Jason McGathey

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Edgar wouldn’t say he’s gotten to know Christie extremely well just yet. They are on friendly enough terms, however, to chat briefly in passing about even non-business related matters. Or for him to become her desperation last resort when, as the day of an event at Liberty Avenue approaches, to ask if it might be possible for him to man the grill.

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Even though rumors are swirling that Palmyra’s butcher, Nick, is on the hot seat, for some reason they hire one of his closest friends, Scott, as Southside’s meat cutter. Nick has been talking him up for months and they finally decided to pull the trigger on the guy.

Part of the wait is that he was only recently released from prison. And the morning that he starts, Dale, Craig and Edgar are coincidentally standing around in the Southside conference room, with the lights off, discussing strategy. This is a fairly common occurrence for many of them, as the two upstairs hallways and three offices all spill into this intersection. Even though the overheads are left off, if the lights from those offices and the hallways aren’t enough, this bank of windows also helps brighten up the room. It overlooks the last aisle down below, half bulk and half frozen, and at this moment affords them another opportunity to observe this new butcher.

            “Hoo hoo hoo,” Craig says, partially a phrase and partially a chuckle, though all three are snickering.

            “Wow,” adds Dale, shaking his head.

Of course, were Scott’s fist flying at one of their faces, they probably wouldn’t be laughing.

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The fourth column in the new items spreadsheet is dedicated to brand name. A seemingly straightforward concept which is nonetheless much more labor intensive than he ever would have guessed. Having uniform brand names for every product in a line is a huge help, for searching items in the system, for setting the sale prices in advance of their weekly flyers. But it’s the kind of thing that must be chipped away at over time, because they’re currently not all that uniform.

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“He’s almost eighty now, but he’s got a mind like a calculator,” Duane tells Edgar, en route to the Bellwether Snacks headquarters, “and he still works, too: two days a week, like clockwork. You can count on it.”

This trip across town was Duane’s idea. He’d stuck his head into Edgar’s office and said he was cruising over to corporate, suggested this ride along. It was intended as a rapport building exercise, most likely, between the two of them, but is also Edgar’s first opportunity for meeting certain key management if not ownership figures. So they hopped into the president’s spacious, silver colored truck, and now have just about reached their destination.

To read the chapters in progress, please visit Amazon! Here's the link:

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I'm currently publishing two chapters a week on there. Recording this podcast myself is much more labor intensive, and as you've probably noticed, doesn't happen nearly as often.

Though its weekly sales amount to roughly half of what each of the other two are pulling in, one oddly colored feather in Liberty’s cap is that it is nonetheless the most profitable store. Palmyra and Southside both appear to be rising ships, with slow and steady upticks in volume, but money is continually poured into each in the name of various improvements. Whereas, apart from utilities and its bargain of a lease, expenses are almost nonexistent at their oldest location. The Locke family likes to characterize Liberty as HHM’s reliable, if unglamorous, cash cow.

One of Teri’s first key lessons for him concerns the addition of new items to their computer system. Months earlier, when they first began installing this Orchestra software, she arranged a blank Excel template twelve columns wide, sent this to all department managers, merchandisers, and store managers. It’s fairly self-explanatory, and she is adamant that if anyone wants a new item added to the system, they must email it via this form.

“If it comes in and it’s wrong, fire it right back at them,” she tells him with a chuckle, “sometimes I’ve sent it back to them two or three times, you know? But hey, it’s one of those things, it’s gotta be right.”

Well, yes and no. Edgar is on his own, off to the proverbial races, soon after learning the basics from her. And he is already a little less hardline about some of these stances than she. The first three columns in this spreadsheet are pretty much crucial, yes – UPC, department, product name. But even these, one could argue, were often art forms requiring a bit of nuance.

Both in size and appearance, Liberty Avenue more closely resembles your average, single proprietor owned, charming little convenience store more than it does an all-natural market. And moving in the complete opposite direction as its Southside cousin across town, this location finds itself situated in a once thriving district which has now fallen seriously out of favor. In a non-GMO nutshell, what happened out here is that heavy traffic forced the city into some dicey infrastructure decisions, which then subsequently killed most traffic – namely, a cement blockaded bus lane right down the middle which essentially made this city boulevard into an interstate, a pair of divided one way streets with no turnoffs for half-mile stretches at a time. Therefore the inbound city traveler, in order to reach Liberty, has to sail a fair distance past it, to the next major intersection – the only crossing point between there and downtown – and then hook a U-turn or else a series of more conventional ones, just to retreat to this funky little enclave.

