Mural prototype for a once great natural market
As a half defeated, half liberated Edgar returns to his house that early afternoon, he opens the front door and strides across the foyer. This is when, raising his head at this moment, his eyes randomly land upon an object halfway across the house, on a table in the living room: the Windows 7 machine! Yes! He never quite got around to toting that up to Lorena. They hadn’t asked for it today, and in truth he had forgotten it was even here himself.
He strolls over now to sit before it and go through his emails. One thing he has noticed in the past is that they have this weirdly frantic response to shutting down someone’s email within about 30 seconds after somebody leaves the company, as though it’s their most urgent piece of business. And so it is now with him, it would appear. But he doesn’t quite understand the panic. The naming conventions on their WSM addresses are standardized and predictable — it’s either someone’s name ([email protected]) or their function ([email protected]), these aren’t, like, long strings of nonsensical, encrypted digits or something. Meaning that anyone who wanted to carpet bomb everybody with a nasty group email could still do so, from any personal email account whatsoever.
Also, anyone who ever pulled up Outlook on any of their devices would still have their entire email history saved, as Felix should well know (he does know this, doesn’t he?) And so it is here, up to the moment a few minutes shy of noon, when his last email came through. Regarding his final message, it amuses him considerably to see that it comes from Vicky, a very concise response to his last missive, about this proposed Don/Todd concept of having vendors submit all new items:
Yeah…that’s what I thought
This strikes him as hilarious all over again, as he considers that it would make for a great epitaph. On Todd Cashner’s tombstone, or maybe Wholesome Shopper Market’s as a whole. If nothing else without question that clown’s time running the company.
WHOLESOME SHOPPER MARKET
1979–2017
YEAH…THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT
But, even though comical to think about, beyond this — and calling his wife to break the news — he immediately launches into this mode of instantly wanting to forgot all about that company. Any time Stable 2 Table From Wholesome Shopper Market attempts to crowd his precious brain space, he shuts it down and shoves it away. He’s making a concerted effort to not even think about that insanity. It’s just not worth it.
If looking at his basic assumptions from afar, though, yeah, he is certain they are lurching forward, in whatever half-baked fashion, with Ken and Sharon and possibly someone else taking over what they can piece together of his job. Those two would be capable enough to muddle through the most urgent matters, cobbling those together somehow, and everyone is able to pat themselves on the back, assure themselves that they made the right call in canning Edgar. That this business continues to exist all but proves it, right? So yes, this is all to be expected.
Even so, it’s hard to comprehend what these companies can possibly be thinking. He has a new job within a week. Meanwhile, as it first occurred to him during the great Harry Redcrow exodus, if an employee ranks even as low as somewhere around the 40th percentile, then they should probably keep him around. Not that the 40th percentile was even visible from where he stood, but if they wanted to slap that ranking on him, that’s fine. It still would have amounted to a major screwup on their part to send him packing.
There’s just no way that in a week’s time they were going to find one person who worked as fast and as accurately as Edgar, for anywhere near the same market bottom pay, who took his job as seriously as he yet complained less than almost anyone. He doubts they could find this person in six months’ time. So who has the last laugh, here? Or, assuming they ever did locate such a replacement, he doesn’t see any scenario where this person flips out less on that mob of obstinate complainers, i.e. what remains, by and large, of the WSM workforce.
There is one exception to his attempting to block out Wholesome Shopper Market, however, or make that two loosely connected ones: where is that file of his personal stuff, that Fred promised Felix would send, and what becomes of his unpaid vacation time? Though Jose insisted he was to be Edgar’s “only contact” moving forward, Edgar calls the guy four times, leaving two voicemails, and sends three emails, none of which are answered. Is this really so surprising? Everything he ever saw from Jose indicates that he was over his head, somewhat inexperienced, acquired for pennies on the dollar in comparison to true professionals like Friendly and even Unfriendly HR. Kind of like the management team assembled there at the end for Wholesome Shopper Market.
So whatever. It would appear that these meager crumbs are gone from his plate as well. Though this is a Right To Work State (otherwise jokingly referred to as a Right To Work For Less State) (also now thought of by Edgar as a Right To Be Replaced By Your Boss’s Old Cronies For No Reason Whatsoever State), and an employee basically has no rights when fired, everything he reads online seems to indicate that he should at least be compensated for unused vacation time and personal hours. Which is no small shakes, adding up to about a month’s pay at this point. But with Jose not answering, hiring a lawyer or something would surely eat up that payday to the extent it too isn’t even worth it. So he forgets all about this as well, and otherwise successfully thinks about Wholesome Shopper Market almost never for the next few months.
