pristine view from a Healthy Shopper office
Yet despite these hiccups, most of them sense that this company is definitely moving forward, and that the right pieces are slowly being snapped into place. Maybe the talks of expansion have completely stalled for now, but at least Central has delivered strong enough sales out of the gate to essentially make up for Southside’s revenue, and they haven’t lost any volume discounts. Also, though Melissa’s departure means that Healthy Shopper Market is once again bereft of its own dedicated, full time IT person — a short lived experiment that lasted just a handful of months — and they are back again to either Felix or his assistant helping whenever they can, there’s something about this current assistant, Jack Lincoln, that makes him feel like an instant fit. As though he was always meant to be a member of this team, and they should maybe reclassify him as an HSM employee, move him over here full time. A proposal he would be all for, in fact.
The atmosphere in this Central office is also quite different from the somewhat drab second floor over there at Southside. This place is bright, owing to so many windows, with plenty of exposed red brick everywhere, and cheerful colors in the places where the walls are painted. Owing to that beauty salon upstairs, which cranks its party jams pretty much 24/7, it’s never completely quiet here, though they’ve mostly gotten accustomed enough to the music to where it’s mostly just background noise now. And it’s a tighter, cozier space, too, which means the conversation seems to float around much more freely, particularly as employees are fond of working around the large conference table in lieu of their own offices, sometimes. Like he had at Southside, Edgar is far more commonly found at his own desk, just kind of picking up on conversational drift every now and then, rarely participating unless they bring the discussion into his room — a phenomenon, curiously enough, that only seems to happen when Barbara isn’t here.
Today Jack has drifted through, distressed to learn that for some reason, Melissa took it upon herself to install a Linux server over at the Central store. Asking if Edgar has any idea why she might have done so, though Edgar admits he wasn’t even aware that this was the case. All the other servers are Microsoft products, so this certainly complicates things. They had already discovered that she changed many of the VNC passwords — for remotely logging into the cash register screens, either to fix something or to observe a cashier’s action from afar — to not only something completely different from what they have been using, but also apparently different from one another. Then failed to inform anyone what these were before leaving. So this is something else Jack is attempting to sort out. Now he’s seated at the conference room table, working on his laptop, as Edgar, zoning out for a second as he ponders his own current dilemma, once again picks up on the conversation swirling around out there. They’re apparently discussing how the store fax machines are continually besieged by transmissions on a daily basis, which is really bizarre and something that should have ended a long, long time ago.
“…well we still get a handful of legit ones, too, pretty much every day,” Valerie’s saying.
“Yeah, I know. It’s the same way at the stores. I’m like…who the hell still sends faxes? When’s the last time you heard someone mention a fax machine?” Dale muses, “but no, they keep a-comin.”
“Wait a second, what’s this?” Jack questions, “people keep bombing your…printers, like up in front of the store, with faxes? Just random junk mail?”
“Mmm hmm, yeah. However that works, if someone has the number, they can send whatever and it automatically prints. Here and at the stores,” Valerie tells him.
“The best is when it’s been out of paper for awhile, then someone reloads it. Sometimes I swear it blows through the entire stack spewing this stuff out. Then they have to reload it again,” Dale muses with a cackle.
“But yeah, we also get, like, legit business communication that way too. I don’t know which is weirder,” Valerie says.
“You know I was reading somewhere, I think they had the basic technology figured out for faxes back in the 1920s,” Jack tells them, “the problem was they couldn’t get anyone to use it.”
“Hmm, if only…,” Valerie cracks.
“That’s kind of like how Alexander Graham Bell actually invented the telephone…so that people could be informed they had a telegram!” Dale gleefully tells them, “that’s, like, the use case that he envisioned. It never occurred to him that people would want to talk on the phone all day. I love hearing about how the technology never quite takes off the way they think it will.”
“You know what I was thinking awhile back, actually, picture this, okay: what about a mail transportation device?” Jack suggests.
“A mail transportation device?”
“Yeah, think about it. Mail, I mean real physical mail, is also kind of like faxes. It seems like that was supposed to be outdated, what, like twenty years ago?”