Southside opened almost exactly three years ago, and is without question the current prize jewel of this operation. The previous occupant was apparently a Harris Teeter where, reputable sources insist, a store manager was shot to death in his office. Bellwether Snacks/Healthy Hippie Market were subsequently able to lease it for a song, though not so much because of this shooting, rather that at this time, this was somewhat of a downtrodden, forgotten district.

Credit goes to Duane Hatley and an assist to owner Walter Locke for being visionaries, and recognizing that this would soon enough become a revitalized, trendy zone. Now, with HHM a crucial if not the original modern tenant pumping fresh blood into this region, the rebound has already begun. Understandably enough, nobody was exactly clamoring to fill that office where the shooting transpired, which is one reason it became an employee restroom, in a hallway behind the conference room. But at least there aren't any reports of a haunting (Palmyra claims all sorts of paranormal activity, however, odd as it seems), which is amazing for a building with this kind of history.

The job sounds straightforward enough. They are a tiny chain of three retail outlets, specializing in natural and locally sourced products, for health minded individuals. Though Bellwether Snacks owns them, these stores have relatively complete autonomy, so long as they are profitable. Healthy Hippie Market doesn’t really have its own accounting department, and nobody inside the stores in this role whatsoever, but Edgar Lodge will be the closest thing to it.

It’s a position that hasn’t existed before. Edgar’s primary focus will involve going through every invoice, ensuring each item is charged to the correct department. Then to assign appropriate retails on the products, based upon that department’s margin. He must also place these products in the correct departments for tax and EBT eligibility reasons, based upon some truly mind-numbing finer points of this fair state’s tax code, within their computer system. Still, it all sounds somewhat basic, just a lot of concentration upon tiny details and a baseline of standard math/accounting type knowledge.

Prefer to read instead? This chapter is also available as a blog post: https://medium.com/@jasonmcgatheywriter/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-b1-409d6cb2876e

Everything was cool up until the summer that Liberty Avenue closed. More specifically the morning where it first occurred to many of them that maybe this company was no longer on the upswing. Their acting owner has just called a meeting, to announce the shuttering of their original location, which somehow endured in this town, in a beleaguered, not exactly great spot, from the late 1970s up until now. And also, oh yeah, that their president, Duane Hatley, who had received the news earlier than his employees, had just chosen to tender his resignation as well.

“I don’t think you know what you’re doing,” Duane told said acting owner, Rob Drake, a quote which has somehow already become common knowledge, and is basically disputed by no one, not even by the targeted individual himself – that it was said, anyway, though Rob would presumably disagree with its sentiment.

But they are a relatively strong cast of seasoned veterans, those assembled in this conference room, and nobody immediately freaks out. Even Liberty’s looming extinction, in fairness, isn’t exactly a news flash, although everyone had remained optimistic it might weather the storm. And meanwhile they have three other locations, all of which are performing somewhere in the range of fair to strong, their tiny chain has endured setbacks before. They will be okay.

Once the unavoidable vague if nervous giddiness associated with even bad news wears off, however, many will wonder what this means re their future president, then. Much subsequent hand wringing will ensue. Some muse that an outsider would represent the best thing for this company, while others opine that an outsider is about the last thing this company needs. And all the while their lame duck of a president admits that he really isn’t sure what he plans on doing after leaving this place, only that it isn’t this.

To read this chapter instead: https://jasonmcgatheywriter.medium.com/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-one-6dba508ebbe5

The structure of the deli here is unique as far as grocery stores are concerned, and each of the stores in turn remains totally different. Beyond pitching in a little to get Walnut up and running, for example, there’s almost no need for Christie to make that hour drive once a week, and she’s mostly exempted from the one-day-a-week edict. Southside continues to try and wrap the department manager and chef up into one individual, whereas Palmyra hasn’t even attempted this.

