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/
