“My car wouldn’t start,” Roxanne said in her defense. “I had to call a friend to bring me here.”
“Uh-huh,” Stan replied, as if bored to the verge of suicide by her troubles. “Daniel, bring her up to speed on the new forms, if you’d be so kind. Okay, six fifty-nine—let’s get those doors opened,” he said with all the pomp and authority of the commander-in-chief.
“What is this?” Roxanne repeated to Daniel, as everyone filed past them on route to their various stations. But an explanation was hardly necessary; a cursory glance said it all. Stan, in his maniacal zeal for attaining supreme customer service from his underlings, had evidently gone to the trouble and expense of having slips printed, each customized with the employee’s name, for grading the cashiers.
“Is this for real?” she asked before Daniel could get a word out. Her face looked stricken as she read the form out loud. “‘Hi, my name is Roxanne Platt’…oh, really…is this legal? ‘Please let me know how I can better serve to you by taking a minute to evaluate my service today. Thank you and I look forward to seeing you at ValuWise again soon!’ Has Stan lost his mind?”
“Um…,” was all Daniel could manage to get out before Roxanne continued her rant.
“‘Please check one…Did I greet you in a friendly and courteous manner? YES NO. Did I ask your preference of plastic or paper? YES NO. Did I ask if you found everything you were looking for? Did I ask if you had any coupons? Did I thank you for shopping with us at ValuWise and wish you a good day?’ You have got to be kidding me!” Roxanne nearly shrieked, as she ripped the top sheet off and crumpled it into a ball, tossing it ineffectually at the trash can across the room.
“He is not serious. Tell me he’s not serious,” she demanded of Daniel, who retrieved the wadded paper from the floor.
“He’s serious, and don’t be throwing these away. They’ve got your name on them,” Daniel warned, tucking it into his back pocket.
“What is the point of all this?” Daniel encircled his arm around her back in a shepherding manner, in hopes of getting her to work before Stan started crawling all over his case.
“The point of all this is to strengthen our customer service—”
“Yeah, but what’s he going to do with these? Is he going to sit around and read them and keep some sort of running tab?”
Daniel swallowed hard. “Actually, all the yes’s and no’s will be tallied for each checker, and at the end of every month, each checker will learn whether he or she has more credits or demerits…and raises, bonuses, vacation days, etc. will be earned according to the score…”
“Don’t tell me anymore now. I’ll lose it before I ever get started,” Roxanne said weakly. She took her daily side chore list from her cubbyhole and tried to focus on her job.
“I’ll just put these on check stand four…” Daniel said, regarding Roxanne from behind with a growing sense of dismay. She walked straight passed him without even a hint that she had heard what he said.
As deodorant and toothpaste were her restocking assignments during the hour before she was to man her register, she headed to the personal hygiene aisle and grappled with the mind-numbing task of counting boxes and canisters. After about twenty minutes of this tedious toil, she returned to the warehouse portion of the store and began collecting the items she needed to fill the shelves with odor-eliminating goods.
All throughout her duties, her mind continued to grapple with Stan Kemplehoff’s latest scheme to humiliate and control his employees. It stuck in her craw like a thorn that couldn’t be excised. The thought of having to parrot out all those gratuitous questions, questions that were only occasionally helpful, filled her with a resounding sense of dread.
The vision of what she was about to embark on nearly paralyzed her with rage. This was nothing but an evil plot to get her to quit, she was certain of it. He had been gunning for her for as long as he’d been manager at their location. He probably figured that firing her would cost the company extra unemployment tax assessments. And being the company guy that he was, he had found a way to rid himself of Roxanne’s less than tolerable presence, and at the same time, protect his beloved ValuWise Corporation.
“There you are,” Daniel said, tracking her down in the nether regions of the store room. “Look, I was hoping to go over the score card business with you before you started checking…”
“Didn’t we already do that?” Roxanne asked, hand to her forehead to quell the headache that was building rapidly.