More to the point of Christie’s current visit, though, and this idea Edgar has, the deli is just one big department that’s expected to pull a 35% margin. But within this there are a whole slew of sub-departments, some of them, like the eyesore of a name Grab & Go, only recently added as a result of that whole tax code dust-up and the finer points it presented. These sub-departments all have different profit targets, too, ranging from anything made in house, which is expected to pull a 50, down to meat at only 25. Some of the unnecessary categories, like seafood, which was at a 30, they’ve dropped entirely, because it didn’t sell anyway and there was no real need to differentiate that trivial amount from meat.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/05/25/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-43/

Though Craig Willis was able to successfully deflect Pierre’s attempts at forcing him to work weekends, he is nonetheless cajoled into driving up to Palmyra and helping that grocery department, for one full day, at time and a half. He returns to Southside the following Monday, flopping into Edgar’s “therapy patient” chair to relate his findings.

            “Man, I think out of everybody working in that store, Trudy…your mom…and Shelly…those are the only three in the building who aren’t on drugs!” Craig tells him, shaking his head at the continued insanity vortex this store represents.

            But even Southside has found itself in a relative state of upheaval recently. With Pierre effectively offloaded to become someone else’s problem, the search for a new assistant manager had begun, and didn’t take very long.

            Vince Brancatto is an old Italian guy with whom half the store has already worked. In Edgar’s office one afternoon, Valerie’s giving him the lowdown on some of this history. She of course is a former employee of the long since shuttered local health food operation, Frilly’s. So is Vince.

            “He seems to have chilled out quite a bit since then,” she explains.

            And this would be an understatement – from whatever baseline you’re talking about. Edgar doesn’t need to know the starting point, because it’s impossible for an individual to be any less chill. Stoic does not even begin to describe the dude, who moves very slowly, but walks around with a serious expression pretty much non-stop.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/05/20/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-42/

They begin moving into the Walnut location on the first, which gives them a month to get this operation up and running. Under normal circumstances, this would be nowhere near enough time, but unlike the last store opening – Southside, some seven years ago – occupying a corner space of this indoor market, the infrastructure’s in place, the permits needed minimal. Also, though a highly controversial move that Duane has hatched out on his own, they’re forgoing any sort of computerized operation here. He’s weighed the pros and cons and determined that it’s not worth the effort and money to install Orchestra here, or anything else of a similar nature. Therefore they will be hand stickering all of the product, and ringing people up on an old-school analog register.

As far as the help is concerned, Johnny is the only existing employee to transfer. Otherwise, Duane’s wife, Karen, has one other newly hired full timer at her disposal, and a couple of young part timers. Moving forward, Duane has informed Edgar and the merchandisers that he wants them in that store one day a week, after it’s open. Until then, for this next frantic month, it’s all hands on deck.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/05/14/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-41/

As they begin moving into the Walnut location, it makes perfect sense to roll this into a company-wide rearrangement. Palmyra’s produce manager, Johnny, has requested a transfer to work in Walnut, as he lives nearer there, and some laidback, seemingly rational and middle aged mom type, Charlene, is hired to fill his former post. Meanwhile, a basically sweet but grouchiness-projecting older in woman in vitamins, Alice, though grousing daily for years about her hour long drive to Palmyra, is offered a position at Walnut – like Johnny, it’s much nearer to her home – but she declines this assignment.

Brady, who has a little money saved and wants to travel the country, possibly live with his brother out west for a while, puts in his notice. So the search for an assistant manager is on. This creates an opening, however, for what is possibly Duane’s most masterful move yet, a potential solution to this Pierre O’Brien quandary.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/05/06/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-40/

The little blurb people put beside their name in Twitter is usually far more comical than anything they ever post. This is one thing Jack Lincoln has noticed, scrolling through that social media time suck in his down time.

But then again, these sites all have their winning attributes. With LinkedIn, he likes the mayhem of their connection suggestions. At the top of their endless doom scroll, the first name is seemingly always someone you’ve never met nor heard of, followed by some random ex-coworker who isn’t a mutual connection with anyone else. Whom you haven’t seen, talked to, texted, or for that matter even thought about in 12 years. Meanwhile, your closest friends in real life, who have on average about 186 mutual connections in common with you, never show up at all.