“We still get a ton of mail, too…,” Valerie observes.
“That’s what I’m saying. Doesn’t that seem really strange, when you think about it? So what I was thinking is, why couldn’t someone invent a mail transportation device? You could almost completely cut out the post office. You’d have this, like, little gadget in your house. The companies just send this stuff directly to your device, and then your print it.”
“Wait but how would this be different from a fax machine?” Dale questions.
“Well, okay, for one, the quality would be better. It wouldn’t be on that crappy paper with the weird, scratchy print. You could have a screen where you pull up everything that was sent. Just delete shit you don’t need, print out what you actually want, and it all comes out looking like the original document. You could forward stuff to your own email or wherever, if you wanted. Shit requires a signature, you can sign it right there. The companies themselves get charged by the piece, for how much they send, maybe even a higher rate if you decide to print. That’s how Uncle Sam gets his cut.”
“What happens if you run out of paper?” Valerie questions.
“Paper’s free. You just pop into the post office and grab a ream. That’s rolled into what these companies are charged. Or maybe they even drop you some off, you just send them a request. Whatever. I’m telling you, it would work, it would be better and cheaper.”
“Mmm, I don’t know. This is like one of those things that might have worked if somebody developed it a couple decades ago. Nobody’s gonna get behind this now, since we think we’ve kinda leapfrogged over the, like, paper era,” Dale offers.
“Even though we haven’t,” Valerie suggests.
“Even though we haven’t,” Dale agrees.
These are my people, Edgar can’t help but think, smiling a little behind his desk, yes sir, these are my people. Right here. This is the team. He would take the current ten occupants of this office — the nine who work here, plus their visiting guest Jack — over any other similar team in the region. Even Vince. Spot them that handicap and this crew here would still shine above and beyond all others. They are cool, they are funny, they are great at their jobs, they are mostly right on the same page with him.
If only they could expand these mindsets outward, somehow make this a contagious phenomenon. This has been more of a hit and miss proposition — or all miss, really, considering that the simpatico souls such as Craig or Michael or Billy or Josey arrived fully formed, already similarly disposed themselves. Not that any of this is readily apparent to an outsider. To an outsider, the nuances are lost, you would have to submerge yourself within this culture awhile to understand.
It’s always highly instructive and entertaining to receive that perspective from an outsider. To this end, when the holiday season arrives and he’s able to bring his wife, Elizabeth, to the yearly office Christmas party, it’s quite obviously a priceless opportunity for such, and Edgar’s pretty much doubled over at the hilarity of it before they’ve even arrived. Held at some dive bar in central Chesboro as it always is, which as expected has half the Palmyra crew grousing to no end, although the other half simply rents a van and enjoys this bonding exercise of a carpooling opportunity. With, rumor has it, possibly a merry beverage or twenty consumed by everyone in the back.
This time around, after campaigning for years, Johnny has finally gotten his wish in the karaoke machine department. He kicks things off with some spoken word type country song about a “wildflower,” which Edgar has never heard before. Then the machine sits silently over in the corner for a while, as they have no proper DJ to pump up the crowd, only Johnny, and nobody else has yet worked up the enthusiasm or the liquid courage necessary to participate. Some girl from Liberty shows up hula-hooping her way through the door, and another, from Central, with a bird in her hair. The former he has at least seen before but the latter not at all.
“Your coworkers are weird,” Elizabeth whispers to him, looking about half queasy, from their seats in an opposite corner of the bar.
“Well…,” Edgar chuckles, “part of the problem is that the more normal ones never come to these things.”
And this is true. Craig, Michael and Billy are three great examples of longtime employees that have never shown their faces at these puppies, have always possessed the good sense to stay away. At least his parents are here, and Elizabeth’s sister, who is still a cashier at Palmyra, and most of his fellow office brethren whom he at least considers his people, even if the wife might also think them a little weird. With them, it’s at least the right kind of weird — and whatever you might say about the others, they are if nothing else never the least bit dull to be around.