His latest job is very similar, as far as the knowledge it requires and work it entails. The only difference is the information he is maintaining. Catching on with an insurance company about ten minutes away from his house, he becomes their database manager. He knows almost nothing about insurance, but this doesn’t matter in the slightest. Though they have about fifty agents, this quiet office in a sleepy little business park type area has only five people working in it. His room is spacious, and when things like the internet or printers go down, nobody would ever dream of asking their database coordinator to fix them. They actually call in an IT professional to figure the problem out, should it persist. Also, though he is initially bummed out to some extent about the pay cut, as Elizabeth points out, when factoring in the drive time, wear on the car, and gas money spent for that unappreciative joke of a grocery store chain, he is really not coming out behind at all.
There are a couple of perplexing incidents over the early portion of the summer, though, blips which ever so temporarily draw him back into thinking about that world. The first of these occurs during a day where he’s out running errands at lunch time, and RU Data calls him. Glancing down at his phone, he sees the name and chuckles, though it only rings twice before he hits the little red button to end this call. But then will instantly regret doing so. If nothing else, he should have at least answered to see what this current crisis was. His initial reaction was that someone probably still had his number on file as the contact, erroneously, and would discover that soon after he answered. Except what if someone at the ol’ S2TWSM told RU Data to call him, with a question about something or other? Wouldn’t that be hilarious? Could he have possibly b.s.’d his way through some nonsense over the phone just then, to throw a comical little monkey wrench into the machine? And how is it anyway that RU Data wouldn’t have updated the contact info, some three months after he was fired?
The next is that utterly surreal moment in late June when he opens up his personal email and observes that…he has a LinkedIn connection request from…Todd Cashner? Seriously? Is this dude out of his mind? Never mind, as Valerie would say, no need to answer that.
Though laughing his head off, he does at least click through to see the details of this request. According to this little thumbnail, Todd is still gainfully employed as WSM president. And now that Edgar thinks about it, what has surely happened is that Todd just sent out a blanket connection request to tons of people vaguely in his circle. But wait…no. This actually could not be the case. Edgar’s only email on LinkedIn is his personal one, which Todd couldn’t possibly know. They have no mutual connections and Edgar has never really used LinkedIn for anything whatsoever, not even for his most recent job hunt. It doesn’t even list Wholesome Shopper Market as one of his previous employers. As far as Edgar can determine, Todd would have had to sit there and type in his name to conduct a manual search, to send this connection request. But no, while positively hysterical, he doesn’t wish to be this guy’s friend.
As it turns out, he is not alone. Though only learning such a couple of months later, the same exact scenario went down with Vicky Fisher. She too has no interest in approving a connection with that madman. By this point, she also is no longer employed at Wholesome Shopper Market, albeit of her own volition. Quitting the company in late May, much like Edgar she has opted for the nice, sane, quiet office job in a completely different industry, working the front desk for some local realty.
“I think I’m just done with retail at this point,” she says, “I can’t take it any more.”
So this is what’s becoming of the leading lights in this industry. He begins to see this playing out all over the place. The most capable cannot parachute out of retail fast enough. Meanwhile, fully entrenched up top are a bunch of persuasive yet ultimately clueless nimrods, clutching the industry in their hands as they beat their chests and roar about their heaping mounds of knowledge and trophy cases full of triumphs. You take even someone like Fred Baldwin, Edgar realizes now, and though he liked Fred, though Fred was a smart guy and good with numbers…when he looks back on that epoch, Fred actually dispensed almost no industry specific knowledge, in any form, ever. He sat in his office and put together reports for Todd all day. It was all smoke and mirrors. Todd placed him there specifically for that purpose, then took credit for that work himself. And Fred was by far the best of the trio — those other two knew even less.
Yet the most significant break in this case will arrive out of nowhere, in between receiving his LinkedIn request from Todd and learning about Vicky’s. It’s an otherwise quiet weekday in late August when one of the other guys in the office, Martin, asks Edgar if he doesn’t mind driving him over to a repair shop, to pick up his car. Martin had dropped it off this morning, gotten a ride in from someone else, and now the vehicle is ready.
During the short drive across town, they’re idly chatting about this and that, getting to know one another for really the first time. During this conversation Martin just happens to mention that he lives in Lorena, and makes this drive down here every day.