“Well, yes—except for the part about how to distribute the score cards and where the customers are supposed to fill them out.” Roxanne winced. Surely this was a nightmare. “You hand them their receipts and any change, then hand them the sheet and ask them to fill it out on the box at the end of the checkout counter—there’s like a ballot box on each check stand now…” Daniel said, clearly embarrassed by his role in this charade.
“Okay…I got it. Here’s your receipt, here’s your score card—please fill it out, blah blah blah, have a nice day…do you need any help out,” Roxanne droned in a sing-song parody.
“Right,” Daniel said sheepishly. “And there’s a pen tied to each box—”
“Of course there is!” Roxanne said with mock enthusiasm, indicating with a caustic sneer that she had all the instruction she could stand on the subject.
“If you have any questions…” Daniel said, his voice trailing off as Roxanne trudged around the corner.
“Is there anything else today?” Roxanne asked, in what she hoped was a cheerful chirp. It sounded to her own ears like the last chirp of a dying parakeet. The customer answered perfunctorily, his mind engaged in the task of finalizing his transaction.
“You saved three dollars and fifty-two cents,” Roxanne informed him as she handed him his receipt. “And sir, if you could take a moment…” but the man was gone like a shot. She placed the unused score sheet on top of the pad and began checking the next customer’s groceries. She was working out a plan in her head to tear off the sheets before she gave the customer the receipt, when she belatedly realized she had not promptly greeted the woman now standing in front of her.
“Oh hello! How are you today? Did find everything okay? Great, great. Would you like paper or plastic? Kelsey, this lady would like paper in plastic. Any coupons today? Do you have a ValuWise card? Alright, your total comes to sixty-five dollars even. Would you like some help out? Five dollars is your change…and your receipt, and if you wouldn’t mind grading my service today, here’s a form with a few quick questions on it, if you’d be so kind…oh, and thank you for shopping at ValuWise and come see us again soon.”
Roxanne heaved a brief sigh before engaging the next person in her line in the same meddlesome banter. She watched out of the corner of her eye as the last woman tried to read Stan’s form while balancing her two bags of groceries. Roxanne was about ready for a nervous breakdown. All this pressure to behave as though she were some kind of wind-up doll from Supermarket Hell was starting to make her feel crazy.
“Where does this go?” the woman asked, holding her folded slip in the air, clearly agitated by the inconvenience.
“Right on the left side there…” The woman shoved it in, regrouped her purchases and headed for the exit without a backwards glance. Everything about her walk said she was extremely put off by this new layer of customer participation.
“I said paper,” the current customer said coldly. It took a couple of beats for Roxanne to catch her drift.
“She said paper,” Roxanne repeated to Kelsey, her mentally-impaired box girl of the day. They both scurried to switch out the plastic bags for paper, colliding occasionally in their obsequious efforts.
“Is that all today?” Roxanne asked, trying to slip back into her scripted routine.
“Yes,” the woman said, holding her hand out for her receipt.
“You saved a dollar-nineteen,” Roxanne said, as she placed the receipt and the score sheet in the woman’s hand.
“I
don’t have time for this,” the woman said, letting the piece of paper float to the counter.
“I understand,” Roxanne said, wadding the sheet and tossing it in the trash. “Do you need help out?”
“No.”
“Thank you for shopping at ValuWise and have a good…” Roxanne stared at the retreating woman with her mouth hanging slack.
“These are meant to be filled out by your customers, not thrown in the trash,” Stan whispered in his spooky good father voice, while he smiled at the patrons lined up at check stand four. He had an uncanny ability to materialize at the most inopportune times.
“Jee—you scared me,” Roxanne said with a start. “Um…she said she was in a hurry…” Roxanne watched in disbelief as Stan bent down and removed the discarded score sheet from the trash. Out of reflex, she began to scan the next order, racking her brain for the proper opening line.
“Hello, how are you today?” she began.
