Ronald Wade was a really nice guy, so nice, that it made people suspicious. What was he hiding behind that pleasant smile? Short, powerful, bespectacled; he had been the produce manager at Ameretat Market for as long as anyone could recall. He may have been there since it first opened. He never seemed to age. Maybe he was a vampire?
He had all the right connections to bring the freshest produce from all corners of the world, and the farm just outside of town, to the good people of Persepolis. He could do things no other produce manager could, and while no one ever expressed it, the townsfolk knew their lives were better for him. In fact, medical records would show that Persepolians had sufficient levels of vitamin A and C despite being generally obese.
On a random Tuesday, Ronald was restocking the garlic display. Maybe he wasn’t a vampire after all? Garlic does have anti-aging properties, you know. Ronald had a moment of revelation looking at the numerous bins of apples, beside a meager offering of pears.
Gala apples from Chile, Fuji apples from New Zealand, Honeycrisp apples from Michigan, Red Delicious (which were not delicious), Granny Smith, Pink lady, Cosmic Crisp, Jazz, and MacIntosh in seemingly endless piles. Beside the glorious display of crimson, polished globes were maybe a dozen tired looking Bartlett pears.
Ronald dutifully finished removing undesirable-looking garlic bulbs and replacing them with succulent, allicin-rich tubers. This could easily be done by a subordinate, but Ronald often did things that could be delegated. He then began inspecting the apples, one variety after the next. He searched his working memory, trying to recall the last time he saw anyone buying a pear.
Some of the premium varieties of apples were more costly than the pears, but most of them were cheaper. Was it a supply verse demand issue? Limited pear supply drove the prices up? But there wasn’t a discernable demand. Somewhat disheartened by the realization that people just didn’t seem to like pears, he retrieved the garlic box. On his way back to his office to conduct research about the newly identified problem, the pear issue, Deputy Blaine from the Persepolis County Sheriff's Office strolled up with a shopping basket.
“Fine display you’ve got here, Wade.” She was combing through the Pink Lady apples.
“Do you see a difference among them?” He quizzed.
Deputy Blaine studied the apples for a moment before replying in the negative.
“These are from South Africa. They have an edible wax coating that keeps them fresh for weeks.” He gestured toward the back row of apples.
“That’s why they look exceptionally shiny.”
She nodded as he gave an impromptu apple lecture.
“And the front half come from New Zealand. They’re in front because they don’t have the same coating and won’t stay fresh as long.”
“Genius” Deputy Blaine praised his fruit strategy.
“I’ll grab some of these puppies from New Zealand then. Hey, what in the world are Cosmic Crisps? I’ve never heard of those before.
“Oh wow, good eye.” Ronald handled one of the strange fruits.
“This is a hybrid between the Honeycrisp and the Enterprise apple. They were developed by Washington State University to combine the crunch and juiciness of the Honeycrisp with the disease resistance, firmness, and extra long storage life of the Enterprise. They can last up to thirteen months in the right conditions! They became available in 2019, and we just started selling them a few months ago. They’re called Cosmic Crisp because of the little white lenticels, which are breathing pores on apples, kind of make them look like stars scattered across a dark red sky.”
Deputy Blaine was impressed but became disinterested after a few apple facts. She took one, rubbed it on her shirt, and took a bite.
“Wow, this is really somethin’. Well, got criminals to catch, take it easy Wade. You know my number if you need anything.” She walked off eating the apple in the store, she was old school like that.
“911?”
“Yup, that’s the one.”
Ronald felt guilty for being so passionate about apple facts. If Deputy Blaine had inquired about the Bartlett pears, he wouldn’t have had anything fascinating to tell her. He got busy with some overdue accounting paperwork and never got around to the pear research he intended to conduct that day. The weight of pear inequality was on him as he arrived home after Ameretat Market closed that evening, however.
As his wife was preparing roast beef stew, which he ate every day, Ronald poured over produce industry trade journals. He found some enlightening details, but nothing that helped him understand why apples had obtained preferential treatment over pears. There were pages and pages devoted to apple breeding, dozens of apple associations, federal apple marketing programs, apple festivals, research grants... but only a paragraph devoted to pears.
