non-organic pricing standpoint. Furthermore, comically enough, even when establishing what these items are, it turns that MRI itself doesn’t always have it line priced within their own file (the always bored and unmoved George’s response, when eventually pressed on this point, is that he doesn’t create this file himself, he’s just the guy sending it, but he’s “sure there’s a good reason for that.”) So those represent the first wave of complications. The second is that Edgar’s printing out the shelf tags at all four stores whether they technically need the tag itself or not — because produce is an outlier in that most of their retails are displayed via large signage instead. But he would obviously never have up to the minute schematics of what is located where right this moment in all four produce departments, and what kinds of signs are potentially up. Therefore, once they get the new shelf tags, it’s on those department managers to contact Park and have new signs made, and specify the needed size. As with so much of this, though, it would wind up being Edgar’s fault somehow if they fail to do so. With Pablo at Central you’ve got no worries, whatsoever, with anything, but the other three…not so much. Actually like so many other facets, Arcadia essentially has no produce manager, meaning it’s a task handled by committee, meaning it’s often a task not handled by anyone in the theoretical committee. And one final wrinkle is that the brand new merchandiser, Buddy, has essentially been thrown to the wolves with this job. Oh, he has plenty of experience, but wasn’t exactly brought up to speed (as much as this is ever possible) on S2TFWSM’s bewildering patchwork of policies and procedures.

“Do you know I was given not one minute of training at this place?” he says, “they basically handed me a name tag and said there you go, get after it.”

“Oh yeah? I’ll bet.”

“Yeah, and the sad thing is, how many other people does this apply to? I guarantee I’m not the only one.”

g. As far as bulk, well, this would seem part of the reason Rob Drake is here. One of the few outright duds, the carryover bulk manager, Ben, isn’t quite the shiniest yogurt covered raisin in the bin. So Rob’s presence seems to cover two major points, aside from the general curiosity of wanting to see how this opening went. For one, Rob insists that he wants to hang all of the bulk department tags himself, which is admittedly kind of impressive. There is no overlap whatsoever between Bellwether’s offerings and this MRI price file, but Rob still considers the bulk department their bread and butter, and rightly so.

But aside from the time spent doing this, he is almost exclusively in this receiver’s office with Edgar. And the general vibe is Edgar’s gathering is that Rob wants to pick his brain about what’s going on around this joint, without coming right out and asking anything too specific, or tipping his hand in any fashion.

It does feel like a card game of some sort, in many respects, although one you’ve been forced to play. Because Edgar in turn has to think about how he’s answering things, without selling anybody out, or coming across as complaining himself in any fashion, while nonetheless imparting some actual information. This is the just the unavoidable dynamic, out here in the corporate world, or even the semi-corporate world, the aspiring to be corporate world. If Rob would come right out and ask him something directly, he feels as though he would reply the same way. If they were even slightly more chummy, like maybe even on the level that Edgar was with Duane, then he could possibly make the case for just laying all of his own cards on the table. Otherwise, it’s just really hard to pull this trigger, blurting out without provocation, you know, I think this was a horrific idea Todd had at the last minute yesterday, changing all these prices, and if you want my opinion I’m not convinced he really knows as much as he claims, period. It’s the kind of thing that is wonderful to fantasize about, and a stance to defend with your coworkers at happy hour or something, but if being honest with oneself about how things actually work out here in the world real world…you suspect such a move would have no impact whatsoever, apart from hastening your own exit out the door.

For Rob does indeed ask what the meaning is behind this non-stop onslaught of tags Edgar is printing today in Lorena, department by department, situation by situation. “So what is all this, anyway? You guys just want brand new tags on everything, or…?”

“Mmm, well, no. Todd wanted me to show MRI as the preferred supplier on everything they carry, and go with their SRP for the price. So we’re in the process of doing that,” Edgar explains. And this feels about right to him, the tenor struck, to let the facts hang in the air without interpretation or inflection.

Rob nods and says, “I see. Well, we did get all of this product from them, as part of this deal. So I guess that makes sense.”

Without having seen any paperwork or numbers whatsoever, it’s hard for Edgar to really comment on this. Presumably buying a store full of product is better than buying a store without the product, but…it’s hard to term anything a “sweet” deal or whatever if you know nothing about what was paid for the building itself. Not only that, but Rob has grilled him in the past in fine point detail about their margins on various product lines. To let this remark about going with SRPs on everything pass without commenting on it is quite curious. He can’t help but wonder if Rob too can feel control completely slipping out of his hands, if he is lost on what’s even going on around this place, but doesn’t want to admit it. Would rather project confidence and that he has a firm grasp on every development.

“Yeah…,” Edgar croaks, trying to come up with something else to say. He stumbles into changing the topic by offering, “you know, I was wondering the other day just how big this store is. I was trying to picture if I thought it might be bigger than the other three stores combined.

Rob chuckles and says, “I’ve actually done the math on that, because the same thing occurred to me. It turns out it is slightly bigger than the other three stores combined, by about a thousand square feet.”

The dust has no sooner settled on this comment when Felix bursts into the room, accompanied by two other unfamiliar gents. They are here to declare that on top of everything else going on today, the deli scales have just arrived. These two guys are Hobart representatives and are here to install the machines. So this is cool, and also great that Felix had the foresight to ask them to send some help, rather than tackling it himself. And Teri isn’t here today, and Ken Douglas is already on his way back to St. Louis. The people who know anything about this are found within this room.

Felix asks Edgar to dip out for a few minutes and show them where these machines are to go, as they in turn yank out the old ones and move them into the back hall. This stacks up as the one on the meat counter, the two on the deli counter, one on a back deli table, then switching out the lone unit that bulk and produce share. Before doing so, Edgar asks these Hobart guys if they know anything about extracting information out of these remaining old scales, as a last ditch effort. But no, they’ve never dealt with these devices, either.