This time, in lieu of having the deli cook everything, with maybe some outdated single potato chip baggies and assorted non-alcoholic drinks thrown into the mix — employees are of course on the hook for their own tabs at the bar — the Latino woman acting as receiver at Central, Pattie, has taken it upon herself to prepare an elaborate Mexican dinner. And it looks amazing. The only problem is, which Elizabeth and Edgar can’t be the only two thinking — though keeping this shared opinion to themselves — every last morsel of it tastes kind of gross. They barely touch more than a bite of everything on their plates. Although this does set off a chain of internal debates, wondering if Pattie is in fact a bad Mexican cook, or if they are really just not fans of authentic Mexican food but are expecting some Americanized nonsense, but then if so shouldn’t Pattie maybe have known that everyone actually wanted the American nonsense, and anyway this being so much worse than the standard hippie fare is a real eye opener, in fact even redeems and elevates the standard hippie fare considerably, has them seeing the standard hippie fare in an altogether brand new light and with a smidgen more respect. But yeah, after this, they are absolutely sticking to the outdated potato chip baggies.
Elsewhere, though Edgar is laughing his head off as Barbara not only corners his wife but chats her ear off for seemingly half of their stay here — doing the whole routine with a wine glass in one hand, the other hand touching Elizabeth’s wrist at select intervals — it’s possible that karma comes around to bite him as the next thing he knows, Pierre’s in his midst, thankfully not complaining about much for once, though blathering forever onward (in his standard sweater vest/white dress shirt/tight jeans/black leather belt and boots getup) about the litany of improvements he’s made and awesome ideas he’s implemented and all the hard work he’s done over at Liberty.
Also about his “friend,” some old woman brought as his platonic date, currently rocking a blues number over in the karaoke corner. Doesn’t she sound really good? Actually she’s not too shabby, as a matter of fact. The girl with the bird in her hair next graces the stage to sing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, and she’s even better, and just when this hoedown appears as if it might begin to gain some serious steam…Andy, from the Palmyra deli, is somehow already so drunk that he falls out of his barstool with a loud crash. Laughing his head off, recovering and reclaiming his seat as if not the least bit embarrassed by it, although Edgar does just happen to catch Rob giving Duane a pointed look, as if to suggest he should somehow straighten this character up.
Perhaps coincidentally, or to make a concerted effort at diverting attention elsewhere, Duane soon has them kill the karaoke, as he directs everyone’s attention over to the front of the bar where an exhausted looking Mr. Locke hoists himself at last from the chair he’s occupied all night, gives the expected, semi-humorous speech, touching on for at least the fourth year running how Liberty just keeps hanging in there, to a smattering of nervous sounding chuckles around the room. While this is going on, Edgar’s dad is whispering that he and Elizabeth should take Walter and Beatrice Locke out to dinner one night, just as a kind gesture, to hopefully get to know them better and tell them thanks before it’s too late. And he knows his dad is right, and agrees with him, all the while thinking that it’s one of those awkward things that sounds cool but will probably never happen, because he can’t picture himself ever going through with it.
Then Duane is pulling names out of a hat, for the steadily diminishing returns of the gift baskets heaped upon the pool table. This time around Edgar’s name isn’t in the hat at all, himself and a few other people, though Duane manages to appease them by offering a nervous smile and improvising in the form of some leftover wine bottles. Sure. Why not. This is realistically a far better bounty than a bunch of shea butter soap and beer shampoo and dandelion coffee anyway.
Having learned their lesson from previous events, not to stick around so long that you’re stuck helping tear down and lug things out from this place, he and his family manage to slip out with about an hour before closing time. In so doing, making rounds to shake hands, he observes with a laugh that Barbara has managed to corner a horrified looking Janis Drake for the entire second half of the evening. And yet as interesting as this night has been, Edgar’s ultimate takeaway, only realized retroactively when the next outrageous twist arrives, is that this night brought with it his final Pierre O’Brien conversation. And how funny it is, how unexpected, that he finds this just a tiny bit sad.
