"Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot" - Chapter 82

Edgar's opinion of these type of complaints is generally the same thing he could tell Ray was thinking up there at the Slingshot conference, but couldn't come right out and say, not to one of his clients: do you think maybe this person just doesn't want to do it? But of course, the primary, obvious reason that this line of reasoning falls on deaf ears with the likes of Destiny is because she doesn't want to do it, either.

The irony here, which he continually attempts stressing to people, whenever this subject comes up, is that getting your inventory straight and then letting the computer assisted ordering do its thing, this is actually much easier than what they're currently doing. And much more efficient. It takes some effort on the front end to get these numbers set the way you want them, but it saves you untold hours on the back end. Yet if these are the same folks regarding him with skepticism every time he suggests they, for example, copy and paste something instead of typing it out by hand – which they pretty much are, identical sets of holdouts – then is it really so surprising they're balking at something as mind-blowing as, gasp, allowing a computer to suggest orders, based on inventory and sales history? Not especially.

He wouldn't particularly care if any of them did so, naturally, were it not for Rob breathing down his neck to make it happen. Yes you wish for the company to succeed, so he cares on that grounds, but again it's a situation where he's doing his job, by making things right in the system and teaching them what he can. And if the holdouts are unpleasant enough then you kind of wish they would fail, so they can move onto somewhere else and a replacement can be found.

The next step in this process is when another Slingshot representative, John Arthur, conducts a two day training course at their Central office, for all department managers and whomever else might care to attend. That none of the merchandisers are sitting in is probably telling, another indication of the battles lying in wait ahead, just as Craig is the only assistant manager and there are no store managers. Aside from every department head and him and Edgar, the only other attendee is this brand new employee onboarding girl they've recently hired, Tosha, a really sweet young black woman whose position never existed before. These concepts have nothing to do with anything she's involved in, but you have to admire that she's curious enough to sit here for two days of this.

Edgar thinks this John Arthur guy is one of the best instructors he's ever witnessed, in any realm. With his laptop projecting onto a screen, he patiently explains everything in easy to comprehend language that makes a ton of sense. He says his son runs a pair of grocery stores that do over $300K a week apiece, and that it takes him 45 minutes combined to do all the ordering himself, for both stores, every week. Because he has his inventory in order, and the reordering triggers set just the way he wants them – and if anything looks out of whack, you can always adjust it. This is legions upon legions easier than walking the store every time out, which is itself likely more error prone anyway than any “mistake” that a CAO suggestion would ever make. That some of the help gathered here are wowing and seem to be impressed with this, are turning and nodding to make approving faces at one another, this is an encouraging sign, but...much work remains to be done.

This visiting guru is truly a wizard, yes, and Edgar learns a ton from him. Both on the major points, concerning not just Slingshot but general theories on maintaining a database and inventory, period, but also smaller, random ones. Like the annoying “leading zero” quandary, in particular UPCs, and how to get around that by right clicking in Excel to format the numbers as General, format of twelve zeros.

Hot on the heels of this, after casually discussing matters with Dale and Valerie one day, he finally works up the nerve to approach Duane with a long simmering idea he's never been inspired enough to act upon. Yet the John Arthur meeting only underscored the need for such, sending his mind off into another direction where it highlights in sharp detail why this is maybe an absolute necessity: the “office basics 101” class.

It started off kind of as a joke he would think about on the drive home, to keep himself entertained. Except that the more he and his cronies discuss such, it's really not that ridiculous at all. And of course Duane immediately signs off on this, he nods and says with a wave of a hand that this is fine, if Edgar wants to head up such over here in the conference room. For one thing, it is indeed absurd to think that employees shuddering in fear at the thought of copying and pasting one line of an Excel spreadsheet are going to pick up this automated ordering concept and run with it. There's just no way. Beyond that, however, there's also an added value in that anyone who subsequently complains about not knowing how to do some of these things, will have their metaphorical legs chopped out from under them, because they would then have to come up with an answer as to why they didn't attend the class.

So he sends out an email blast and posts notices by the time clocks, some two weeks in advance of what is surely the slowest day of the week, a Wednesday afternoon, for which he has scheduled this class. At least whenever it's not the first Wednesday of the month, where they're hanging brand new sale signs. He didn't expect response to be especially robust, but at least some people have signed up for his little brainchild here, and that's a start. If successful there's no reason they couldn't do this once a year down the road or something, too. Somebody else might even teach it, because these concepts are not exactly mind-blowing to most modern folk, who are also aware they can just Google and figure out any of it they didn't already know.

Nobody is willing to drive down from Palmyra for this junk, which was totally expected. Also that those who otherwise might need this the most apparently have no interest in such – your Vince, your Barbara, your Pierre. At least a couple of those characters might overhear some of this however, and put it to good use, although Edgar does have occasion to marvel that Vince not only fails to perform any discernible work, he also seems extremely adept at tuning out the world around him entirely. To a degree that makes even Edgar blush, the old man's skill at such.

Okay, though, on a positive note, he does have six attendees arriving, at least one from each of their three Chesboro stores. Even if two of these characters, Mitch from Liberty and Jimmy the Central bulk manager, who hang out together in the back, give a distinct vibe that they already know most of this stuff and this just sounded like a good opportunity for taking it easy on the clock. Yet their presence helps legitimize the concept anyway, both from an attendance numbers standpoint, but also in beefing up the quality level of the attendees. So he's thankful for their presence, for multiple reasons.

