Chapter 2
TWO
WIL
“Well, shit,” Sam says after I slam the swinging door into the warehouse rack behind it with a thwap and throw myself down into the empty chair at the inventory desk. “That could have gone better.”
“What a disaster.” I lean forward and drop my head into my hands. I needed a win today, and instead, everything is much, much worse. “I’m stuck, Sam. I’m never getting out of here.”
My best friend reaches over and slaps me on the back—hard. “Get over yourself, Jaws. It was one eval. A very shitty eval.”
“A very shitty eval in a long line of very shitty evals.”
Sam and I go way back, and he’s called me Jaws—a play on my initials—almost as long.
We both started at Hometown Electronics when we were sixteen, working nights and weekends in the warehouse.
We unloaded trucks and then later turned around and loaded products into customers’ vehicles.
We built actual muscles as well as the kind of mental muscles needed to wedge an enormous TV into a hatchback.
And how to not punch the throat of any dumbass who thinks they can fit an enormous TV into the back of their stupid hatchback.
Sam and I went to different colleges but worked here during breaks, and when the time came to start our careers, there was no question for either of us.
Hometown Electronics was our future, and we wanted the future to begin here at Woodlake, the company’s flagship location.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” He’s not smug, although he could be.
Inventory scored a 91 on their evaluation yesterday.
Sam and his assistant team captain, Eric, have this warehouse buttoned up—their paperwork, the backstock, the truck process, accurate inventory counts.
My department, merchandising and media, barely scraped by with a 77, by far the worst score on an eval by the district team we’ve had since I moved into the merch manager role a couple of months ago.
“Shane and Aurora both need to step it up as team captains,” I say, “especially Aurora. This is the flagship store. There’s no room for mediocrity.”
Sam huffs out a laugh. “You sound like your dad.”
I groan. “Please don’t bring him into this. He’ll find out soon enough, and then the shit’s really going to hit the fan.”
My father is the founder and CEO of the country’s third largest (and growing) electronics retailer.
Sam made a choice to work here. I didn’t, not really.
Dad offered to pay for college as long as my siblings and I gave a minimum of ten years to the company after graduation, and that was a deal I couldn’t pass up.
I grew up in these stores. I know everything there is to know about selling computers, or stereo systems, even projection TVs.
I can ring out a customer with my eyes closed.
I can read the profit and loss ledger, I can set a planogram, I can fit an enormous TV in some dumbass’s hatchback.
But apparently, I can’t get my team to make sure the right products are in the right location with the right signage and the right price.
And if I can’t pass the merch eval, I can’t move out of this position—the last and what’s turned out to be the most difficult of the required rotations—to become assistant general manager, and then, eventually, get my own store.
I’m 27, and if I can make it through the AGM program before my twenty-eighth birthday, I’ll be the youngest GM in the history of the company—well, after my father, that is—and I’ll finally prove to him that I’m not a complete failure.
“Fuuuuuck.” The word comes out on a long exhale.
“Profound.” Sam stands and slaps me on the back again. “I’m going home. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“For what?”
“You’re kidding, right? HollowPoint. I busted my ass to get those tickets.”
I snort. “You did not. There’s a whole stack of comp tickets up at customer service.”
The Golden, a legendary music venue in downtown Minneapolis, sends us an envelope every month with tickets to some of their shows, and occasionally, there’s a hidden treasure in that envelope like HollowPoint, a local band on the brink of making it big.
“Seven’s good,” I say. “In the meantime, I’ve got to try to explain to Jeremy why we crashed and burned today.”
“Good luck. I heard Annie’s pregnant again, so Jer should be in a good mood. On that note, I’m going home to my beautiful wife and daughter.” He grins and practically sprints out of the warehouse. Sam and Adriana’s relationship almost makes me believe in soulmates. Almost.
I open a file drawer and find a fresh yellow legal pad. On the top page, I write Shane. I flip to the next and write Aurora. Then I work through the eval notes and make a list for each.
The PA system beeps twice from a speaker above the door and the voice of our general manager, Jeremy, booms through it with a screech of feedback.
“Wil to the Dugout,” he says, too loud and too close to the phone’s mouthpiece.
“Jefferson A. Wilshire the fourth to the Dugout, please, at your earliest convenience.”