He had a notebook full of information at the dinner table with him. The steam from roast beef stew, served over oven-baked potatoes, fogged his thick-rimmed spectacles.
“About forty percent of apples and pears are processed. Pears are typically canned, used as additives in mixed fruit drinks, or in fruit cocktail. But processed apples are typically used for applesauce, apple juice concentrate, pie filling, or hard ciders.” He abruptly informed Roseanne, his wife, while waiting for the beef stew to cool.
Roseanne looked surprised, because she was, both by the details revealed and by the unprompted announcement.
“Ordering pears and apples at work?” She inquired, relevant to the topic.
“Not really, I just noticed that while America produces approximately ten pounds of apples for every pound of pears… Ameretat Market has eighty, eight-zero times as many apples as we do pears.”
“Eighty?”
“Eighty.”
“Well, you’re the produce manager. Do you think that is a reasonable balance?”
Ronald paused, considering the matter with more seriousness than Roseanne was accustomed to witnessing.
“I have to look into it.”
“I can’t remember the last time I even had a pear?”
“Exactly. I think there might be something more than meets the eye to this.”
Roseanne laughed.
“Do you think there is some kind of big anti-pear conspiracy?”
Ronald was silent, he looked suspiciously at his phone which sat on the table near his plate. He knew it recorded conversations, he just didn’t know who was listening. He simply nodded and lifted a forkful of beef stew to his mouth to blow on it.
Roseanne laughed harder.
“You can’t be serious, Ronald!”
Ronald put a finger to his lips, an American gesture indicating that silence was requested. It would probably be recognized in other cultures as well, but Ronald was American.
“Got some black garlic from Northern Japan in today. We’ve never had that before.” He purposely changed to produce-related topic.
He devoted his evening to pear research, trying to gather the data necessary to support advocating for more space and attention to pears. The very next morning, Ronald sought out the Ameretat Market manager, Albert Kresckenhauer.
“Good morning, Mr. K.” Ronald found him overseeing a store associate cleaning the glass doors.
“Mornin’ Ron. Hey, did we adjust the delivery schedule for Saturday? I promised Mayor Budinski we’d deliver flowers for the Founder’s Day parade.”
“Oh, yeah, shouldn’t be a problem. I wanted to talk to you about an issue with the produce department.”
“We’re not selling the diarrhea lettuce, are we?”
“No, our lettuce comes from Arizona this time of year.”
“They grow lettuce in Arizona?”
“Winter lettuce capital of America.”
“Hm” Kresckenhauer shrugged.
“It’s about pears.”
“We have diarrhea pears?”
“No, there’s nothing wrong with our pears.”
“You said there was an issue.”
“Well, yeah, but it’s not diarrhea related. I noticed we have about eighty, eight-zero times as many apples as we do pears. I’d like to expand our pear selection and maybe reduce the apples by five to ten percent.”
Kresckenhauer shrugged again.
“It’s your produce department. If you think that’ll work, go for it.”
Ronald had overprepared, that was easier than he had expected. He thanked Mr. K and went about implementing his plan.
Ronald waited for the right moment, he didn’t want to remove apples too soon and have empty space. Empty space was a big no-no in the produce department. He wanted to project abundance, not scarcity. People panicked when produce was scarce.
Buy 3 apples, get 1 for free!
Read the sign in front of every apple bin, followed by suggestions for using excess apples. Pairing apples with caramel, peanut butter, or making a charcuterie board with apples and sharp cheddar among them. Ronald observed many customers taking pictures of the suggestions with their cellular telephones. Within days, the apple population had been sufficiently reduced. His plan had come to… fruition. The Bartlett and Anjou (red and green) order had been sourced and placed.
On the ambitious morning that they arrived Ronald was gleefully stocking the new pear display when Mr. Kresckenhauer came to see him in the produce department. Mr. K almost never visited the produce department because there was almost never a problem there.
“Ron. Apple sales were huge last week but profits were down almost seven hundred dollars!”