Otherwise, it's Ralph Hedges – who again, while he admires this dude's spirit – may have perhaps merely shown up to complain about various things, not exactly learning a ton he didn't already know, either – and Candace from Liberty, Sondra from Central. Come to think of it, though never explicitly telling Edgar such, it appears that Dale may have informed his three in-town vitamin managers that attendance was mandatory, because otherwise these seems like a strange coincidence. And then Tosha, the onboarding girl. He gets the feeling that she doesn't have a ton to do yet, but whatever the case, it's great that she's sitting on these meetings.

“People don't like to learn anything new,” is how Dale explains this reluctance, the opposition and often outright hostility they're facing when it comes to Slingshot and other related concepts. And Edgar's certain that this is part of it, but a very small chunk at best. For the most part, they are convinced that it's going to bring them more work, not less, and remain unconvinced otherwise.

Because how else to explain this endless nitpicking? That the employees bring so much concern about their precious orders being just so, down to the piece, and are terrified that some computer assisted ordering might upset that delicate house of cards? Please. It's ninety percent that they are convinced this is going to be more work – and not learning anything new might fall into that same hamper as well. He does hold out a smidgen of sympathy for the remaining ten percent, however, who he believes are genuinely living in fear of new technology.

And he can only hope some of those are represented here. Hopefully they learn a little bit and maybe spread the gospel to the like minded complainers who aren't on hand. As far as addressing the fear, a little knowledge might go a long way. Maybe he can inspire them to wonder at the nature of this fear – like, for example, what do they seriously think is going to happen, that they're going to break something? There is after all the Undo button on most modern business applications. You try something and it doesn't work, who cares? If you saved hundreds of hours letting the computer algorithm make suggestions for you, and it screws up one order, or misses something here and there, are we seriously crying about this? Who cares? You fix it and move on.

Not that he's getting into all that right now. The whole point of this gathering was to take a step backwards and to address some possibly missing basics. It's a free form discussion, for the most part, with Edgar just addressing questions as presented to him, demonstrating on his own laptop projecting to the screen, just as John Arthur had done weeks earlier. But he does have his own major points he wants to touch on, each of which typically lead to an extended discussion on the matter.

Among these, perhaps the most controversial: just because the mouse is sitting there, that doesn't mean it's your friend. Experiment with the Enter button and the Tab button on your keyboard instead, and you might be pleasantly surprised. Or even the directional arrows. Get into the swing with this and it might even transform your life. Then you can maybe move onto related concepts such as the Home and the End and the Pg Up and the Pg Down, or even farflung game changing combos such as Ctrl Home and Ctrl End.

Or possibly the greatest pairing of combos in history, a duo in the hot key Hall Of Fame: Ctrl C followed by the Ctrl V. With their frequent collaborator Ctrl Tab there in the middle, if you're flipping to another document. Edgar's fond of saying that he tries not to even type his own name if he doesn't have to, and there's a great deal of truth to this. From a speed and an accuracy standpoint, it's best to copy and paste as much as possible.

Behold the glorious majesty of the Ctrl A. Save often, but do so by shunning your enemy in sheep's clothing, cast the mouse aside in favor of Ctrl S. Cut out the printing pop-up middlemen and go directly to the source with Ctrl P. Ctrl F is technically for finding information, but it's also a handy box for storing information, like for example looking up something online. Drop it into the box, followed by Ctrl A and Ctrl C. Ctrl Tab to your preferred destination and Ctrl V it there. Really just mess around with Ctrl anything and see what it might do. You're not going to break anything.

Got too many documents open? Hold down the windows icon and the letter D to magically transport back to the desktop screen. The vast majority of the time, you don't need to go blind attempting to checkmark tiny boxes – you can click the sentence next to the box instead. Hold down Shift and click the first and last item in a long list, like for example photos in a folder, if you want to do something with all of them. Hold down Ctrl and do the same, if you want to go through and cherry pick items in a long list instead. Don't feel like typing today's date ever again, in an Excel spreadsheet? Type =TODAY() into that cell and you will never have to worry about it for the rest of your life. Double click in the middle of a long number or word or whatever to highlight and then copy it, instead of attempting brain surgeon precision with the left click and the drag and the precise stopping point. Here's how you double click on that little black plus sign to copy something, instantly, into every cell of a column. Here's how you drag it down manually, if you like. If you keep consistent enough formatting and get rid of the unnecessary spaces, it will even begin to autopopulate cells for you, too, if you like, thus saving you some unnecessary repetitive tasks. For the grand finale he saves his personal favorite combination, just in case anybody cares, which is of course quite naturally the Ctrl + C, Ctrl + Tab, Tab, Ctrl + V, Ctrl + Tab, down arrow superstar combo, permitting a user to positively fly in ways that clicking around with a clunky old mouse never could.

Though it might be of some use to them, he doesn't seriously expect this charming little tutorial to move mountains. Its value will almost surely come in the form of an excuse eliminator, particularly if people realize they will have future meetings, if need be, because their antiquated attitudes aren't going to fly any longer. Realistically, what they probably need is someone with some actual authority around here – store manager, assistant manager, preferably Duane and/or Rob – to explain that if they don't get on board with this stuff, then bye bye. Instead those who are on the bus continue plugging away, and attempt to do what they can with those who are not.