“See me in my office after your break,” Stan whispered sweetly. Roxanne nodded dutifully, her cheeks flushed with both humiliation and anger. Her breathing was fast and hard.
Let him fire me—I don’t give a damn, she was thinking while blindly working her way through customer after customer. If he was going to can her, what was the point of twisting herself in knots trying to play kiss-ass to a never-ending line of folks who couldn’t be less interested in ValuWise’s new martial politeness campaign?
At the first opportunity, she seized Daniel’s attention.
“How are you doing?” he asked, giving Kelsey a hand with the bagging.
“Plastic,” Roxanne corrected him.
“Right,” Daniel said, smiling awkwardly at the young mother with the newborn in a body sling.
“I’m about a millisecond away from losing my mind,” Roxanne said beneath her breath, a faux smile plastered across her face.
“Your break is in thirty minutes,” Daniel replied discreetly.
“I can’t wait that long,” Roxanne informed him, staring him straight in the eye lest he miss the seriousness of what she was saying.
“I’ll see what I can do…” Daniel tried to dash away, supposedly with her request as his utmost priority, but Roxanne held him in place by his sleeve.
“Daniel…do not leave me here. I…need…a…break…NOW.” Daniel’s expression said he had gotten the message loud and clear this time. He took a key from his pocket and inserted it into the register. He canceled out Roxanne’s access and keyed in his own. “Go, I’ve got it.”
Daniel wasn’t thrilled by the position Roxanne had put him in, but the look on her face was one he’d never seen before. She seemed scared and vulnerable, a combination in her that gave him a cold chill down his spine.
Roxanne stood on the back steps of the warehouse, gulping breaths of air as she searched for her keys. She found them and began to automatically scan the lot for her car as she descended to the employee parking lot. It wasn’t until she reached the bottom step that she realized she didn’t have a car to go to. Her miserable piece of crap was at home, stubbornly fixed to its parking space. She sank to the steps, as listlessly as if she had been poured there.
It had been so long since she had cried, she idly wondered why her cheeks were wet. She swiped roughly at the rivulets, sniffing hard as she fought back a powerful wave of self-pity.
“Goddamnsonofabitch,” she swore for openers. That felt good enough to encourage more creative curses. The more she swore, the less she felt like crying and the more she felt like punching someone in the face, namely Stan Kemplehoff. Maybe Andrea’s cocky boyfriend, too.
She let loose a few more inspired epithets, then reached for her cell phone. She called Andrea’s salon, only to get the auto-attendant. She thought of trying her cell number, but checking her watch, figured she was in busy at work on someone’s head. She continued to stare at her cell phone, willing it to come up with some useful suggestions. It remained mute and uncooperative.
“What am I going to do?” she said in an uncharacteristic whimper. “I have no car and almost no job, and zero options. Oh, my God—I hate my life!” Her gaze rose to the tarmac, but no further. She was feeling so dispirited, she couldn’t even bring herself to mutilate a few cigarettes. Finally, out of her dreary reverie came an inspiration. Within seconds, she had her ex-husband on the line.
“What’s up—I’m about to go into a meeting,” he said without preamble. Ah Derek—always Mr. Impatient.
“I’ve got a problem,” Roxanne said, willing to skip the small talk and cut to the chase if he was. “My car’s dead. It’s the starter or something.” Derek missed a beat, as he attempted to figure out how this was a problem that concerned him.
“Have it towed to the garage and get it fixed,” he said, as if the conundrum was simple enough for a child to solve. In fact, it made so much sense, it took Roxanne aback momentarily.
“Well, I could do that Derek, but that’s easier said than done. I’m at work, I have no way of getting home or getting back to work tomorrow—”
“Okay, so you need a car. Rent one until yours is fixed.” Roxanne gritted her teeth and tried not to let her ill feelings show.
“Derek, I can’t afford to rent a car or have mine fixed. Besides, you know as well as I do that’s probably a waste of money. The car is fifteen years old. What’s the point of putting three hundred into a car that’s only worth about seven?”
