Well, Tonya Flaherty never called him that Friday. Or at any other point. However, the highly entertaining email exchanges continue unfettered, such as when Edgar inquires about this line of incense which mysteriously appears in expected fashion, upon the shelves of Liberty Avenue. Attempting to ask Sam about the origin of these, which feature a different semi-nude female on each separate aroma, only produces the expected incoherent answer which leads a listener to question his grip upon reality. Which is maybe fitting, considering some of these varieties have either vague or overt drug related names, like the package marked Opium. Let it be said, however, that some also feature charming little slogans, such as, Don’t Burn S**t! Burn Westwood! Whatever the case, Tonya’s not here, which leads Edgar to eventually emailing her with his burning questions, concerning this “inappropriate incense,” as he terms it, along with some other random things. She answers the following morning:

Haha! You are a trip! Best emails ever. Please tell me the drug references and naked bodies aren’t just my department. The curse words you reference have to be the Westwood stuff. Showed it to Cody when he was still here, he about fell over, lol. But yes these are allegedly opium scented which ironically still seems to be appropriate and I do get those certain kinds of people that say patchouli smells like pot. However, they always, always call it the ‘m’ word. (Didn’t know if we had an email filter that would pick out that word) Yea for the bible belt. D@mn dirty hippies, running around with their ‘m’ being lazy! My fave inappropriate incense was a women dressed up as cat woman with a whip and the ‘Lucky Lady’ incense with a little woman with pasties, rofl. Don’t know why it was such an issue now. Surely it wasn’t just noticed. Tell me, was the “way to go” sarcasm or not, lol. I peeped at the checkbook and we no longer have it so I’m assuming Bellwether does. Disregard the one from the 6th as that’s not it, it’s the previous one. I forgot the last thing I was going to say so you maybe getting a truncated random addendum, or maybe not, lol. Thanx a ton, Edgardo!

~Pinkie

The fact that he knows what Tonya’s talking about and can follow every bit of it, or even Russian Robert’s confrontational bluster when he’s in the store, yet struggles to comprehend Sam or that bizarro cashier Linda, really says a ton about those last two and where they are coming from.

He’s also having trouble getting Sam on board with using the new items spreadsheet. Strangely enough, however, Liberty’s grocery-produce manager doesn’t have a problem with typing this stuff up. It’s just that he prefers to do so in the body of the email, missing ¾ of the information, though Edgar has explained this creates more work for him and it’s probably more work for Sam as well:

yo edgar hey buddy i need for you to place these products in the system they are new products we got in.

popcorn indiana

all natural caramel popcorn (843571002369)

popcorn indiana

all natural drizzled black white kettle popcorn (43571002345)

popcorn indiana

all natural drizzled cinnamon sugar (843571002352)

popcorn indiana

dark fudge chocolate chip (843571002338)

thanks

-sam

And yet Sam continues to regard him with the same semi-amused, half disbelieving smirk every time Edgar mentions the new items spreadsheet, that it’s easier for both of them, as though Edgar’s trying to pull a fast one over on him. Still, apart from a Tonya sighting, the highlight of any Liberty Avenue trip — not that he needs to visit, for Linda will send these along with the internal mail upon filling up a sheet — remains deciphering the veteran cashier’s insane scribbles, on the Scan Error Sheet. He treasures these so much that he’s now in a habit of saving them, taking them home with him. The latest only contains three entries, but they are priceless, fairly representative ones:

10% off by mgment today 1 customer. Need UPC. Discontinued item.

Gluten Free on order. Not in bulk today.

Use UPC does on sm oval skin creams from vitamins HAND KEY these please they are small but they are in the system.

He is able to piece together what she’s talking about roughly half of the time. Even then, however, these observations typically have nothing to do whatsoever with the sheet’s intended purpose, i.e. identifying items that don’t scan, or ring up incorrectly. For example the last of these items, the skin cream, where she seems to be documenting for posterity that the UPC on this product is so tiny that it will not scan, and helpfully suggesting that anyone who might read this should hand punch the numbers instead.