Ronald froze. He had been given the latitude to manage the department and had broken weekly apple sales records, but at what cost to the company? He had a sinking feeling in his stomach. It wasn’t the diarrhea lettuce.
“But your campaign led to a four percent increase in the bakery, two percent in dairy, eight percent in nut butters, we sold out of caramel sauce and frozen pie crusts. Store profits were up three percent last week, accounting for low apple profits!”
Ronald was silent for a moment as he absorbed the information. This, he determined, was actually good news.
“I want to thank you with this employee spotlight certificate.”
Ronald beamed as he posed for a picture, holding the certificate while shaking Mr. K’s hand. Once the associate, who was unofficially Mr. K’s personal assistant, had taken the picture, Mr. K chatted for a few minutes while Ronald just wanted to finish arranging the pears and post promotional information to persuade customers to branch out in their fruit journey.
Luckily Mr. K was paged to the front office, otherwise he may have stayed there all morning. He was quite chatty. Ronald perfected the pear display just as customers were trickling in. He stood proudly beside the pears, recommending them as people browsed. The public received the pear highlight with general ambivalence. No one was excited about pears, sales were modest. But modest was better than almost non-existent.
That evening, as he left work, Ronald was the only person in Persepolis with pears on his mind. That was not the same case in Aurora, Ohio. Aurora was home to the Midwest Produce Procurement & Distribution Center, overseen by Dean Bloomberg. A report had just reached him, it was troubling.
“Sir, pear orders are up four hundred percent and apple orders are down ten percent in Persepolis.” Reported his produce intelligence officer.
Dean walked up to a large map on his office wall and located Persepolis. With his hands behind his back, he studied the map for a quiet moment.
“Similar profit margin. Much higher rate of spoilage. No discernable ethnic cuisine demand. Puzzling.”
The produce intelligence officer stood silently as the most powerful man in produce pondered the situation.
“Get to the bottom of who is responsible. I want some courses of action to make a data-driven decision.”
“Yes sir!” report in hand, Oscar Davenport exited the office to begin his mission.
Back in Persepolis, Ronald was sleeping blissfully while Oscar was boarding a plane.
Oscar was waiting in the Ameretat Market parking lot the following morning as employees began to arrive. He flipped through a binder full of employee dossiers as each one entered the store. He was looking for one guy in particular, a short, powerful, bespectacled produce manager named Ronald Wade.
Green Subaru, bumper sticker about dogs Oscar logged into Ronald’s dossier as exited his car. Oscar sunk down behind the steering wheel and raised binoculars to his eyes to observe Ronald as he entered the store. Ronald had no idea he was being watched. Mr. K met him at the door.
“I knew this pear display was a bad idea” that’s how Mr. K greeted Ronald.
“Huh? Why?”
Mr. K presented a flier that had been taped to the front door upon his arrival.
PEARS ARE UNAMERICAN.
SUPPORT AMERICAN APPLES!
A picture of masked men with firearms crouching in front of apple barrels was beneath the words of the flier.
Ronald was perplexed. Albert was shaking. Oscar was grinning as he watched through his binoculars. An unnamed employee was scraping tape residue off of the glass door.
“I don’t even know if I want pears in the store!”
“Is this a joke?” Ronald was in disbelief. Sure, the mafia started over lemons, but why would anyone brandish a firearm over pears?
Mr. K was more pale than usual.
“No! Vandalizing the store over pears isn’t a joke!”
“I think vandalism might be a strong word. It’s just a piece of paper taped to the door.”
“It is vandalism! It’s vandalism, and a threat, and, and… infringing on interstate commerce!”
Mr. K talked a lot about the constitution.
“Then we should call Deputy Blaine.” Ronald still wasn’t taking the matter too seriously.
“I already called 911. They’re sending a patrol.”
As if the police were manifested by the conversation, a cruiser from the Sheriff’s Office pulled into the parking lot. Oscar waited until the deputies entered the store to leave. Deputy Blaine and her partner, not like that, he was just the other deputy that she worked with, met Mr. K and Ronald at the front door of Ameretat Market.
