Really, tchê? That’s outrageous!”
The cell phone Sr. Geraldo was talking into hadn’t been designed for giant hands like his. It’d taken him no fewer than five attempts to dial his boss’s number, which just goes to show how hard he found it to press a single one of those tiny buttons. Now that he had Sr. Amauri on the line, it was as if Sr. Geraldo couldn’t believe he was being heard on the phone; he made a point of shouting every word.
“Anyway, I didn’t call for the gossip,” he explained, then chuckled. “The truth is I rang to see if you had time to meet for lunch today and talk about … Uh … Let’s call it an unpleasant matter.”
Every last thing, from his casual tone of voice to the indirectness of his question, had been meticulously planned. Sr. Geraldo even rehearsed the sentence three or four times so he could have an idea of how it sounded. He knew better than anyone that Sr. Amauri, as supervisor of the Fênix supermarket chain, was always buried under a mountain of problems and never had a minute to spare, which is why he didn’t take kindly to last-minute invitations like this one, even when they came from his most competent and dedicated manager, which is exactly what Sr. Geraldo was, and despite them being on friendly terms.
Sure enough, the supervisor was annoyed. He got straight to the point:
“Geraldo, about the issue at your store. Whatever it is, you have the autonomy to handle it on your own. In fact, you don’t only have the autonomy, but it’s also your duty to try to handle it on your own. After all, you’re the manager, are you not?”
“Yes, of course I am, but …” Sr. Geraldo cleared his throat, hesitant and disheartened. Even though he’d expected the boss to kick up a fuss, he hadn’t counted on him objecting so strongly. “Now look, tchê, if you’ve got to know, I’m not proud, not at all proud, of what I’m about to tell you.” He then said, improvising, “But I think you’ll understand. Or at least I hope you’ll understand. The thing is, I simply have no idea how to solve this problem. There. That’s all.” And in a sudden burst of inspiration, he added: “You were a manager once, Amauri. I wonder if, back in the day, you never, never ever found yourself in the position I’m in now, without any idea what to do.”
“Yeah … Sometimes … I suppose I did, now and then …” Sr. Amauri grudgingly admitted, unsure of how to rebut Sr. Geraldo’s insinuation without seeming arrogant. “But,” he insisted, “can you really not figure it out on your own? Must we really meet to talk it over?”
“Come on, tchê, I wouldn’t have called if I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
The supervisor smacked his lips on the other end of the line.
“Alright. So be it. Same restaurant as last time? Can you be there in half an hour?”
“Yes, of course. Wonderful. That’s just perfect,” the manager said, savoring that small victory. “Thanks. I guess I’ll see you soon. Bye.”
He left the cell phone on a corner of his desk, leaned back in his chair, lit a cigarette, and gazed around his small office. The space, crammed full of things that never seemed to find their right place, looked more like a depot than it did the management of a supermarket. All those years stuffed in that room … Sr. Geraldo hated it. Yet as he gazed around him now, he felt something special. It’s not that he didn’t hate the space anymore; quite the contrary. He could have easily summoned up the usual rage. All he had to do was focus on the many annoyances contained in those four walls. Still, his current troubles had reminded him of everything the room represented, small and depot-like as it was: a good job, stability, a hard-earned position … He wondered if it would be his much longer, then sighed. He’d been sighing a lot lately.
He was a stocky man, prone to obesity, with a full nose and large eyes that were constantly wide open. There was something coarse and vulgar about him: although his hair was grayish and impeccably styled, and his face smooth and beardless, he didn’t seem sophisticated. His low, booming voice and warm affect, at once a little ironic and intimidating, made it difficult to tell apart when he was kidding from when he was being serious. Most people would be hard-pressed to believe there was more to Sr. Geraldo than met the eye. He was a boorish, unattractive man who dressed in clothes that appeared elegant; that is, a man who used to be poor but had made his way up in the world with painstaking honesty. The staff loved him because he never gave them a hard time when they slipped up, or demanded too much, or played the tyrant—among other qualities any employee with a bit of sense could appreciate. At the same time, he had no patience for idleness or for people who did everything in their power to do nothing. He hated shirkers. To set an example, he helped out with several of the supermarket’s manual tasks, spilling buckets and buckets of sweat, working just as hard as his most dedicated employees, even though he was the manager and under no obligation whatsoever to be doing that kind of work.
After smoking, he left the supermarket in the hands of Paulo, his assistant manager and second-in-command, and left for the meeting. He reached the restaurant before Sr. Amauri, who walked in several minutes later in a pair of handsome, polished dress shoes—shoes Sr. Geraldo had given him on the occasion of his last birthday and then regretted the minute he saw Sr. Amauri try them on, realizing, a moment too late, how much better they’d have looked on his own two feet. They smiled while enthusiastically shaking hands and exchanging a couple of casual remarks. Then they called over the waiter and gave their orders. It didn’t take long for the food to arrive, and it was clear when it got to their table that the two men were famished.
