Strategically merchandised health & beauty section at Stable 2 Table From Wholesome Shopper Market
On Thursday the 23rd, Fred emails Edgar to request his presence at the Central office, at noon on Friday. The stated purpose of this meeting is to “discuss” what kind of “progress” he is making. No other details are provided, however, so he assumes this must mean the weekly list of outstanding projects, which he emailed/Slack messaged to Fred for a second time, on the Friday just passed.
Apart from the items on that list which aren’t really “projects,” because they were more questions or suggestions he was kicking up to management, he had made some decent progress on the others, though only truly knocking off the first and most pressing bullet point, that of what would happen when they re-synced Lorena with HQ. As Edgar and even Ken had mostly suspected, RU Data were not correct in their hypothesis, believing that it would trip the print flag there for everything that had changed during that notorious day of the Don Evans scanning army, as they now reverted back to the price shown everywhere else.
So by pulling some reports and using his nifty little Excel lookup plug-in, Edgar is able to figure out what changed and when, isolate the items that were affected on that day. The next step was to figure out what items have experienced a price change since then, and exclude those — even without being synced, he had simply uploaded the files to HQ and Lorena both, during that stretch. Everything that remains gets a new tag printed in Lorena, and they’re back in business.
The actual time involved is not too extreme, though one typically cannot just sit and work on something like this — particularly when physically inside a store — in a single, long, uninterrupted stretch. Also because, he is somewhat surprised to see, and gives him an indication of how whimsical and random some of these choices were, that crew had gone through and changed a lot of stuff that day, quite a bit of which was not wrong, but which the person in question had merely felt should have a different price. Therefore he jumps in to help Ashley and Amanda hang the tags, for the remainder of this shift.
He has still spent only those three days in his brand-new office. On Wednesday, as he is once again in Lorena putting out various smoldering fires, he receives a welcome, unexpected email from Sarah, asking him if he has any idea when this HSX printer will be ready. Though she too was slid over into a tag hanger role at Central, and he might theoretically have just as much if not more interaction with her now, they really haven’t connected much of late. So it’s always nice to hear from her, but also, he thinks that the content of this message is great, because it provides added fuel, if he hopes to hold the IT department’s feet to the flames.
At this point, they have progressed way beyond ridiculous and into the absurd, when contemplating why Felix and Rusty have still not gotten these devices up and running. The least problematic explanation might be that they simply don’t realize how important this is, but even that’s not so great. But if Edgar had to guess what’s really to blame, it feels like once again that Felix has no idea how to get these going, and is continually stalling. Yet nobody has freaked out on them, they’ve mostly just been gently prodded here and there on occasion, and even then really just by Edgar. If the stores ever receive any of these fantastic looking new tags that Park developed, it’s because Edgar printed them off at HQ and brought them. That is the only scenario that’s ever been in play. At the stores they’ve pretty much just said cool, these look sweet, thanks when he has them, but not sweated it when they don’t, continued to just print tags in the old style the rest of the time.
For Sarah to say they that many of them were wondering what the holdup is, though, this is fantastic taken at face value, and it’s also useful from a leverage standpoint. Like when, after replying to her, saying he’ll ask the IT crew what’s going on with those, he immediately forwards her email to Felix and Rusty, copying everyone else of relevance. And sends it in Slack as well, quite naturally. And Rusty responds later that day, via email, estimating that he’s about “70% finished” with getting those printers up and running — an encouraging figure, sort of, but also a definitive one. At least they’ve nailed something down at this point, which may or may not be used against someone in a court of law. Well, that sounds good, anyway.
Now that this Friday morning has arrived, driving up to Lorena for a few hours just to double back and then some to Chesboro obviously does not make sense. Thinking about that conversation with Vicky Fisher, and the cacophony presented by Palmyra, he concludes that the same applies to that place right now, too. He has a huge dairy update he’s working on, and would accomplish a ton more doing that on his laptop here at the kitchen table, before cruising down for Fred’s little meeting.
First things first, however, he kicks things off by plowing through his email inbox — deleting junk, answering the questions, moving those that will require action later into his To Do folder. And speaking of Vicky, by far the most memorable message of the bunch is sent by her:
Hey, I have been told that the vendors will be submitting all new items from now on. We will not be doing it ourselves. Have you heard anything about this? I was wondering what you thought.