Jack thinks there’s a sweet spot in the algorithm here, however unintentional. It’s like some bizarre combination of bad coding and the company’s own deliberate yet zany ideas on the best way to run things. Whatever the case, it sure is fascinating – even as he wonders how they, Twitter, and a whole host of other platforms ever hope to make money, to sustain themselves long-term.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/05/03/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-39/

Well okay, now she has officially seen just about everything. As Glenda Jackson is opening the latest manila folder from Liberty Avenue, what tumbles out is not only the expected modest stack of invoices, but also a clipped together bundle of…word search answers? From the latest Healthy Shopper Market newsletter? Yes. Along with a little post-it note atop these, which reads, LIBERTY’S PUZZLES! Employee crossword puzzles to Be turned in!! And then a smile below the dots of those two exclamation points, which are supposed to be the eyes.

As a recipient of these newsletters herself, albeit in emailed form, she knows what this is all about. Their marketing person, Valerie Swanson, who writes said newsletters, had indicated that the first person to send her a completed word search (yes, a word search; definitely not a crossword puzzle) would win a gift basket, of mystery products from the store, worth about $50. Why this store would collectively believe that this meant they should wait a week, bundle them all together and ship these on the truck to the Accounts Payable person is beyond her, but she’s really not surprised. Unfortunately, they are going in the trash now. Doesn’t look like anyone from that store is winning anything this time around.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/29/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-38/

Some conspiracy theory type cashier, a thirtysomething dude that’s been with the company for maybe three weeks, sticks a post-it note to the monitor up in Palmyra’s office which reads, Friends: be careful what you’re doing on here! “They” are watching!! He has drawn some eyeballs up above the message, a set looking to the left, and another set looking to the right, while at the bottom, much as you can infer such from a simple drawing, there’s a big old sarcastic smiley face.

This message cracks Edgar up, the first time he sees it and beyond. While the sentiment is a bit much, there’s no denying things are getting a little more corporate around here. The impetus for his post-it note, surely, is a days old incident whereby Teri Barnette, who’d been drafted to figure out the latest equipment related malady, had connected in via VNC to take a remote look at Palmyra’s office computer…and sort of flipped out to discover that someone was scrolling around Amazon on that screen, shopping for black lights.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/27/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-37/

It’s strange how certain topics get lofted into the air, and begin to catch fire due to their momentum, when you’ve mentioned your own recent preoccupation with them to no one. Of course, skeptics will claim that it’s only because you are currently paying attention to this subject, that these perceived coincidences do not exist. But while that’s certainly true to some extent, and while there are also unseen threads connecting chain reactions invisible to you, this can’t possibly explain away everything.

Edgar’s over in the managers’ office at Southside, one afternoon immediately following the Sean incident. He’s listening to Dale and Barbara playfully bicker, from the desks at opposite ends of the room. The whole reason he has drifted over here is because, while he can technically VNC into this computer from his office on the other side of the wall, to use the Hobart ScaleMaster program, it ends up being a bigger hassle than just walking over here. If he doesn’t lock the keyboard or black out the screen, a different person will continually drift into this room, one approximately every three minutes, and begin attempting to work on this device themselves. Some, like Craig, will mess with him on purpose, as a joke, but for the most part they seem kind of oblivious, as though not even noticing a cursor bouncing around and typed words magically appearing on the screen. But then if he does lock the keyboard and/or black out the screen, then they simply reboot the machine.

He’s sitting here typing away, while these two volley their argumentative banter, and thinks that there’s one thing which has completely disappeared from the office equation: jokes about your significant other. Edgar has worked off and on in offices for the past twenty years, wrapped around his stints as a meat cutter, and this was once a commonplace comedic thread, everyone sitting around bemusedly grousing about their spouses and boyfriends and girlfriends. It’s just gone now, and the thought makes him vaguely sad.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/24/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-36/

Walnut is a city of approximately 40,000, located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The interstate neatly cleaves into two distinct sections, one of which is modern and heavy with strip malls, the other considerably older, with very few developments over the past decade or two. The downtown proper is one mild exception, however, as things have slowly been on the upswing, with the addition of a craft brewery slash restaurant and a trendy coffee shop, to go with charming older institutions such as a timeworn diner and an ancient two screen theater which still shows first run movies.