Deputies Blaine and Dudley, who had the same haircut and looked remarkably similar, took a report and made a few vague promises about an increased presence. Mr. K begged them to stay, they were the two strongest deputies in the county, no one would think of messing with the store while they were there. They tried to reassure a visibly shaken Albert Kresckenhauer, grabbed a few apples for the road (on the house), and departed. Mr. K was not pacified, he was frightened and seriously contemplated not opening the store that day. Ronald was able to leverage the generic statements by the deputies to assure Mr. K enough to allow the store to open as scheduled. Ronald wasn’t scared about some sort of pro-apple militia, though he would have felt responsible if the store lost out on a day’s profit, and his co-workers on a day’s pay.
He was, however, on edge as he went about the day. Looking over his shoulder every now and then, especially around the pears. He quietly restocked everything as necessary, everything except the pears.
Oscar, meanwhile, went across town to check in on a notorious rabblerouser. Terry Kapp, the so-called “fruit prophet”, had caused a lot of problems for the industry. He was pro-apple, pro-pear, pro-fruit in general; but he was always squawking about “responsibility to the trees”, “only taking as much as you can eat”, and so on. Consumers wasted about thirty percent of the produce they bought, reducing post-purchase waste would cut into profit. Terry was a problem.
Terry wasn’t an actual prophet, but don’t tell him I said that. He did, however, have several connections within the industry. True believers who were fighting from inside the machine. They tipped him off about the pear issue, and that industry muscle was inbound. Terry had a young crabapple tree in his yard, it was not big enough to safely support his weight, so rather than hide in it, he was standing on a ladder behind it while observing his house. As the prophecy foretold, Oscar appeared. He parked on the side of the road and crept down the driveway, keeping in the shadows of the trees.
Oscar rummaged through the compost pile, the recyclables, and even the regular garbage. Terry was recording Oscar with his cellular device, Oscar was peering into the windows after inspecting rubbish. He didn’t find anything worth reporting and returned to his car, proud of his espionage and unaware that he had been seen. Terry holstered his self-defense slingshot and climbed down the ladder. After reinspecting the areas that he observed Oscar examining, he returned to his home. This wasn’t his first encounter with industry goons, but it still felt degrading.
Ameretat Market closed at its normal time without incident and Oscar reported his activities to headquarters. Terry, though, rode his bicycle to Ameretat Market. At the pleading of his wife, he no longer wore his prophet outfit in public. He rode through the bustling streets of Persepolis wearing a trilby hat made of woven pineapple husk fiber, an Aloha shirt bearing the image of pineapples wearing sunglasses, and environmentally-responsible crocs… with pineapple jibbitz. He was on a pineapple kick lately.
Terry walked into the store after closing time. The door typically wasn’t locked until the staff left, and given their small-town hospitality, they would typically serve customers after-hours if they were just grabbing something quickly. Ronald froze when he saw Terry but quickly shook off the fear after assessing that a man in a pineapple shirt was probably not part of an agricultural terrorist organization.
“Ronald” Terry approached with an outstretched hand.
“Terry Kapp, the fruit prophet. I know what’s going on here, and I’m here to help.”
Ronald looked around as he shook Terry’s hand with a degree of discomfort.
“Do you, um… work for the Sheriff’s Department?”
“The Sheriff’s department that wastes thousands of watermelon seeds with their eating contest every year? No way! Not me.”
“Oh. OK. Well, um, what can I help you with?”
“Is there somewhere we can talk privately? About the pear issue.”
Ronald mistook Terry for a detective trying to stay undercover despite Terry plainly telling him that he did not work for the Sheriff’s Department. He escorted Terry to the warehouse where the two sat on wooden fruit crates and sampled some of the pears in question. Terry saved the core of his to replant as nature intended.
“What happened today wasn’t about pears” Terry informed Ronald.
“It wasn’t?”
“No. It was about you. You’re fighting for equal treatment, and they responded with surveillance, propaganda, and intimidation.”
“Who responded with that? Who are they?”
Terry bit into a Gala apple that he had helped himself to. He would later save the seeds.
“Big Apple.”