“Wow, that’s quite a haul,” Edgar observes, “I used to make that drive myself quite a bit. In the other direction, though.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah right before this I was working for this little grocery chain called Wholesome Shopper Market. One of our stores was in Lorena.”
“Okay, okay, I think I know what you’re talking about,” Martin says, nodding, “on the edge of town, there, heading south toward Walnut? At the three point intersection?”
“Yeah! Exactly!”
“Yeah I think they’re out of business now,” Martin tells him.
“What!?” Edgar says, choking on his laughter, though not necessarily believing the guy.
“Oh yeah. I’m pretty sure that place is gone,” Martin insists, then adds, “see, they really should have done their homework before opening a store there. Lorena just isn’t the place for that, it’s never gonna work. Especially a place that size.”
“Yeah, that place was huge!” Edgar says, for additional confirmation, though his mention of it alone would seem to indicate Martin knows what he’s talking about.
“That’s what I’m saying.”
After dropping Martin off, Edgar can’t quite recall being in a bigger hurry to continue home, and fire up his trusty Windows 7 machine, pronto. Yet, though initially jubilant, he is phrasing his search every which way and can seem to find nothing whatsoever online about the Lorena store closing. He supposes it really was too good to be true. That place only opened seven months ago, and there’s just no way even the most incompetent regime in history could run an operation that size into the ground in such a short time frame. Right?
Yet the thought gnaws at him, mostly because he also cannot find anything about Lorena’s continued existence, either. The last article posted online, by anyone, concerns the day of the mayor’s ribbon cutting ceremony. Maybe that’s not surprising, when you’re talking a tiny town in the boondocks, halfway between the mountains and nowhere, that probably doesn’t even have its own newspaper. Still, if there were only some way to access the actual numbers…
This is when it hits him. The Cloud. Yes. RU Data Cloud. Well, that’s debatable, if you’re phrasing that as a question, but it should still be operational, yes. As he types in that web address and lands there, the next thought is to try his log-in credentials and see if they still work. No, it would appear that he has been given the heave ho, but this isn’t necessarily a problem. After all, he created the log-ins there for everybody, and gave them all the same password. Knowing that crew, there’s a real strong chance that half have never visited this site even once, and even fewer changed their password. At the top of this likelihood rundown, one would find Vince Brancatto — after all, what use would the grocery/bulk/beer & wine merchandiser have for a bunch of movement reports? — and sure enough, it is not the least bit surprising to discover he can log in here just fine using Vince’s email and the Wholesome123 password.
He goes to Lorena and attempts pulling up the sales history, but the current week comes up as zeroes. Hmm. This doesn’t necessarily indicate anything, however, as it might mean the program no longer works or even that they’ve stopped using it. Edgar decides to backtrack to one month ago, then, a week in the middle of July, and is astounded to see that the store came in at over $200,000.
Two hundred thousand! Whoa! So Martin must have been way off the mark, this store must actually be thriving. Although, the more he thinks about this, he’s not exactly convinced. That figure seems like a fairly suspicious leap, when considering they were just around $70K up through the moment he left in late March. Further investigation reveals that in the week to follow, they also cracked $200,000, followed by a zero. And a zero and a zero and a zero. Yet if backtracking instead, one soon encounters a whole long unbroken streak of $70,000-ish weeks.
So this is totally what happened. They had a pair of blowout weeks in late July, and then shut the place down. He begins laughing so hard that Elizabeth asks him what’s up, from the next room over. And he also cannot resist poking around a little further. The other three stores are all in the same neighborhood of where they’d been five months ago. Palmyra never recovered from that awesome remodel job, meaning that Central has remained their busiest store.
Still, at some point the numbers on here went seriously haywire, if drilling down to specifics. This surely must have been either Ken or Sharon’s doing, because, for example, he can see that all of the deli sub-departments are for some reason now flowing into Health & Beauty. Wishing to put his own personal spin on the situation, since he’s already here, Edgar goes into the employee names, and spices up just a couple of them. No one ever said nicknames were verboten, and as such, Todd “The Industry Crusher” Cashner and Don “Fucktard” Evans have that extra little pizzazz that surely everyone will appreciate. All six people who ever bothered looking at reports or whatever, that is.
Seeking a little more confirmation, he reaches out to some of those last remaining allies, none of whom he has even so much as texted since March. And sure enough, he is right on the money, Lorena went bust at the end of July. This is when he first learns of Vicky’s departure. Dale and Valerie are still around, but neither is willing to give an overwhelming vote of confidence for how long this might be true. Also, though not asking him in the slightest for an appraisal, or even referencing his own firing, they can’t resist chiming in with their takes on that situation.