It’s directly into the middle of all four that the latest Healthy Hippie enterprise will drop. Yet not as a proper, freestanding store, but rather more like an outpost. Directly across the street from the coffee shop, there’s a large indoor market, a plaza where individual businesses rent space, and the HHM squadron is set to occupy a spacious corner stall.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/20/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-35/

Out here in the wild and woolly retail landscape, it’s often unclear whether keeping these incidents to oneself is the right thing to do. You could certainly advance a valid argument that sweeping something like this under the rug is not in the company’s best interests. Yet to run and complain to Duane about it wouldn’t really feel right, either, would leave Edgar feeling more like a third grade tattletale. He is seriously trying to picture a scenario that would find him contacting Human Resources about somebody, and is drawing up nothing but blanks.

But this opens a whole other dilemma concerning what’s to be done about someone, then, instead. He’s not really a complainer or a gossip. So far he’s found three or four trusted allies here whom he might privately speak his mind to, and that’s about it. Even while recognizing that gossip may in fact serve a legitimate purpose in the workplace, for this very reason — it’s one of the least complicated and possibly only viable outlet they have — if it reaches a fever pitch, if enough people form an accurate consensus about someone. He just can’t bring himself to bitch to random employee A about random employee B, because it feels unprofessional, and just not how reasonable adults should handle things.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/17/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-34/

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/14/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-33/

This isn’t to suggest that Palmyra has cornered the market on personnel – or personality – struggles. Naturally, after months of relative calm, many of these bombshells just so happen to arrive during the busiest months of the year, when they can least afford to deal with such distractions.

The first major bloodshed arrives when Aria is escorted off the premises by police. This move doesn’t just signal the end of her employment with the company, but finds them pressing charges against her as well. Although the exact details are murky to those who haven’t dealt with front end paperwork – and probably even many who have – she had apparently perpetuated some scam for years which involved pocketing cash, and adding that amount to the daily credit card total, having realized that nobody was verifying this. Reports vary, but the consensus seems to be that she had stolen somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 over the past few years.This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/11/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-32/

Getting a handle on this bulk madness is presumably one of the reasons Duane asked Harry to come up with a list of what each store is carrying. The results were evidently not quite what he had in mind, though, for he asks Corey to do it all over again. When Edgar hears about this, apart from considering it comical, his next thought is that he could come up with those lists in about five minutes, or at least lists of what each store is ordering, separate lists of what each store is selling. Could even combine them in an Excel sheet in some fashion to highlight what the differences are. But then considers that Duane surely knows this, and if he was interested in such, he would ask. So he must be looking for something else.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/08/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-31/

The eighth column in the new items spreadsheet is dedicated to a simple flag, to mark whether the product in question is packaged or random weight. The number 1 is placed in this column if so, to trip a function in the system that will weigh this item at the cash register, but is otherwise left blank.

For as much time as he spends arguing with alcohol zealots, heightened now by hiring Jake Gifford for what you may as well call an Executive Beer Hipster position, the random weight items – mostly in the bulk department – are easily the most confusing and labor intensive category this side of the deli. And yet they do not have a merchandiser assigned to this department, which is all the more surprising considering that Bellwether Snacks owns them, and their wares fall entirely under this bulk banner.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/05/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-30/

Nearly two months after that lone time hanging out together, the night of Dave’s band performance, Brady randomly asks Edgar if he wants to go grab some beers. It’s a Friday at the end of October, and while refraining from dressing up themselves, they figure there are bound to be a few Halloween related happenings in the region tonight. As an added bonus, it seems that former meat department goofball Justin will be joining them.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/03/31/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-29/

Edgar is also able to take advantage of Corey’s predictable schedule, albeit not quite in the same manner as the recently busted loafers. Rather, frustrated already with his Corey related dealings on the beer-wine front, this has given him a great opportunity to secretly shift into Plan C.