Edgar does wonders if she’s aware that he’s the only person who ever sees these forms. Unless finding them so hilarious he can’t resist showing someone else, that is, like a cartoon or a joke in the newspaper. He has thought about asking Linda this, before deciding that she kind of drives him nuts and he’d rather not even get her started. And just maybe he doesn’t wish to spoil this glorious if surreal mystery, thereby ruining one of the greatest treats this job has to offer.

Her little notes do contribute to the trippy atmosphere surrounding this establishment, after all. And one analogous experience to this, if found at the opposite end of the behavioral spectrum, is when he makes what seems to him a totally normal, obvious, and dare he say even kind of funny wisecrack, yet they regard him as is he’s the one who just arrived here via spaceship. Such as the morning not too long ago where Edgar has only shown up moments earlier, and a handful of them are hanging around one of the cash registers. Isabel casually mentions to Edgar that a group of students are in the store, with a couple of their teachers, because they’re on some kind of scavenger hunt.

“Hmm, let’s hope a grocery receipt is one of the things they’re supposed to find,” he cracks, and laughs a little. Isabel, Linda, and Sam all stand leering at him, blinking wordlessly with their mouths open.

Ralph Hedges is the vitamins manager at this location, and at least on the surface, seems as though he should be an ally. He’s an intelligent guy and reasonable enough, has even got somewhat of a background in tech, he says, despite his fairly advanced age. However, Dale has already cautioned Edgar that Ralph is one of these people who makes everything way more complicated than it needs to be, and while it’s possible he’s already been preconditioned to think so, as a result of Dale’s comment, Edgar believes you can visually survey the scene at the vitamins desk and determine that this is true.

The vitamins desk at this store is really just a counter, about the size of your average coat check stand at a restaurant. Enough room for one employee to slip behind, with shelving underneath, and another shelf on the backside for their computer. Flanking this machine on both sides, though, is folder after folded stuffed to capacity with paperwork. These towers both stand about as tall as the monitor. One stack is a copy of every invoice dating who knows how far back, the other a paper version of every email the vitamins department has received. What purpose these mountains of documentation serve is difficult to imagine, but Ralph does apparently insist upon them.

It’s pretty bad that Edgar has developed perhaps the second-best conversational rapport here with Russian Robert. Today Edgar’s strolling through the bulk section of this maze, back to the break room table where he commonly sets up camp. Robert’s stocking one of his bins, sees Edgar, and emits a demonic little chuckle of his own. Remarks that Edgar looks tired, to which he admits that yeah, he probably is.

“You no like coffee?” Robert questions.

“Oh yeah, I like coffee. I drink it all the time. I get…,” Edgar says, holding his hands out and shaking them to demonstrate.

“Me too. I drink too much coffee, it’s no good.”

“It’s good.”

“What?”

“Coffee. It’s good,” Edgar clarifies.

Robert sighs and eventually concedes, “yays, bot…not every focking minutes.”

As Edgar’s mom alluded to, there is certainly a great deal of wackiness to be had, working for this company — all the more shocking in a location such as Liberty, which on the surface doesn’t even look very busy. He often leaves at the end of a day, or make that just about every day, thinking what just happened? And then scrolling backwards through the events of the recently concluded shift, as though not peeling an onion, but rather reassembling one.

Therefore a conversation like this will only occupy his thoughts for maybe fifteen minutes, before the next outrage, until he is driving home and can rewind through the day minute by minute. In the moment, if not a pressing task of his own, there is always another email arriving, or someone barging into his midst with a request. Or, like now, he’s getting up from the table to check something out on the floor, and unexpectedly bumps into Harry, working on something in the bulk section himself.

Harry is clutching a yellow legal pad in one hand and a pencil in the other, busy examining one section of the massive bulk bin wall. Edgar’s wondering what he is up to, but doesn’t ask. Yet Harry looks up and smiles at Edgar, somewhat sneakily, in the manner of someone playing detective, thinking they’re really getting to the bottom of something. He of course cannot resist explaining his project to Edgar.

“Duane asked me to get him of a list of every bulk item they’re carrying, at each of the stores,” Harry says. Will spend, he later explains, about a day and a half per location, doing just this, so in other words a week total. Scribbling down the PLU numbers and names, in pencil, on endless sheets of yellow legal pad paper.