On Monday morning, the lime polos went on at Verdance Grow Center #114, formerly Underwood Garden & Feed. I watched them go on from behind the register with my coffee, the way you might watch a tide come in.
Kenzie came in first. Her polo hung to mid-thigh, because one size fit most and Kenzie was five-foot-one. She looked like a highlighter that had been told some bad news.
"F," she said, before I could ask.
Merle came in next. His polo was stretched over a flannel shirt he refused to take off, so he looked like a lime with a lumberjack inside it. He looked at the sky through the front windows.
"Clear," he said. "For now."
Then it was 0645, and the door opened, and Hank walked in.
He was wearing the polo.
I had spent the whole weekend wondering if he would. I had pictured him in forest green and the acorn patch, refusing to surrender, like a captain on a sinking ship. I had rehearsed what I would say. I had not rehearsed this.
It was the same polo as everyone else's. It was also completely different.
He had starched it, and not lightly. The collar stood up on its own like a little lime fence. Each short sleeve had a crease running down the middle, sharp enough to open mail. He had tucked it into his khakis, which had their usual property line.
His belt buckle shone like it had a separate job.
GET YOUR GREEN ON! ran across his back in perfectly level letters. I don't know how he got them level. I suspect a ruler.
"Morning, ma'am," he said.
"Morning, Hank."
"Uniform's compliant." He handed me a folded sheet of paper.
"I've checked it against the memo. It's worn during every shift. It's the official Verdance Lime. I've made no modifications."
"You starched it."
"Starch is a laundry product, ma'am. Not a modification."
Kenzie walked a slow circle around him, like a judge at a dog show. "A-minus," she said. "The minus is for the color. That's not on you."
"Appreciated," Hank said, and went out for morning inspection.
The Brand Activation Specialist arrived at nine.
His name was Jace Ulrich. He was twenty-eight, wore a lime polo that fit him perfectly, and carried a tote bag that said I ♥ BRAND. His hair had been arranged to look like it hadn't been. He shook my hand with both of his hands.
"Sadie! Love the energy in here," he said. "Love it. Very real, very earthy."
"That's the mulch," I said.
"Love the mulch."
Jace said "energy" the way other people say "um." In his first ten minutes, he told me the lanyards had a fun energy. The new end-cap displays had a discovery energy. The parking lot had "kind of a transitional energy," which I couldn't argue with, since half of it was a gravel pile.
Then he walked out to the yard and saw Hank.
Hank was in the shrub section, straightening a row of boxwoods so they faced the same direction. A boxwood does not have a front. Hank had decided otherwise.
Jace stopped walking. He looked at the collar. He looked at the creases. He looked at the tuck.
"Oh," he said. "Oh, wow. Okay."
"Morning, sir," Hank said.
"Hi! Jace, Brand Activation." Jace smiled at him with everything he had.
"First of all, love the commitment. Love it. You're really wearing the polo."
"Aye, sir."
"It's just..." Jace made a vague circular gesture at Hank's entire torso.
"The tuck is a whole different energy, you know? It's a little bit..." He searched for the word. "Formal."
"It is a uniform."
"Right! Totally. But it's a relaxed uniform."
Jace pulled a spiral-bound booklet out of his tote, the Verdance Brand Experience Guide. He flipped to page fourteen and read aloud. "Team members project a lived-in, approachable warmth. Think: your favorite neighbor on a Saturday."
Hank looked at page fourteen. There was a photograph of a smiling man in an untucked lime polo, holding a watering can he had clearly never used.
"That man is holding the can upside down," Hank said.
"That's a model."
"He'd lose the water."
"So the polo's untucked," Jace said quickly. "And, um. Are those creases? On the sleeves?"
"Aye, sir."
"Can we not do creases? Creases feel a little... corporate."
Jace said this without any apparent irony, standing in front of a banner that said GET YOUR GREEN ON! in six-foot letters. "We want lived-in. We want soft. We want 'I just grabbed this off the chair.'"
Hank was quiet for a moment. A customer walked past between them with a flat of marigolds. Hank automatically squared one marigold in the corner of her flat. She didn't notice.