Shit. If he’s calling me that, it can’t be good.
Which is confirmed as soon as I step into the Dugout, the managers’ office behind customer service, and see Jefferson A.
Wilshire III leaning against the desk, his arms crossed, his glasses perched on top of his thinning blond hair.
He’s frowning. Of course he’s frowning. I can’t remember the last time he was happy to see me.
“Dad,” I say in a resigned tone. “What are you doing here?”
He presses his lips together into a thin line, then says, “It’s Mr. Wilshire in the workplace setting, remember?”
Mr. Wilshire. What a tool.
“What do you think I’m doing here, Wil?” he continues.
I pull out a chair from the other desk and sit down, leaning forward with my hands clasped. I might as well get this over with. “You heard about the eval.”
“Of course I heard about the eval. In case you’d forgotten, this is the flagship store.” His tone is stern, sharp.
I look at my hands. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“Then what’s the problem? Is this a joke to you?”
I look up. His face has turned a shade of red somewhere between tomato and beet. “You think I like bombing the eval? You think I want to have to repeat this rotation because I can’t pass a merch eval?”
“Seems that way.”
“That’s not the case, and you know it. But—” I stop before I thank him for coming down from his ivory tower to rag me about it. That would only make things worse.
My older sister Kelsey excelled at everything: valedictorian, captain of the state high school championship soccer team, summa cum laude at Schilling University—Dad’s alma mater.
She was managing an entire department at the corporate office by age 26.
Our younger brother Kaplan missed valedictorian by one-one-hundredth of a point, ran cross-country, brought home all sorts of medals.
He, too, went to work at the corporate office, in the bowels of the accounting department, after graduating from—where else?
—Schilling, and has earned all sorts of accolades for his revolutionary approach to backend accounting systems.
I didn’t love school. I didn’t apply to Schilling because of my dismal grades.
I went to the University of Minnesota and I was damn lucky to get in.
I didn’t graduate with honors—there were days I wasn’t sure I would graduate at all.
I spent all my free time working, listening to music or going to live shows, or volunteering with the Hometown League, the nonprofit baseball organization for kids and adults with disabilities that my mother started. That’s still how I spend my time.
I suppose even the negative attention I got from Dad—for bad grades, showing up hungover—or drunk—on Christmas, even growing my hair long my senior year of high school—was better than his cold shoulder or the things he called me behind closed doors. He’s an embarrassment. Slacker. Disappointment.
But now I’m in the manager rotation at Hometown, and—except for this merch eval—I’m good at what I do, and I want to prove him wrong.
Prove to him that I’m capable of helping Hometown Electronics succeed.
I want him to see my value. To trust me to run one of his stores—this one, the flagship.
Maybe then I’ll finally fit in with this family of overachievers.
I stare at the clear expression of disappointment across his features, nothing I haven’t seen before. A look that makes me wonder if maybe I don’t want to fit in, after all. If I should follow in my mother’s footsteps instead and leave it all behind.
I thought that the merch manager rotation would be a breeze, especially the media department, which sells CDs, movies, video games, and software.
Because I love music. Because when I was a kid and would tag along with Dad when he toured stores, I’d spend all my time in that department. Second nature, right? Wrong.
“This is your final rotation. I don’t want to see you fail,” he says.
I’ve heard that my whole life. “We agree on something, at least,” I mumble. If he heard me, he ignores it.
He might not want to see me fail, but he doesn’t have enough faith in me to believe that I won’t.
“Don’t be so hard on him, Jeff,” I heard Mom late one night when they thought I was asleep but could hear every word with my door cracked. “Give him time. He’s got what it takes.”
“Does he?” Dad asked. “He’s not motivated. He’s lazy. How can he even pay attention to the world around him when he’s always got those damn headphones on? He’s got to live up to his name.”
Mom scoffed. “I never should have agreed to give him that name.”
“You didn’t have a choice,” Dad said. I could imagine his scowl, and Mom rolling her eyes. “You coddle him too much. You’ve got to stop treating him like a baby and show him that the world doesn’t owe him any favors.”
“He’s not even ten years old, Jeff!” Mom said.
“And already, he’s too much like you. Too sensitive. Too emotional.”