After months of trying it Corey’s way, it’s pretty obvious to Edgar that this simply isn’t going to work. He had pleaded his case to Duane, to have Edgar email him all cost changes and for him to have the final say in all alcohol pricing, which sounded maybe passable in theory, except he only responds to half of Edgar’s emails on this topic, at best. And the other thing is, this doesn’t just involve Palmyra because, owing to the limitations of their Orchestra software, unless slapping stickers over the barcodes, the other two stores are roped into whatever Corey does or doesn’t say.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/03/27/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-28/

The personnel nightmares continue at Palmyra, anyway, which demand far greater attention than anywhere else. As much as can ever be the case in this high overturn industry, the other two locations remain stable – and in fact, it’s not uncommon for Liberty to go months without a single change. Some of Palmyra’s vagaries are explained away as the result of hiring college kids, in a college town, though this only accounts for so much.

One mild mannered kid, hired to work in grocery, everyone seems to agree has great potential. He’s quiet, he’s smart, and he works hard. Until the afternoon where, with a long cart full of product from a recent delivery in the aisle with him, which he is busy stocking, and Trudy conversing with another employee a little further down that same aisle, without any apparent provocation, he inexplicably yanks his apron off. “I can’t TAKE this shit anymore!” he shouts, slams said apron to the ground and walks off the job.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/03/22/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-27/

“I like Christie, don’t get me wrong. But…”

It’s amazing how many conversations start out this way, Edgar’s thinking. As Arnie begins to rant in what amounts to a slightly elevated whisper, up here in his office.

With the other computer in here unoccupied, though the Orchestra server is connected to it, Arnie has unofficially claimed this as his work station, whenever in need of one at this store. He typically does so by announcing the “DEFCON status,” on a scale from 1 to 5, as he enters the room, which is meant to indicate how much general hostility seems to be in the air today.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/03/19/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-26/

Though Microsoft’s cloud storage OneDrive platform uses a few different icons for its “Something Went Wrong!” message, there’s one that cracks Jack Lincoln up, every time, which would be the one which resembles a pile of doodie, wearing a birthday hat. Allegedly this is supposed to be a piece of birthday cake, but it doesn’t really resemble such, even a half crumbled one, and anyway that wouldn’t make any sense. Why a piece of birthday cake if Something Went Wrong (then again, why a totally fine looking bicycle, which is one of the other icons)? Nope, what it most resembles is a pile of poop, wearing what is unmistakably a birthday hat, one of those cardboard cones with a chin strap string. Therefore, whenever he sees this, he internally cheers, doodie hat! And has said it out loud a few times, accidentally, it’s true, which maybe his fellow coworkers up here in the Bellwether Snacks HQ think is one of his personal swear words or something.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/03/16/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-25/

Modern efficiencies can be great, if that saved time is put to good use. This is one of the things Glenda thinks about often, as she’s humming along entering invoices, in her island of a cubicle at the Bellwether HQ. If you are banking that time to get better at your job, be it by catching up on other things, or learning more, or tinkering around in an attempt to find even better methods, then this is great. But the problem with everything being faster these days is that often, all it’s accomplished is…making everyone expect everything that much quicker, so that you’re not really saving any time and certainly not much stress.

Not that she’s really all that stressed, not that she’s complaining. But there are plenty who are stressed to the gills by today’s frenetic pace, and the only reason she’s not is by finding more efficient ways to do the exact same thing, yet not revealing this little tidbit to anyone. Which allows her to study up on her job, and experiment.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/03/14/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-24/

The emails continue between Edgar and Tonya on a frequent if not daily basis. At no point does he ever mention doing anything socially with her again, nor does she. Until a handful of weeks have gone by and out of the blue it’s 2:30 in the afternoon on a Friday, and she dials his office for whatever reason, in seemingly a giddy mood. Says she’s getting off at four herself, it’s a gorgeous fall day et cetera, and wondering if he wouldn’t want to meet for happy hour somewhere.

Part of him thinks he should blow her off, so as not to appear too eager. What kind of lowlife wouldn’t already have plans for a Friday night? But then he thinks, they’ve already wasted enough time, it sounds fun, who cares. As the hipster district lies roughly halfway between their two stores, they both agree this would make the most natural destination, preferably a place with a patio. He is just about to suggest Johnson Street Tavern, when she interrupts.