“Shouldn’t we maybe learn what somebody does before we fire them?” Dale jokes. “Just saying. I mean, how many times have we been through this?”
As for Valerie, reaching her later this same day, she cracks, regarding Edgar’s dismissal and the unprecedented shuttering of Lorena after just seven months, “wow, you guys really absolved yourselves there, huh? Good move. That’ll show ‘em.”
Also, another highly reliable birdie on the wall happens to relate that she overheard the following conversation, right before Edgar was fired:
Todd — I don’t know, he’s just a know it all and we’re about damn tired of it.
Rob — Know it all…how? Like, you mean, he keeps chiming in all the time and, like, telling everyone what to do?
Fred — Mmm no what I think Todd means is that any time you ask him, well, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that?, he’s got an answer for everything.
Rob — Okay, but wait. Shouldn’t our people have an answer for why they’re doing what they’re doing? I mean, isn’t that why we have them in place? Tell me what I’m missing here.
He does feel extremely well vindicated by now. That they’d royally stepped in it by letting him go, yes, but more importantly that they hadn’t known what they were doing in the first place. Also, he can’t help circling back to that seemingly minor LinkedIn connection request. Dale and Valerie had not received such from Todd, but then again, they were still working for him. As far as Edgar knows, he and Vicky have been the two most high profile exits of the past five months, and it’s probably not a coincidence he contacted them. Todd knows he is in trouble, he is well aware that he fucked up, and that was some Hail Mary move to attempt getting them back into the fold.
And yet even Edgar is taken aback by how fast this flurry of revelations will continue to arrive, intensifying and speeding up, as they are pelted by one newsflash after another, over the coming months. Out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant one night with Elizabeth, they happen to stumble upon former vitamin manager/current Blue Basket rep Nicole, dining with her husband. She actually launches up out of her booth and gives Edgar a big hug.
“I am so sorry!” she gushes, “what were they thinking!?” Which is great to hear and all, except the big takeaway stemming from this conversation concerns Duane Hatley. According to Nicole, Duane went down to Alabama after leaving HSM. He began running some other small, independent, highly similar grocery store chain. And now that company is intent upon expanding…into the greater Chesboro region, with him and Karen at the helm.
Another late afternoon in early December, Edgar and Elizabeth are cruising through Palmyra…at which point they pass a certain grocery store location, and are scooping their jaws off the floorboard to observe that this building is pitch black. “No…way…,” Edgar croaks, whipping into the parking lot, as they both climb out and approach this recently shuttered store. There is still some product inside, but most of the shelves are barren. The carts have been moved just inside the door and there’s quite a bit of dust everywhere. Oh yeah, also a sign on the door advising that this store has gone under, but the Chesboro locations remain up and running.
“Thank God you got out of that place!” Elizabeth observes, after they snap a bunch of pictures and then drive away. “I think they did you a favor!”
“Oh yeah. I totally would have gone down with that ship,” he agrees, adds, “it was sheer insanity there at the end, but I was obsessed with, like, trying to straighten things out. But this obviously would have happened either way.”
This development has him in a pensive mood, however, for much of the night. He can’t but think that how for most people, bad jobs are probably the biggest “sunk cost” predicaments of their lives — himself included, of course. You might not even hang onto bad relationships as long. But all you can think about is how much time and effort you’ve invested, and it’s such a hassle starting over. That if you just stick around a little while longer, and if you try just a little bit harder, it might turn around. You think this well past the point where moving on is the only thing that makes objective sense.
At home again, there is much more evidence about this closing than the one in Lorena, various angles and major developments which they are readily able to pull up on their smart phones. One small but key article finds Chesboro Business Monthly interviewing Rob Drake, who laments that all 27 employees at the Palmyra store just lost their job. No mention is made of Todd Cashner or that whole Waxoff distribution madness, only Rob saying that this closing will “allow” them to get their inventory “back to more reasonable levels.” A final, highly intriguing note concerns the fate of Central and Arcadia. Though insisting both are doing just fine, Rob sounds halfway between putting a positive spin on things and high on his own self importance when he mentions he is attempting to sell the company, but only after he finds “a suitable buyer.”
Hunting down information about Palmyra’s fate turns up still other, unexpected information, like an article from a month prior in the Chesboro Gazette. In this one, a handful of local vendors are complaining that Wholesome Shopper Market is routinely behind on paying them, which has never happened before. At this juncture nobody even knew Palmyra was closing — Rob only informed everyone a week and a half before they turned out the lights — but the newspaper is nonetheless hinting that WSM is on shaky ground and might be soon extinct.