“What do you want me to do, Roxanne?” Here it came, the grudging persecution act. Poor old Derek Platt, being forced to endure the eternal burden of having once said “I do” to her.
“I don’t know, Derek… Maybe I’m hoping you’ll loan me the money to buy a new car—a new used car, I mean.” Derek exhaled audibly, switching the phone to his other ear, a tell-tale sign that he was about to lose his equanimity, what little he possessed when it came to dealing with her. “Hello?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because you’re the only one I can ask.”
“Ask your parents,” he said, throwing the first dagger. Only a person once in possession of total trust could know how to place the point so accurately.
“You know that’s not an option,” she said, acknowledging he’d hit a nerve.
“They would be the most logical people to hit up for a loan,” he said, giving the blade a twist.
“Derek, they’d just as soon see me lose my home than help me out financially.” This was only a marginal exaggeration. Harold and Daphne Burrows firmly and unflinchingly believed in never making loans or monetary gifts to their children, unless it was solely for educational purposes. A perfect example of this was her brother, Wes, on whom they had spent a sizable fortune for Harvard Medical School. Two other siblings both graduated from UC schools, which was no cheap ticket, either.
Roxanne was the only scholastic underachiever in a family which prided itself on higher education. For that reason alone, Roxanne sometimes felt they owed at least a little something for letting them off the hook. Like maybe the price of a “pre-owned” car. Derek had a point, but she wasn’t going to let him know that.
“That still doesn’t mean I should have to loan you the money,” he protested.
“You need to not think about it as lending me money, when in reality I need a car just as much for Connor’s sake as I do for any other reason,” she argued.
“Roxanne—I’ve got to go. They’re waiting for me.”
“Will you at least think about it? Derek…? Derek?” Roxanne glared at the disconnected screen on her phone. “Asshole,” she mouthed, as she flicked the phone closed. Well, so much for that idea. She was going to have to come up with something, though, or she’d be hoofing it home after work.
“Oh, crap!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet as she realized she hadn’t clocked out before her impromptu break. Plus, her fifteen minutes of freedom were up, which meant she had an assignation with Stan the Slave Driver, most likely so he could give her her walking papers.
S
he scrambled up the steps, wracking her brain for plausible excuses for her many and varied transgressions. She didn’t have much time for rumination; she ran into Stan as soon as she burst through the loading dock door. She smiled reflexively as her armpits stung with perspiration. Her smile froze and faded as Stan curled his finger in a sinister, beckoning way.
Roxanne passed into Stan’s office, her chest thudding despite her desire for nonchalance. There was a hint of the menace that was to follow in the way he sharply closed the door behind her. She took a seat as directed, determined to take whatever he was going to brow-beat her with in stride. She sat lightly in the chair, tentative and wary, almost forgetting to breathe while she waited for Stan to let loose on her.
Being prone to dramatic displays of authority, Stan took his time, doing his best to unnerve his prey before attacking. Roxanne studied him as he studied her, his hands wrapped around the armrests of his chair, his posture slightly cocked, as if he might pounce at any moment.
After the stare-down that resulted in a draw, Stan turned his attention to the manila file folder on his desk, the contents of which he undoubtedly knew by heart. Nevertheless, he leafed through the pages with mock-absorption, glancing up at her occasionally.
Alright, already—let’s get this over with, for God’s sake, Roxanne thought, her jaw set defensively, her fingers drumming a beat on her leg, her annoyance building by the second.
“So…” Stan began. The mere sound of his condescending voice made her cringe. “You’ve been here a long time, Roxanne—twelve, thirteen years?”
“Thirteen,” she dutifully answered.
“There are a couple things about your file that caught my attention. You’ve seen your share of managers come and go, haven’t you?”
“More than I can count,” Roxanne confirmed with a breezy smile. Stan chewed his tongue methodically as he considered her response.
“The first anomaly is that, in all those thirteen years, you’ve failed to be promoted.”
Alligators in the Trees Page 52