“Anywhere but Johnson Street Tavern. I hate that place!”

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/03/10/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-23/

Well, Tonya Flaherty never called him that Friday. Or at any other point. However, the highly entertaining email exchange continues 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 Edgar 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

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/03/08/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-22/

Well, Edgar thinks with a wry smirk, it’s funny how the technology is bullshit to certain people, most of the time…except when maybe they want a project knocked out in lightning fast speed, last thing on a Friday afternoon. But whatever. He’s just here to facilitate whatever goofy ideas a guy like Harry might come up with – and considers it a fun challenge, anyway, to see how efficiently he can pull something like this off. The experience might come in handy for much more legitimate projects down the road.

He has noticed, though, that folks in Harry’s demographic tend to lump everyone into two categories. There are those who are Good With Computers, and should therefore be capable if not totally responsible for everything even remotely connected to such. The rest of them are Not Good With Computers and should therefore not be required to learn any of it. If asked, in fact, Harry would probably describe Edgar’s job as Good With Computers, or possibly the even more generic, Computer Stuff. But, alas, Good With Computers is not a job title; only those who are Not Good With Computers think that it is.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/03/04/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-21/

With the promotion of Edgar’s mom to deli manager, this means that the part time fuckup Steve is now into his fourth administration. Having arrived on the scene before Dolly, even, and outlasting not only her but everyone who’d been around in the deli prior to his arrival, including the previous merchandiser, the wine enthusiast.

“Hey, it’s a warm body,” Corey is known to shrug, whenever anyone mentions Steve, “at least he always shows up.”

And yet while this response seems like a sane, measured one, it highlights one of the major fault lines running through retail. The Peter Principle gets all the press, but its inverse, which Edgar has begun to think of as the Steve Paradigm, is just as prevalent, and just as bad: establish at the outset how little you are going to do, how poorly you are going to manage even that meager amount, and then continue to do exactly that. Nobody will ever get their hopes up, and you will be set for life. People might even begin to view you as some sort of insanely dependable rock, for merely showing up and breathing while on the time clock. This is way better than creating lofty expectations, which you maybe can’t deliver upon.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/03/01/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-20/

The sixth and seventh columns of the new items spreadsheet are dedicated to cost and retail, respectively. Cost obviously doesn’t appear on their shelf tags, and there’s nothing they are doing within the Orchestra system that involves these numbers – the monthly margins are calculated at the invoice level, i.e. the sums coded to each department based on how AP is entering them. They are giving their shipments the ol’ eyeball test on the back dock, but there is no check-in process otherwise, no logging of item by item inventory into their system.

The cost on this spreadsheet therefore is somewhat ceremonial, outside of the job Edgar’s doing, calculating retails based on each department’s markup. But it had been in place when Teri trained him, and they changed nothing when he took over this role, even if nobody else needs to know this particular information. And as anyone who has trifled with these Excel spreadsheets endlessly knows, it made the most sense to leave that field right beside the retail one, just for simplicity’s sake, when applying and dragging down formulas.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/02/27/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-19/

Liberty Avenue remains his least investigated outpost thus far, for obvious, business related reasons. Even if in many respects still his favorite to visit, because it is so chill, there’s not enough going on to justify driving over there more than once or twice a month. Even regarding the price updates, which, at Corey Brown’s suggestion – and a genuinely good idea he had, for once – they are now batching to crank out at all stores every Monday, only on Mondays, the Liberty crew is doing a great job of responding to these on their own, without Edgar needing to bring the shelf tags over.

But whatever he’s missing on frequency, spending any time at all at Liberty nonetheless affords a great opportunity for sustained observation, because it’s such a compact, thinly staffed, well lit location. And it’s possible that a ratio you might term characters per capita is highest here as well, even if George the Wilford Brimley clone is out, replaced by his backup, a really sweet older lady named Isabel, who hails from somewhere in the Caribbean.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/02/21/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-18/

Still, there is one aspect missing thus far from his repertoire with the Healthy Hippie Market, somehow, even eight months into this experience. And it will take the Palmyra crew to begin resolving this oversight, however indirectly. When word begins to circulate that the newest guy in the deli, Dave, is also a musician, and that he’s playing out this Friday night in Chesboro, a decent chunk of that store’s workforce makes plans to attend together. One day Edgar happens to be up there, and is thrown an invite as well.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-17/

He hates to see Dolly go. She was one of his earliest and most vocal champions, and this isn’t something he takes lightly, or will ever forget. Also, as a sidebar, it’s worth noting that she was continually trying to hook Edgar up with her daughter, and while this didn’t happen, he appreciates the effort.