Actually, how Edgar even discovers this piece is by visiting the Central store’s Facebook page. It’s late on a Friday night, they’re hanging out in front of the TV and he’s drinking a beer, which feels like the perfect time for this stroll down memory lane. One of the most hilarious entries he discovers is also nearly the most recent. Using what appears to be some kind of burner account, someone pasted a link to that article right on the WSM Facebook page, along with this gut buster of a comment:
WSM Bosses: “Well expenses are way up and sales are way down. In the past year or so we’ve gotten rid of our controller, most of the store managers and assistant managers, half the office people, the entire HR and IT departments and pretty much anyone else with any seniority. We’ve even given a bunch of our old buddies prominent positions with this company. Man we are awesome! This place is on the upswing!”
#killingit
Curiously enough, they’ve left all this up and intact on their page, which is apparent because Carl, the marketing guy at Bellwether, is for whatever reason tasked with or inspired enough to respond to it:
WSM boss here. None of that is true. Feel free to msg me if you really want to talk about it.
But who is he kidding? Does he seriously believe the Wholesome Shopper Market is doing just fine? Or that posting such will somehow help right the ship and stave off the inevitable? Or if nothing else, keep people learning of the inevitable? And why the heck is the marketing guy for Bellwether apparently now the spokesperson for WSM?
Well, some answers arrive very early in January, when the announcement is made: apparently unable to secure “a suitable buyer,” the remaining two stores will close their doors at the end of the month. They limped into the new year, but it’s official. The dream is over. You cannot save the world if you go out of business, indeed. And the evening after this announcement is made, Edgar’s watching TV when his phone lights up and he can see that it’s former coworker Brian Prentiss, calling from Florida. It’s pretty obvious what this is about and as he answers, Edgar’s already cracking up while croaking out a hello.
“Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude,” Brian says, “what happened!?”
Brian relates that Isabel had just called him and broken the news about the extinction of this WSM brand, after nearly 40 years. The saddest part, he and Brian agree, is that while in poor health, Mr. and Mrs. Locke are still alive and it’s unfortunate they have to witness the total annihilation of this one-time miniature empire, which they’d poured so much time and effort into. All gone. Brian had also only learned a short while ago about Edgar’s firing, and is asking for details now.
“I don’t know, the whole thing was really weird,” Edgar tells him. “They were basically accusing me of intentionally sabotaging the equipment, but, like, didn’t have any examples. I couldn’t stop laughing. I’m like, this is what you came up with? The reason this company’s going down the tubes is because I’m sabotaging the equipment?”
“Yeah, well, I heard there were some shady things going down, with like the money and the deliveries and stuff,” Brian offers, “I think maybe they were worried you were gonna figure it out.”
And this could be true, who knows. It’s possible they may have thought this, but Edgar seriously doubts this would have happened, particularly after they made the very peculiar decision to stop checking in deliveries. Although, granted, this would itself be one potential motive for making that decision. Still, though he knows it’s a lot of fun for people to spin all sorts of wild rumors about everything, the problem with that is that it turns everything into a rumor. If he were in Todd’s shoes he would encourage such, he would lean into the rumors. But no, it’s better just to stick to the provable facts: that management crew was extremely incompetent.
“Eh, maybe, I don’t know,” Edgar demurs, before suggesting instead, “I think some of those people oversold their credentials. They didn’t seem to know enough to run 3 or 4 stores. We’re supposed to believe they were in charge of these major operations back in St. Louis?”
“I know, right?” Brian agrees.
“Todd must have talked a really good game when Rob hired him,” Edgar says.
Brian laughs and says, “the sad part is, it wasn’t even that good. I overheard some of it. It wasn’t that good.”
The half hour long conversation concludes with each of them discussing what they are up to now. Brian is a produce merchandiser at a prominent chain, blanketing the entire state, and says he loves it there. He also throws out an offer for Edgar to relocate to Florida himself, says he could have a job at the snap of some fingers, and even quotes a fairly handsome starting salary.
“I guarantee we could use you here,” Brian adds.
And yet, not for the first time, Edgar’s mind flashes back to what Vicky had said, and he supposes it’s true for him, too. “Thanks, man, but I’m good. I think I might be done with retail, period.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. There’s just a lot of…really stupid practices in place, and outdated thinking, and, like, no one knowing what the hell’s even going on. It’s just really hard to fathom how some of these people have risen to the positions they have.”