As he reads and rereads this message, the content strikes him as equal parts amusing and infuriating. Or it would be infuriating, if it weren’t so preposterous. All that’s left, then, is the hilarity. He appreciates Vicky giving him a heads up about this, and picking his brain on the matter. She doesn’t come right out and say so, but the impression he’s getting is that she must have her doubts. Clearly, this could only have come from either Todd or Don. And of those two, Todd might represent the more logical pick…except something about this topic has the ol’ Don Evans veneer to it. Totally sounding like a concept Don would have pulled out of his ass, gone around spouting off about at the stores, as an already decided fact, telling everyone that it was happening, as he only then later tried to figure out how to cobble together a strategy for pulling this off.
There’s another level of comedy here as well: this is something they had already tried not so long ago with one of the vendor reps, Marla, on behalf of Universal. Except then as Don might recall she was complaining about this being too much work, at which point Don started telling everyone to email Edgar the invoices instead so he could look through them. Then totally flipped out when Edgar threw up his hands for once and said, I’m not doing it that way, sorry.
Vicky: No, I can’t say I’ve heard about that one. But I really don’t see how this can work. The main problem with this scenario is that the vendors have no way of knowing if something is or is not already in our system. Unless the item has literally just been invented and they are letting us know in advance (I do have a couple of reps who are nice enough to do so, with that scenario), that is, which is about the only exception I can think of. Otherwise they don’t have any means of determining whether an existing product would ring up at our register.
It seems like everyone would be wasting a lot of time on stuff that wasn’t actually new — unless maybe the plan is to wait until an item is already on the shelf, and then have a rep submit it? Although even then I don’t think that’s really an improvement. Especially since we’ve been getting on people for years about putting stuff out before it rings, because the people ordering it and then stocking it are the first ones to know this is a new item. Or even like a local or DSD guy who stocks his own product. If it’s a newly invented product, like I was saying, that might work. Beyond that he’s…what, taking them to the cash register to see if they scan, or given access to and a log-in for a scanner, or flagging down someone else to do so? Then stocking it anyway but going back to his office to immediately email me a new item file?
So yeah, I really don’t see this working. I still think the person ordering the product is the one who should be adding it, and if something is missed, then the person stocking it should be. Or giving it to their department manager, anyway. But I guess we’ll see how this plays out! Thanks for the heads up!
At eleven, Edgar packs up his laptop bag and sets out for Chesboro. Arriving about five minutes shy of noon — this is a predictably better time of day to make this drive, marginally, than nearer either rush hour — he sets up shop at his old, plain white desk, which is totally empty now, in the nearly cleaned out office, cracks open his computer and starts messing around with that dairy file again. Fred’s apparently behind the closed door of the conference room with someone, he’s not sure who, but during this stretch Park does at least stick his head in the door to say hi.
“Hey man, what’s up!”
“Nothing much,” Edgar grins up at him. Then corrects his course, offering instead, “well, you know…”
“Yeah,” Park chuckles, asks, “so what, you’ve got an office up at Palmyra now?”
“Yeah man, it’s pretty nice. A lot closer to home too.”
“That’s sweet.”
“What about you? You’re moving over to the Waxoff building?”
“Yeah…although I still haven’t actually been over there…,” Park admits with a chuckle, “but it’s not too far of a drive.”
“That’s cool.”
“Yeah man…well, right on. Nice talking to you!” Park says, throwing up a wave as he continues to his own office.
Fred drifts past a few minutes later, to apologize for running behind schedule. He tells Edgar to hang tight and he’ll be with him as soon as possible, before continuing onward to the conference room once more. So while continuing to plug away at this dairy update, the next visitor to grace these grounds is Felix, who explains with a sheepish smile that he needs to check something out, and continues onward to the mess of cables known as Spaghetti Junction.
Though Felix attempts to make idle chitchat, Edgar notices immediately that he seems extremely nervous. Also, that he doesn’t really appear to be checking anything over there, is only pretending to do so. Could this have something to do with why Edgar was summoned here? Are they launching some sort of investigation on Felix, and are seeking his input? It would certainly explain the vibe of this conversation, which feels mostly like the IT director is attempting to gauge what sort of mood Edgar is in right now.
If so, apart from the sheer awkwardness of such a debriefing, he’s never really gone through something like this, and isn’t quite sure how he would respond. His conflicting opinions of Felix are continually at war with one another. On one hand, the guy does seriously need to get it together, whatever it takes to bring this place up to speed, from the chip readers that were supposed to be installed in October, to the HSX printers, to the internet connection pretty much everywhere. On the other hand, he’s always unfailingly cordial. But then again, it is pretty certain he’s been selling Edgar out to management, pinning some of his own problems on their pricing coordinator here, in an effort to save his own hide. But then again, Edgar has no proof of this.