These twin topics are dominating his thoughts, in the wake of Dolly’s firing. As is always the case, a circling of the wagons is enacted between the survivors, taking stock of what this shakeup means. An assessment of which allies are left, and looking at these hardy souls with a newfound, greater appreciation. But also, yes, this whole notion of employee relations – for Dolly’s daughter is in fact a cashier at Southside – and how it pertains to his current status.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/02/15/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-16/

Once a week, after going through the invoices, Edgar emails the department managers, spelling out what they could have ordered cheaper elsewhere, and/or should have for possible some other reason, like quality. The vendor and the item number are after all listed on their shelf tags, are two of the fields on the new items spreadsheet. Merchandisers are copied on these emails, although the degree to which they’re involved with product ordering itself ranges from heavily (Christie) to pretty much introducing new item lines only (Dale). Harry Redcrow as always seems to not have much faith in the information Edgar is imparting, and may in fact continue to consider him an idiot.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/02/12/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-15/

The Hobart Scalemaster program is Edgar’s clunky if just barely passable portal into adding and editing items on the deli and produce scales, at Southside and Palmyra both. While Liberty does have one all purpose scale in back that everyone uses, it has never been online, and this is considered no great loss. If anything is ever needed there, he jots down a note of it, and does so the next occasion where he’s in the store. They have one catchall PLU number labeled “miscellaneous item,” which they can use in a pinch, crossing that out to write in the correct name, and this works just fine for the time being. Of course, it’s entirely likely they will run afoul of the same weights and measures tyranny at some point, if for example packaging up bulk department snack mixes, but this prospect is a campfire compared to the forest blaze up in Palmyra right now.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/02/08/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-14/

The fifth column on the new items spreadsheet is dedicated to package size. While not nearly the headache represented by brand names, these also need to be uniform. You couldn’t spell out ounce half the time but abbreviate it to oz the rest; similarly, you couldn’t put a period behind lb on occasion yet omit it on the remainder. And this said nothing of the whole metric versus standard dilemma, within which often the vendor catalogs or even product lines themselves weren’t even consistent. The same often applied to liquids, occasionally abbreviated as fl oz and occasionally not, decisions seemingly applied at random.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/02/04/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-13/

As such, while yes, maybe she is partial to Edgar, Glenda feels there is at least one major reason to be: his experience almost always neatly matches her own. He’s the kind of guy that would keep his lips zipped about these individuals — but if you asked, as a confidential, business-related inquiry, will admit his own take on the situation. She brought up Pat one day to him, and Edgar chuckled, said that DiStazio reminded him of kid in high school who would have had his papers sticking every which way out of a Trapper Keeper, clearly a runaway mess, with papers visibly falling out behind him in the hall and some even with dirty shoe prints upon them, who would then nonetheless constantly disagree with teachers who accused him of being disorganized and losing his homework all the time.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/02/02/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-twelve/

Edgar wouldn’t say he’s gotten to know Christie extremely well just yet. They are on friendly enough terms, however, to chat briefly in passing about even non-business related matters. Or for him to become her desperation last resort when, as the day of an event at Liberty Avenue approaches, to ask if it might be possible for him to man the grill.

He normally has weekends off, of course, so it’s going to take some convincing. Or not even that, really, for in truth he’s already liking the sounds of this, from a networking and novelty aspect. But it wouldn’t do well to display much enthusiasm for such a concept, lest it become a a regular thing, but also just on general principles.

“Mmmm…,” he waffles.

“I’ll give you forty bucks cash,” she says.

“Now you’re talking,” he replies, shooting a finger pistol at her.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/01/27/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-ten/