“Ya think?” Brian says with a chuckle. “Tell me about it.”
And yet, some gaps will remain in Edgar’s knowledge for a few months still, concerning how everything went down, and what became of the major players. Then again, it isn’t as though he cares enough to investigate, or to contact his isolated allies who crashed while still aboard this burning wreckage. Every once in awhile, he starts thinking about that place, always late at night and usually with a couple of beers involved, and will poke around on his computer for a little while, seeing what he can find.
Like how, before Wholesome Shopper Market went out of business, he discovers that he still has access to his company Slack as well as the Microsoft Teams group with Ken and Sharon, the entire chat histories within. So clearly these were hugely important pieces of the communications puzzles, and highly sensitive as well. But hey, at least Todd finally got his wish to stop paying for email! The same applies to those Dropbox folders Dale has shared with Edgar and the vitamins managers, which he could theoretically pull up any time he was truly desperate for entertainment. For that matter, though he only checks a few, it would seem that no one thought to have him yanked from accessing their records from any vendors who had online portals. So he can see their invoice histories there, and can witness, for example, that they went back to ordering Harmony Hill there at the very end, presumably after they ran into some sort of money crunch trouble with Universal and MRI. Attempting to buy some time, with ordering on terms, though it was already too late. And of course, The Cloud, which he can view using Vince’s log-in clear up until the day that site goes dark.
Their social media presence might be even more hilarious. Lorena’s Facebook page is no longer in existence — although, come to think of it, he can’t actually recall that it ever existed in the first place — and neither is Palmyra’s or Central’s. He might be tempted to say “of course” Liberty’s isn’t, either, which is true…except that the Southside page is still up, despite that store closing even more distantly in the past. This seems to ring some bells, though, about whoever was running that having quit or been fired, without anyone learning the log-in info, and their losing control of it as a result. Years have gone by without a post, though it remains an interesting stroll down memory lane and still generates the occasional comment or like.
But then there is Arcadia. This one is the real gold mine, for not only does it remain active, it also boasts a whole flurry of inscrutable yet highly compelling content, courtesy of some James kid who was given the keys to that enchanted kingdom. He was evidently a cashier, possibly even a front end manager, though obviously dealing with some sort of mental health struggle, if not a certifiable mental disability. Many of their posts consist of nothing but extremely up-close selfies of James himself, typically without much comment. Or else random photos of some product, also sans any sort of explanation. He is also using it to post stray thoughts about his own life, i.e. the sort of the things that would typically land on a personal profile — the official page of one’s employer, not so much. Like for example this blue ribbon winner of an observation:
Grrrrrrrrr stop sending me friend request on facebook from porn models Idon’t want that when I have the best girlfriend in the world so stop it now it’s totally annoying
The store was still open at the time he posted all this junk, yes. Things are by appearances happening in much more orderly and expected fashion from a legal standpoint, however. It’s only the middle of spring when Edgar receives a letter in the mail, explaining that bankruptcy proceedings are opening up against Wholesome Shopper Market, and providing details if he wishes to file a claim. Which, come to think of it, yes he would. He doesn’t exactly expect to win anything, mind you, but this will if nothing else keep him in the loop on every development. It’s also hysterical for him to think about their seeing his name over and over again on every bankruptcy related dispatch.
It does rankle him that his employer of over a decade, Bellwether Snacks, could effectively just say screw it, we’re not paying you for your vacation time simply because we don’t feel like it. And that those personal files were not sent from that laptop they absolutely had to seize right that very second. Jose, the alleged human resources professional, could just blow off every phone call and email and there was nothing Edgar could do about it. But this is just the climate employees find themselves up against in the modern business world. Even a relatively minor corporation like Bellwether Snacks can beat you over the head all but flaunting how much power they wield, and how you miserable peons are nothing…until something goes haywire, in which case you are supposed to feel sorry for them.
There are a whole slew of local vendors on these bankruptcy filings, asking for even less than he, though, which is really sad. Balancing this sentiment out, however, is the presence of Walter Locke, also seeking damages. This one cracks him up to no end, at least until he begins to consider that it is extremely sad as well. Though asking for basically twice as much as Edgar, his reasons given are nearly identical, a vague reference to personal damages and so forth, which makes his claim feel a little bit more legitimate. As it will turn out, his and Mr. Locke’s cases are dismissed for the same reasons, too, a supposed lack of adequate documentation.