"Understood," he said.
There was that word again.
On Tuesday, Hank arrived at 0645, untucked and unpressed.
It is hard to describe how wrong it looked. It was like seeing a grandfather clock lying on its side.
The polo hung loose over his belt. The collar flopped. There were wrinkles across the front, real ones, the kind you get from a dryer and a bad night.
He had obeyed the brand guide to the letter. He had grabbed it off the chair. You could tell it had been a hard chair for him.
"Morning, ma'am," he said.
"Hank," I said. "You don't have to—"
"Page fourteen," he said, and went out to the yard.
Kenzie watched him go. She didn't give it a grade. That scared me more than anything.
It was a strange day. Hank did everything he always did. He loaded mulch and watered the hanging baskets and answered questions about aphids. But he did it all at a slight distance, like a man in a store he didn't work at.
Mrs. Wainwright from the garden club came in for her weekly hydrangea consultation. She took one look at him and put her hand on his arm.
"Hank, are you ill?"
"No, ma'am."
"Are you eating?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Is it your wife? Is Lorna all right?"
"Lorna's fine, ma'am. It's a relaxed uniform."
Mrs. Wainwright looked at his polo for a long time. Then she looked at me, behind the register, as if I had personally done this to him with my bare hands. She bought her hydrangea food from Kenzie instead.
Merle came in from the bulk yard at lunch. He looked at Hank, who was eating a sandwich at the picnic table with his back unusually rounded. Then Merle looked at the sky.
"Pressure's dropping," he said.
There wasn't a cloud anywhere.
On Wednesday, two things happened.
The first was that Jace redid the hose aisle. The Brand Experience Guide said hoses should be displayed in "fun, browsable bins." So Jace had me buy four large wicker bins. Then he took Hank's flemished spirals off the floor, one by one, and dropped them into the bins in loose, tangled heaps.
"So much more inviting," Jace said. "It's a treasure hunt energy."
Hank was standing at the end of the aisle with a clipboard. He didn't say anything. He just watched each spiral come apart as it was lifted. When the last one went into the bin, he turned around and walked to the seed rack.
The second thing was worse.
At closing, Hank did the daily count, the way he had every day for three years. He handed me the clipboard. I glanced at it the way I always did, without reading, because the numbers were always right.
Then I stopped. In the margin, in Hank's small square handwriting, there was a correction.
Garden lime, 40 lb bags. Count: eleven. Actual: ten.
I looked up at him. He was looking at the clipboard as if it belonged to somebody else.
"It's one bag," I said. "Somebody probably carried it out and forgot to ring it."
"It's thirty-four months, ma'am," he said. "And now it isn't."
He went home. I sat in the office with the clipboard for a long time. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, a wicker bin of hoses settled with a soft rubber sigh.
On Thursday, Hank came in at 0645, untucked and wrinkled and polite. He did morning inspection. He did not inspect Merle.
At 0700 he knocked on my office door, which was already open. He knocked anyway. He always did.
"Ma'am," he said. "I have a request."
He handed me an envelope. It was a plain white business envelope, and it had been ironed. There was not a single wrinkle in it. It was the only thing on him all week that had been.
On the front, in block capitals, he had written two words.
REQUEST MAST.
"What's a mast?" I asked. "I mean, I know what a mast is, on a boat. But I'm guessing you don't want a boat."
"No, ma'am." He stood very straight, untucked polo and all. "In the Navy, any sailor has the right to request mast. It means you ask to speak, in person, to your commanding officer about a matter you can't solve at a lower level."
"I'm your manager. You can talk to me any time."
"With respect, ma'am, you're not the lowest level I've tried." He nodded at the envelope. "I've tried myself. That didn't work either."
I opened it. Inside was a single typed page. At the top, under the subject line UNIFORM, there was one more line.
Requested audience: The highest-ranking officer of Verdance Home & Garden available.
I worked for a company with two hundred stores, nine states, and a Brand Activation Specialist.
I had no idea who the highest-ranking officer was. But I had a strong feeling Hank was going to find out.
Up next: Request Mast
Continue to Part 3 →