“How’s the back holding up, Geraldo?” Sr. Amauri asked out of the blue, after loudly ingesting a half-chewed lump of meat. A look of curiosity and concern flitted across his red, equine face.
Sr. Geraldo put down his knife and waved his hand like he was shooing away a fly.
“Forget about it. The doctor said the pain will ease up until it goes away, and I’m relying on it.”
“I bet he told you to take it easy, though.”
“He did. But you know what doctors are like.”
“I know what you’re like,” Sr. Amauri retorted.
The manager rolled his eyes. He knew Sr. Amauri’s spiel inside and out. It seemed they couldn’t see one another without the supervisor going on about the damn thing. It was something of a ritual.
As expected, Sr. Amauri proceeded to chide him:
“You open the store in the morning, close up at night … You’re the first one in and the last one out … You never rest. I’m not wrong, am I?” He shook his head. “You know you don’t have to do all of it on your own. You could delegate to the assistant manager, like the other managers do. What’s stopping you, tchê?”
“I like to keep an eye on things,” Sr. Geraldo said between forkfuls, shrugging. “We’ve talked about it before, Amauri. We’ve also talked about you wearing those shoes in front of me.”
Sr. Amauri failed to recognize the strategic non sequitur. Feinted, he smiled:
“You know, I didn’t even have them on. I went home and changed before coming to the restaurant just to bug you.”
A long silence ensued. Apparently both men thought they should finish their meal before broaching the subject they had come there to discuss. But before polishing off their food, the supervisor remembered to say:
“I may have to borrow some of your staff next week, Geraldo. Looks like everyone’s decided to go to the beach this summer. It’s mayhem: massive lines at the cash register, customers complaining around the clock …” He shook his head as if trying to chase away a bad memory. “Anyway. You can’t imagine what a mess things are. I’ve been recruiting cashiers from our stores in the cities and sending them to branches up and down the coast: Cidreira, Pinhal, Quintão. It’s only for two weeks or so. What do you say? Can you help a guy out?”
“Sure, no problem. I’m fully staffed,” Sr. Geraldo said with pride. “Besides, it’s been slow here. Probably for the same reason the beaches are so crowded. Porto Alegre’s dead. I reckon I can loan you as many as three cashiers. Two weeks, you said?”
“Maybe more. It’s so unusual, even for summer, that I don’t know how long it’ll go on. Not for certain, anyway.”
They turned their attention back to the meal, lowering their eyes to their plates. They finished eating, then called over the waiter. No, thank you, they didn’t want dessert, just coffee. Thanks. The flustered server disappeared with the dirty dishes and everything else, promising to bring their coffee soon. Sr. Amauri shifted in the chair and brought his hands together on the table, entwining his long fingers.
“Very well, then …” Smiling with cold, ceremonious ease, he narrowed his eyes. “I guess it’s time we discussed the unpleasant matter you brought up earlier, whatever it is. I have to say, I’m curious.” He checked his watch. “Curious and running a bit late, frankly. I need to go straight to the head office, see if I can figure out what happened with those unissued invoices. So? Go on, spill.”
But Sr. Geraldo didn’t answer. He glanced to the side, worrying the toothpick between his lips, as if scanning the tables around him for the right words.
Sr. Amauri narrowed his eyes even more. Was he seeing things, or had his friend’s pride taken a blow? Sr. Amauri grew more and more intrigued as he waited. Finally, the wide eyes he knew so well became resolute.
“Alright, I’ll get straight to the point. Because that’s how I do things,” the manager said, raising one of his hands in self-defense. “The issue is theft. Theft, theft, and more theft. Our stock is being ransacked—cookies, beverages, sweets, deodorant, everything—and I can’t seem to get to the bottom of it. I don’t know what to do. I’ve never seen anything like it. Damn it, Amauri, there’s a thief on my staff!”
Sr. Amauri processed the information in silence. For a second, his equine features softened, as though the issue at hand weren’t as serious as he’d imagined. Then, his face clouded over again. He was trying to gauge just how big the iceberg was beneath the information Sr. Geraldo had disclosed.
“Suspects?” he finally asked.
The manager was momentarily distracted, his tongue moving the toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other.
“Hunh? Suspects? Well, yes, actually … I have a hunch it’s the two stock clerks: Pedro and Marques.”
“Then fire them,” Sr. Amauri suggested, shrugging one shoulder in disdain. But as he said this, he realized that if things had been that simple, the manager wouldn’t have called a meeting.
Sure enough, Sr. Geraldo shook his head.
“No, that’s not the right way to go about it. I don’t have proof. If it is them, they haven’t left a single trace.”
“A bad deed well done.”