It’s a nice but otherwise relatively unremarkable Friday afternoon in late spring, and Edgar’s leaving work, bound for the first family cookout of the season. Elizabeth has already given him a small list of things that are needed, which he is to pick up en route. To this end, approximately halfway home, he pulls into the first and possibly only grocery store between here and there, some discount chain at the edge of downtown, which opened a few months prior.
He has never set foot in this building before and isn’t sure what to expect. Nonetheless, as he gets out of his car and approaches it, his wife calls him with an urgent update, a few additional items that this place will hopefully have. Is still on the phone with her when he enters the store, casually chatting as he just so happens to look up. And at the far end of this produce department, he can see Shelly emerging from the swinging double doors, pulling a cart of fresh fruits and vegetables behind her.
All but exploding with laughter, he says to Elizabeth, “can I call you back? I gotta go. I’ll tell you about it later,” and hangs up.
Striding with purpose toward Shelly, Edgar is positively beaming, although once they make eye contact, she doesn’t look especially pleased to see him. Then again, there’s a good reason why her nickname became The Troll Under The Bridge. Yet, as expected, if he’s cordial enough and plays this right, she might be all too willing to talk about those still murky end days at Wholesale Mayhem Market.
It’s true that this is Shelly relaying this information to him now, a known complainer. After all, if she’d had perhaps a slightly better attitude throughout, it’s possible this could have contributed to WSM still remaining in business, as opposed to her slinging produce for this discount grocery store. But, her breathless vibe doesn’t seem like someone make up a bunch of off the wall crap. It’s more like someone rattling off a ton of bullet points from memory, in rapid fire fashion, just to get it over with.
“What happened to Todd?” he asks, perhaps the most significant outstanding mystery.
“Rob fired Todd. Oh yeah. This would have been…in July.”
“Really? Was this before or after Lorena closed?”
“They’d already announced it, but it wasn’t actually closed yet. Basically as soon as that came out, Rob was like, you’re done.”
Well, so much for being “on their own” in a year. It would appear that this dream also died on that day. So close, Todd, so close. His exit would have brought about some other falling dominoes, though, which it’s only natural to inquire about next.
“Okay, so Rob just kind of assumed that Fred would want to take over. But then Fred was like, nope, peace out, I’m going back into retirement. Or semi-retirement, I guess he was calling it. Whatever. So then anyway Don took over, but that was only basically long enough for him to get his old job back in St. Louis, and then he bailed.”
“So then who took over?”
“Okay, so then — oh, and Sharon quit!” Shelly observes, pointing a finger at Edgar, as she expects he will find this tidbit interesting.
“Really?”
“Yeah, she quit, like, a couple months after you…were gone. Now she’s working in the grocery department at the Cost Merchant across town.”
“Wow,” Edgar chuckles, and shakes his head, “that’s hilarious.” So Sharon had created a bunch of havoc, inserted herself in a million different discussions that had nothing to do with her, constantly angled for additional power, and then quit two or three months later anyway. Sounds about right.
“Yeah, so at the end there, Dale and Katie were basically running the place…”
“Katie?”
“Yeah, she was the only one who stuck around from Lorena. They moved her down to our store to run vitamins. Of course we went under a few months later ourselves…Oh!” Shelly giggles, “so yeah, this one day, okay, this was after Vicky quit, Todd had been fired, Sharon quit, Lorena was closed…Rob calls a bunch of us who are left together for this meeting. We’re sitting around in, like, this circle and Rob’s asking us, who is this Ken Douglas guy? I saw his name on the payroll. Who is he? What does he even do? And we’re all, like, we have no idea! We’ve seriously never met the guy! None of us have ever had any interaction with him! I think Rob at that moment was just, like, okay, I’m pulling the plug on him, too, whoever he is.”
Talk only inevitably turns to Edgar’s departure, which he keeps brief, the only words spoken reiterated just about verbatim from what he’d said to Brian. “Eh, they had some weird theory about me sabotaging equipment on purpose, but, like, didn’t have any examples. I couldn’t stop laughing. I’m like, seriously, this is the best thing you could come up with?” He does mention his struggles just to get paid out for unused vacation time, however, and his inability to reach Jose.
“They fired Jose!” she says.
“What?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure what happened, but they totally fired Jose too! I’m like, oh no…”
“Okay, so what even actually went down? I mean, I know Lorena wasn’t doing so hot, and I saw something in the paper about vendors not being paid, but still…”
“Well, okay, what I heard is that they were…like Todd was doing something funny to hide money and stuff. And like, with that Waxoff office or whatever, apparently he just went, like, out of control ordering stuff.”