“New York City?” Ronald wasn’t following the logic.
“No, not The Big Apple. The Apple Industrial Complex. Dean Bloomberg sent his goons here because you cut into their market with this pear stunt.”
“It wasn’t a stunt though. I just thought we should offer more of a variety to our customers.”
“Exactly. They don’t want variety, unless it’s varieties of apples. You never attacked apples. You just asked for a little bit of recognition for a fruit that has been coexisting with mankind for thousands of years. Look, I’m not anti-apple, I’m not even pro-pear. I just want everyone to treat all fruit fairly. How many pear commercials have you seen?”
“None that I can think of. But to be fair, I don’t think I’ve seen any apple commercials either.”
“OK, well how many pear festivals have you been to?”
Ronald thought for a moment.
“None, actually.”
“Exactly. Try to organize a pear festival? Venues are all suddenly booked, fruit trucks get flat tires, sudden codling moth outbreaks happen. Big Apple won’t let it happen. You’ve spent your whole life in produce. You noticed something nobody else noticed. They noticed that you noticed.”
Ronald felt a shiver run up his spine with that line. They noticed that he noticed… and now they were harassing him.
Another conversation was happening parallel to the fruit summit in the Ameretat Market warehouse. Oscar was on the phone with Dean Bloomberg. He reported on the conditions of the produce market, and that nothing unusual was going on at the Fruit Prophet’s home. Dean was impressed with the assessment of the produce department and with Wade’s shrewd business sense.
“If you can’t bet them, join them.” Bloomberg said to Oscar.
“I’m going to fly out in the morning and offer this Wade guy a position at the southeast distribution center. We can stem the bleeding in Persepolis and put him to good use.”
Ronald barely slept a wink that night. He parked at a convenience store down the street instead of in his own driveway. Checked every cabinet and closet for industry saboteurs, made sure that each and every window was locked. Every creak of the house, every branch tapping against the windowsill in the breeze, every time his Jack Russell Terrier licked himself, it all sounded like danger.
But he survived the night and went to work the following day like there wasn’t a coordinated plot against him. He had to be brave, if not for himself for the dignity of pears. He drove to work after inspecting his car for explosives, surprised to find his tires inflated.
After parking in the nearly empty lot at Ameretat Market, he cautiously walked toward the store.
A man who looked vaguely familiar, Oscar, and another sharply dressed man approached him. He did not have any weapons to reach for, that was probably a massive oversight.
“Hi, good morning. Ronald Wade? I’m Dean Bloomberg, president of the Midwest Produce Procurement & Distribution Center. I’d like to talk with you about an opportunity to come work for me at our southeastern distribution center.”
“Dean Bloomberg? Stop treating pears like trash!” Ronald recoiled at the name, which he had just learned yesterday from Terry.
“Yeah, cute. Anyway.”
“Why are you treating pears like trash?” Ronald interrupted.
"For thirty years we've optimized a system that feeds millions of people every day. The trucks arrive on time. The warehouses are stocked correctly. Spoilage is minimized. Forecasts are accurate. Consumers find what they expect. One produce manager ignored decades of market behavior and now my forecasts are wrong. If pears were as transportable as apples, if they had the market valuation of apples, then I’d be trying to elbow apples out of the market. I’m fruit agnostic, but I believe in making money."
That all made a lot of sense to Ronald.
“I hear you really know produce. You’d be a real asset.”
“Isn’t the distro center in Pasargadae? That’s a bit of a commute…” Ronald dithered.
“Whatever they’re paying you here, I’ll double it. Here’s my card, let me know.” Dean handed Ronald his business card and went back to his rental car, he had a flight to Cleveland to catch.
Ronald remained in the parking lot for a while before heading inside.
The following day, Terry went into the Ameretat Market looking for Ronald. The apple display had grown and there were only a few pears in an obscure corner. Terry inquired of the first store associate that he encountered.
“Mr. Wade, the produce guy? Oh, he quit. Got a job at the big distro center in Pasargadae. We’ll sure miss him, but we’re happy for him.”
“I didn’t see this coming.” admitted the fruit prophet.