Two cups of coffee appeared on the table. They did so on their own, as if by magic, or at least that’s how Sr. Geraldo and Sr. Amauri would remember it, so absorbed in conversation they didn’t even register the light-footed waiter. They took two small, wistful sips of coffee. Then the supervisor said:
“If you suspect Pedro and Marques, then you need to stay on top of them. Have you checked the security footage?”
“I have, I have. Nothing. Neither of them seems to get up to much.”
“Then let me ask you something, Geraldo: Why do you think they’re the culprits?”
“Intuition,” the manager said, lifting his cup of coffee and gazing at Sr. Amauri through the rising steam.
Though Sr. Amauri tried to contain himself, he couldn’t help but laugh.
“Give me a break, tchê. Intuition? Last I heard, intuition is a gift exclusive to women.”
“Come on, I mean it. I just don’t like them. They’re insubordinate. They don’t take orders. They don’t give a damn about the chain of command. They don’t respect me. They’re always wandering the aisles together, talking about God-knows-what.” Just discussing the two stock clerks left Sr. Geraldo visibly flustered. “Anyway, that’s it. You asked if I had suspects, didn’t you? Well, I don’t trust them. They’re the only member of staff I can imagine doing something like this. But I don’t like flying blind either, Amauri. I can’t justify firing Pedro and Marques when I don’t have proof they’re the ones behind all this.”
“Sometimes it can’t be helped, my friend. You’ve got to try. Everybody flies blind at some point in their lives. If you can’t get to the bottom of things, as you said, why not fire them and see what happens?”
“Because Pedro and Marques … Setting aside the disciplinary issues … Pedro and Marques are the best stock clerks I have.” Seeing how confused the supervisor looked, Sr. Geraldo shrugged and explained: “Maybe it’s experience, I don’t know. Both men have worked at other, bigger chains than ours. Are they insubordinate? Yes, definitely. But hard as it is to admit, they’re better at their jobs than anyone else. They even remind me a bit of myself back when I was a stock clerk, the only difference being that I was disciplined. I toed the line. Believe me: It’d be a shame to let them go only to realize we’d made a mistake. It’s the middle of summer, Amauri, you know how hard it is to hire new staff this time of year. Much less two workers as good as them.”
Sr. Geraldo and Sr. Amauri paused to drink their coffee. Good coffee. Excellent coffee. So good in fact that the supervisor expressed his approval with a long, drawn-out “mmmmm.”
“Damn, I’d forgotten how excellent the coffee is here,” he remarked, then leaned forward slightly and picked up where they had left off, this time more quietly than before. “Look, Geraldo, I can’t have any of our employees hearing this, but the fact of the matter is that our stores are extremely vulnerable to the issue you were just talking about. We can’t always keep tabs on the staff, and they know the stores better than anyone. They know the blind spots, they know the security guards’ routines … If they really want to steal from us, if they get it into their heads that they’re going to steal from us, what’s to stop them? It’s virtually impossible to catch them red-handed. On top of that, Geraldo, you’ve heard the proverb, haven’t you, about how one bad apple spoils the barrel? Well. A dishonest worker will always do his darnedest to corrupt an honest one. Always, without fail. The more friends he has, the better for him and the worse for us.” He polished off his coffee with two final glugs, then checked his watch one more time, shocked to see how far the gold pointers had moved. “Damn, look at the time, tchê! I’m late … Right, let’s be practical. What do you think: Are the security guards in your unit in on the scheme? Are they just looking the other way, or are they stealing too?”
The manager was shaking his head before Sr. Amauri had even finished.
“Frankly, Amauri, I haven’t got a clue. I have no hard evidence. That’s why I’m so worried. It’s been two months since I started noticing our stock go missing, and even though it’s gotten worse, I still don’t have a single lead. It’s like chasing a ghost! I inspect the staff lockers periodically: nothing. I inspect their backpacks when they leave: nothing. It’s like things are vanishing into thin air!”
“Right …” Even as Sr. Amauri got up to leave, he looked deep in thought. “Very well … Here’s what we’re going to do: we’ll scale up security at your store. I’ll call a few of our other branches today and see if they can lend you a couple of guards. It’s a temporary measure, of course. After that, we can figure out next steps. Sound good?”
Sr. Geraldo seemed to like the idea.
“Wonderful! When do you think you can get the guards to the store?”
“As early as tomorrow, most likely. I’ll call you later today to confirm.” Sr. Amauri checked his watch again. “Listen, Geraldo, I’ve got to run.”
“Bye, Amauri. And thank you. I’ll be waiting for your call.”
“Bye. And get the bill, will you? I covered us last time. Don’t worry, we’re going to put an end to this nonsense.”
They shook hands, then Sr. Amauri rushed out into the sunny day.
The manager treated himself to another cup of excellent coffee before heading back to the supermarket. “Don’t worry, we’re going to put an end to this nonsense.” Sr. Amauri’s words echoed comfortingly in his head. It sounded as if all of it—his good job, his stability, his hard-earned position—was still safe.
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