“Well, yeah, I figured that was the case…”
“Which was apparently costing them a lot more than the Central office was anyway. Oh, and I guess what really set Rob off is he allegedly found out that somehow Marla was getting paid on a regular basis, even though she didn’t even work for us? I don’t know, but yeah, as far as the vendors went, they were coming up to ask, like, begging us to pay them, but we’re, like, what do we do? Our hands are tied! Can we even cut them a check here at the store, or would that bounce?”
Though extremely fascinating, and the kind of conversation that could easily drag on for hours, he eventually waves goodbye and scurries off to grab these items for the cookout. Yet he can’t stop thinking about that series of revelations, a phenomenon only heightened when he’s filling Elizabeth in later.
Days later, he receives another LinkedIn connection request, this time from Felix. Which Edgar instantly approves. His thinking is that if he has no proof to the contrary, then he’s going to give someone the benefit of the doubt, as far as being somewhat of a friend. It helps to some extent to see that Felix is no longer working for Bellwether, either, but has rather moved on to an IT gig at some smaller local company. Edgar has no idea what brought this about, and doesn’t ask.
Over time, though, with this networking bridge established, his name must begin popping up in the algorithm for various shared connections. Glenda Jackson, who was technically the last standing WSM employee, sends him a request. She had slid over into Bellwether’s accounting department, though soon moving on herself. A couple other Bellwether employees, like Tracy, extend requests, too, as do half of the former store-level coworkers with whom he remained on good terms — for the other half, he is the one reaching out.
So this only naturally has him feeling a little bit better about how this went down, to realize he made a number of connections from the Healthy Hippie days onward, and that those relationships are still intact. Also, though he doesn’t want to give those buffoons the satisfaction of actually clicking on their profile, it’s only natural he would pull up the names of that illustrious management trio who’d ran their business so notoriously into the ground. One can at least see the profile pic, the location, and the current employment status, just on the search page, without selecting the person in question.
Well, Fred might say he is “semi-retired.” Although what this often means is that someone continues working full time, but for less money. And so it seems with him, as he lists his current job as a member of a retail reset team. Edgar is quite familiar with this employer, having worked for them twenty years ago, briefly, himself, in the exact same role as Fred. As for Don Evans, he is indeed once more an assistant store manager at a Cost Merchant in St. Louis. In other words, all evidence indicates that this is the highest level he has risen to in this industry — at least until he was flown into North Carolina to obliterate their small chain, in some sort of operations guru role for which he was woefully inexperienced.
And then there’s Todd. Edgar happens to know just a smidgen more about the Todd Cashner story. According to Vicky, she was sitting there minding her own business in the real estate office one day, also attempting to block out every stray thought of that final retail nightmare, when a clutch of most unexpected paperwork lands upon her desk. It’s a packet concerning one Todd and Marla Cashner, who were attempting to sell their house. Unable to stomach these names, she passed this particular task along to a coworker.
It’s easy enough to connect the dots from here, at least to some extent. Sickening though it is, there is always another sucker out there, all too willing to fall for a good line of bullshit. They all like to think that reputation will eventually catch up to the Todd Cashners of the world, but the world is a big place and polishing this turd is his greatest — possibly only — skill. Therefore it’s none too surprising to see that he is running another small grocery chain, this time in Memphis, TN. Or at least this is what his profile claims. As for Marla, there’s perhaps just a tiny bit of intrigue here, as she lists her current location as a completely different city.
So who knows. What’s not open for debate, however, is what virtually everyone is referring to as the all-natural cherry on top. Every regional newspaper reports that, though a prime piece of real estate, the former Central location of Wholesome Shopper Market has sat empty for months upon months…until this upstart chain, whose product base and demographic is nearly the same, recently decided to swoop it up. They are originally based out of Alabama, but president Duane Hatley (featured in one article in a hat and meat coat, bringing some steaks out on a tray beneath his understandably broad grin) earmarked Chesboro as one of his top markets for expansion. This Central store, which is set to open in just a few months, will be their first in the state.
Duane goes on to add that every former WSM employee is welcome to apply, and will be given top priority for rehire. When word of this begins to circulate, everyone says that Dale Paquette was the first person in line, taking Duane up on this offer. And there are many others, too. To everyone who asks, however, Edgar gives them all identical answers: he is done with retail, and has no interest. And means every word of it. At least he thinks he does.
